[1] Alongside contemporaries such as Khalil al-Sakakini, Izzat Darwaza and Najib Nassar, Beidas was one of Palestine's foremost intellectuals in the early twentieth century[a] during the Al-Nahda cultural renaissance.

[4][5] On returning to Palestine, Beidas became a prolific translator, and a dominant figure in introducing the major writers of Russian literature to the Arabic-speaking world.

The book dealt with a subject, the Palestine Partition Plan and the establishment of the state of Israel, which appeared only occasionally down to 1948, but whose significance for writers who survived the debacle only emerged after that date, retrospectively.

On the occasion of the Nebi Musa riots of 1920, which arose in protest at the incipient implementation by the British Mandatory authorities of the Balfour Declaration's opening of Zionist immigration into Palestine, Beidas was one of the key speakers, credited with giving a 'soul-stirring speech.

Beidas' was a main proponent of the Palestinian national movement, through his journal Al-Nāfa'is as well as through a number of public speeches and articles in major Arabic (Egyptian) newspapers such as Al-Ahram and Al-Muqattam.

Beidas tried to raise awareness of the threatening presence of the Zionist immigrants, and urged the Ottoman authorities to treat the inhabitants of the Palestinian Sanjaks fairly.

[citation needed] Beidas' weekly periodical, al-Nafā'is al-'asriyyah (النفائس العصرية, The Modern Treasures), was founded in 1908 in Haifa, around the time of the Young Turk Revolution of July 1908.

[15] In one of his anonymous pieces for it, Beidas called upon the fathers of his society to prepare their children towards the 'age of freedom' (al-hurriyya), one where the free man was somebody who could make his own law (shar'ia) and guide himself (qiyadat nafsibi).

An-Nafa'is became a distinguished institution, benefiting from the general cultural awakening in the region and the increased focus on literary and scientific matters.

In the preface to the first issue of An-Nafa'is, Beidas explained that he considered novels to be one of the great pillars of civilisation in the enlightenment of the mind and his aim was to draw readers' attention to the significance of narrative art from the intellectual, social and moral point of view.