As such, he campaigned for the union of Greater Syria (modern-day Levant) and vehemently opposed Zionism and foreign mandates in Arab lands.

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.

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.

[2] 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.

[2] In 1916, while serving with the Ottoman army in the Sinai Peninsula,[5] he joined the underground al-Fatat organization through Ahmad Qadri, a high-ranking member from Damascus.

[10] 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.

[11] 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.

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.

[15] 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.

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.

[17] 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.

Unlike other Arab politicians at the time, Darwaza supported a combination of pan-Arabism, Islamism, and dedication to the Palestinian nationalist ideal.

[19] He began to edit in the al-Ja'miyya al-Arabiyya newspaper in the early 1930s and in December 1931-January 1932, he wrote articles encouraging Arabs to protest against British policies in the Middle East, to unite in the face of growing dangers, and to renew their drive towards freedom and independence.

[21] Darwaza helped instigate and organize the 1933 demonstrations in Jaffa which protested British policies in Palestine and continued allowances of Jewish immigration.

[10] Darwaza was one of the principal organizers of the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine which first erupted in his hometown of Nablus with the launch of the Palestinian general strike.

[22] The Mufti sent a delegation consisting of Darwaza, Mu'in al-Madi, and Abd al-Hadi to Baghdad, then to Riyadh to discuss the situation and upon their return on 6 January 1937, they revealed that the advice given to them was to cease hostilities.

[24] Later in that year, Darwaza held several meetings with Nuri al-Sa'id of Iraq to explore various solutions to help the Arabs avoid appearing intransigent.

[25] Despite attempts to calm the situation, in Damascus, Darwaza established and headed the Central Committee for National Jihad in Palestine which echoed Izz al-Din al-Qassam's call for a "holy war" against the British and Zionism.

"[26] Darwaza worked closely with the Mufti, who was now under house arrest in Beirut, to garner support and supplies for the revolt and supervise the Arab rebels in Palestine.

[30] Darwaza, along with Emil Ghuri and Mu'in al-Madi, served as the AHC's delegates to the September 1947 convention of the Arab League's Political Committee in Lebanon.

[32] After resigning from the AHC, Darwaza spent the rest of his life in the modern state of Syria where he left politics to concentrate on literature.

[33] As a pan-Arab intellectual, Darwaza aided in establishing the union between Syria and Egypt forming the short-lived United Arab Republic.

[35] In 1983 Darwaza granted Palestinian historian Muhammad Y. Muslih an eight-day interview and allowed him to photo-copy his memoirs in entirety.

The book was intended to be used as a textbook in primary and secondary schools throughout the British Mandates of Palestine and later Iraq, hence its simplified and direct language.

[37] Later in his lifetime after leaving politics, Darwaza published memoirs that discussed in detail the city of Nablus in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

According to Youssef Choueiri, "he gives a graphic and almost exhaustive description of his hometown... its mosques, residential quarters, orchards, industries, and inhabitants.

Moreover, he dwells at length of the social composition of the town endeavoring to reveal the open conflict between 'feudal families' and the new generation of middle traders, functionaries, civil servants, and teachers.

He states "I considered [this opportunity] an act of divine [favor] and started reading whatever books of exegesis and qur'anic studies were accessible to me."

Darwaza states in this exegesis he would "uncover the wisdom of revelation, the fundamental concepts of the Qur'an and the whole range of its subject matter and present it in a new style and new sequential order."

[41] His ideas helped the spread the word of secular pan-Arabism against religious nationalists and those who believed in separate Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian destinies.