1889 - 1975
Palestinian politician and historian.
Muhammad Izzat Darwaza, born in Nablus, was an Ottoman bureaucrat in Palestine and Lebanon. He was a major figure in several Arab nationalist organizations, including al-Fatat, during the waning years of the Ottoman Empire, and helped organize the first Arab Congress (Paris, 1913). A pan-Arab nationalist who believed in the unity of Greater Syria after the Ottoman defeat and the establishment of the British and French mandates, Darwaza was also concerned with resisting Zionism.
During the British Mandate in Palestine, Darwaza became a leading figure in the Istiqlal (Independence) Party, a pan-Arab nationalist party reestablished in Palestine in 1932. When the Palestine Arab Revolt that began in 1936 flared up in 1937, Darwaza coordinated guerrilla activities from Damascus for the Arab Higher Committee.
He was a member of the reconstituted Arab Higher Committee for one year in 1947, then retired from active politics to write on Arab, Islamic, and Palestinian history.
Bibliography
Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of ModernNational Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
Khalidi, Rashid, ed. The Origins of Arab Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
Kimmerling, Baruch, and Migdal, Joel. The Palestinian People: A History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Porath, Yehoshua. The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918 - 1929. London: Cass, 1974.
— MICHAEL R. FISCHBACH
