Muhammad 'Izzat Darwaza (; 1888–1984) was a Palestinian politician, historian, and educator from Nablus. Early in his career, he worked as an Ottoman bureaucrat in Palestine and Lebanon. Darwaza had long been a sympathizer of Arab nationalism and became an activist of that cause following the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire in 1916, joining the nationalist al-Fatat society. As such, he campaigned for the union of Greater Syria (modern-day Levant) and vehemently opposed Zionism and foreign mandates in Arab lands. From 1922 to 1927, he served as an educator and as the principal at the an-Najah National School where he implemented a pro-Arab nationalist educational system, promoting the ideas of Arab independence and unity. Darwaza's particular brand of Arab nationalism was influenced by Islam and his beliefs in Arab unity and the oneness of Arabic culture.
Later, Darwaza co-founded the nationalist Istiqlal party in Palestine and was a principal organizer of anti-British demonstrations. In 1937, he was exiled to Damascus as a result of his activities and from there he helped support the Arab revolt in the Mandatory Palestine. He was incarcerated in Damascus by French authorities for his involvement in the revolt, and while in prison he began to study the Qur'an and its interpretations. In 1945, after he was released, Darwaza eventually compiled his own interpretation entitled al-Tafsir al-Hadith.
In 1946, he joined the Arab Higher Committee led by Haj Amin al-Husseini, but resigned the next year after being disenfranchised by al-Husayni's methods. He left for Syria afterward and briefly aided in the unity talks between Syria and Egypt in the mid-1950s. By the time of his death in 1984, Darwaza had written over thirty books and published numerous articles on the Palestinian question, Arab history, and Islam.
Biography
Early life and background Darwaza was born to a middle-class Sunni Muslim mercantile family in Nablus. The Darwaza family had long been involved in textiles and had extensive trade relationships with merchants in Beirut and Damascus. In his memoirs, Izzat writes "The import of [textile] goods from the outside was, for the most part, through Beirut and Damascus." Izzat's father, 'Abd al-Hadi Darwaza and his paternal grandfather Darwish Darwaza, owned a store in the Khan al-Tujjar of Nablus. Izzat recalled, "From what I remember from my father and through my grandfather, the title merchant or merchants in Nablus mostly referred to owners of commercial textile and cloth shops. In Nablus, these shops were confined, or mostly confined, to a caravansary called Khan al-Tujjar, in the middle of Nablus."
Izzat received elementary and preparatory education in Ottoman government-run schools in the city. In addition to Arabic, he learned Turkish and English, as well as a basic knowledge of French which he strengthened in by the end of his formal education. Darwaza left school without going to Istanbul or Beirut to finish his education as was the custom of his generation. Instead, he educated himself, and according to Rashid Khalidi, became "a self-taught intellectual."
Loyalty to dissidence toward the Ottoman Empire Originally, Darwaza supported the Ottoman Empire based on his feelings of identification with Islam and of belonging to the larger Ottoman Muslim ummah ("nation"). In 1906, he served in the local Ottoman administration as a clerk in the Department of Telegraphic and Postal Services (DTPS) in Nablus. His first assignment in that department was for the District of Beisan and northern Palestine (the Galilee and northern Samaria). He was also an Arabist and was enthusiastic about the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, expecting that the new Ottoman government would institute reforms and grant the Arabs autonomy within the framework of the empire.
His loyalty to the Ottomans eroded, however, due to the impact of the new governments's Turkification policies which he viewed as repressive against his ideals. Because of his dissatisfaction with the Young Turks, Darwaza was driven to support Arab independence from the empire. In 1908, he joined the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), but withdrew soon after because of its Turkish nationalist political agenda. He played an active role in establishing a branch for the Party of Harmony and Freedom in Nablus in 1911. The party was founded in Istanbul and joined by Arab members to counter the policies of the CUP. In 1913, he joined an anti-Zionist group based in Nablus that sought to prevent the sale of Arab-owned land to Jews by submitting petitions to the Ottoman sultan, or by buying land for sale to preempt its purchase by Jews. In June 1913, he helped to prepare and became secretary of the First Palestinian Congress (also known as the Arab Congress of 1913) in Paris. In congress, he was also the delegate for the Jamma'in subdistrict of the District of Nablus. Meanwhile, Darwaza was still working in the DTPS.
In 1914, he established the Arab Scientific Society whose purpose was to spread Arabic culture in the region through the establishment of Arabic schools. The society did not succeed, however, due to the outbreak of World War I. Within the DTPS, Darwaza was appointed commissioner and deputy for the Nablus Post Office. He was promoted again—this time as director of postal stamp sales in Beirut.
Promoting unity with Syria
During World War I, Darwaza served as Postal Directorate-General of Beirut and retained this post until 1918. In 1916, while serving with the Ottoman army in the Sinai Peninsula, he joined the underground al-Fatat organization through Ahmad Qadri, a high-ranking member from Damascus. The aim of al-Fatat was to liberate and unite the Arab lands under Ottoman rule. In the wake of the Arab Revolt of 1916, Darwaza left the Ottoman civil service to serve in King Faisal's provisional government in Damascus. Ideologically, Darwaza became an Arab nationalist endorsing the concept of a Greater Syrian Arab state.
Following the World War I Armistice, Darwaza held several political posts including Secretary-General of al-Fatat from May 1919 to March 1920, Secretary of the Muslim-Christian Association's Nablus branch, and Secretary of the First Palestine Arab Congress in Jerusalem in 1919. During the spring and summer of 1919, a vigorous political campaign was waged by the Arab politicians in Palestine who were divided into "Younger Politicians" and "Older Politicians". The campaign was centered on the political future of Palestine, and Darwaza, a Younger Politician, played a central role. The Younger Politicians consisted of Arab nationalists who sought to unite Palestine with King Faisal's Syria while the Older Politicians consisted of Palestinian nationalists who preferred that Palestine be an independent entity.
Darwaza and Hafiz Kanaan—another leading al-Fatat member from Nablus—lobbied Arab groups in Jerusalem to advocate Syro-Palestinian unity before the arrival of the King-Crane Commission on 10 June 1919. They first met with Haj Amin al-Husseini and Kamil al-Husayni of al-Nadi al-Arabi party and they immediately expressed their support. They also suggested that Darwaza meet Raghib al-Nashashibi, Hussam ad-Din Jarallah, and Aref al-Dajani, supporters of independence. Darwaza convinced Nashashibi to gather some of the Older Politicians of Jerusalem to a meeting at his house. When it was made clear that Musa al-Husayni, a leader of the Older Politicians, was now in favor of unity, all of the other Older Politicians followed suit. When the commission arrived in Jaffa, it concluded on 27 June that it was in favor of Syro-Palestinian unity under a British Mandate.
In the first week of July 1919, the General Syrian Congress (GSC) held its first meeting in Damascus and Darwaza was its secretary. The GSC called for the immediate independence of Syria as a sovereign state under a constitutional monarchy and underlined its opposition to the establishment of Zionism in southern Syria (Palestine). Along with Haj Amin al-Husseini and Aref al-Aref, Darwaza founded and became an officer of the Palestinian Society in Damascus. The organization urged all societies and clubs in Palestine to cooperate and condemn the San Remo Conference's decision to grant Great Britain a mandate over Palestine and Transjordan.
The hope of Darwaza and the Younger Politicians for unity with Syria were curtailed when it became known that King Faisal was aligning himself with the leaders of the Zionist movement because "they [the Zionists] were helping us [the Arabs] in the [Paris Peace] conference." Afterward, Darwaza believed King Faisal did not devote to the Palestine issue its deserved attention. Faisal was deposed by the French in July 1920. An event that further deteriorated Darwaza's ambitions of Arab unity was the confirmation of the British Mandate over Palestine at the San Remo Conference on 24 April 1920. His experience in Damascus revealed to him that the universalism of Arab nationalism was not as concrete as its advocates had thought, and the military might of the European powers—France and Great Britain—were an overwhelming force to contend with.
Educator in Nablus Darwaza continued his political activity, representing Nablus in the Fourth Palestinian Congress in May 1921 and the Seventh Palestinian Congress in June 1928. From 1922 to 1927, he served as the principal of the an-Najah National School (later to become an-Najah National University) where he initiated and nurtured an Arab nationalist political educational process. Darwaza wrote textbooks and was an educator himself. One of his students who later became a nationalist politician, Akram Zu'aiter, wrote that Darwaza "used to give us a weekly lesson on the principles of Nationalism and [modern] society, in a way which sharpened our thought and broadened our horizons." Zuaiter also recalls that Darwaza wrote up nationalist and historical plays that his students would perform in.
In 1927, Rashid al-Haj Ibrahim, the leader of the Young Men's Muslim Association of Haifa, a prominent merchant, and future associate of Darwaza, invited him to his home to speak to a large group of students and notables about nationalist (qawmiyya) and patriotic (wataniyya) education. This was recognition that Darwaza's contribution to the spread of Arab nationalist sentiments gained influence not only in an-Najah School, but throughout Palestine.
Fight against the British Mandate
Darwaza became a member of the Arab Executive Committee and in 1930 was appointed by rival nationalist Haj Amin al-Husseini (then the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem) as the General Administrator of the Waqf (Islamic religious trust) under the Supreme Muslim Council. In 1931, he convinced his city's MCA to change its name to the Patriotic Arab Association. Unlike other Arab politicians at the time, Darwaza supported a combination of pan-Arabism, Islamism, and dedication to the Palestinian nationalist ideal.