محمد عزة دروزة (1305-1404 هـ/1887-1984 م): سيرة ذاتية مقتطفة من مذكراته

Muhammad 'Izzat Darwaza was born in Nablus in 1887 and became one of the most prominent figures in Palestine and the Arab East in the Twentieth Century. He lived through the Ottoman and Syrian Faisal periods (1919-1920) as well the British Mandate period and beyond. He joined the secret Al-Fatat Society in 1915, and took part in creating the Independence Party in Damascus in 1919 and in Jerusalem in 1932. His entire life was devoted to combatting French, British and Zionist imperialisms, both before and after the Nakba of 1948. He helped to found the Al-Najah College in Nablus in the Twenties and became Director of Islamic Waqfs in Jerusalem in the Thirties. From his exile in Damascus, he directed the Great Armed Rebellion of 1937-1939, led by al-Hajj Amin al-Husaini, which fought against the partition of Palestine. In the Sixties and Seventies, he advocated Arab unity in his writings and unified guerrilla action against Israel and took part in the creation of the United Arab Republic (1958-1961), and had suffered both imprisonment and exile. He authored some fifty books in addition to hundreds of articles about Arab, Islamic and Palestinian history, both ancient and modern, and treated subjects like religion and Judaism. His Memoirs were the crowning achievement of his writings.

Darwaza belonged to a generation of Arab leaders who were totally devoted to their cause, a generation now being replaced by another in some Arab countries which advocates “Abrahamic normalization” at the expense of Jerusalem, the first direction of prayer and the site of the Prophet’s Night Journey and Ascension; and at the expense too of a brother Arab nation in terrible suffering. He died in 1984, in Damascus, where he was buried.