[1][2] Named for Mount Carmel in the Haifa district, the first issue was published in December 1908,[1] with the stated purpose of "opposing Zionist colonization".

"[9] Khalidi contends that almost immediately after the publication of its first issue in December 1908, al-Karmil "became the primary vehicle of an extensive campaign against Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Accused of spying for the British against Ottoman Turkey and its German allies, he fled from his home in Haifa to Nazareth, and from there, wandered over the Galilee and the eastern bank of the River Jordan.

He went on the run for three years, living with Bedouin goat herders in the hills of what is now the Israeli Galilee, West Bank and northern Jordan, narrowly escaping capture.

[13] Her journalistic contributions between 1926 and 1933 have been characterized as a kind of "one-woman press", wherein she commented on a wide range topics, including women's activities locally, regionally, and internationally.

[16] Among the contributing writers to al-Karmil were many who had participated in the Arab revolt of 1916, such as Druze intellectual Ali Nasir al-Din and educator and journalist Hamdi al-Husayni.

Nassar was arrested in March 1939 by British police and held in administrative detention under the Defense Emergency Regulations in a women's prison in Bethlehem until February 1940, when she was detained because "she was actively engaged in subversive propaganda.