The Palestinian Military Experience: Notes on Theory and Performance

The Center for Arab Unity Studies published the book The Palestinian Military Experience: Notes on Theory and Performance by Nafez Abu Hasna.

Although historians differ on the nature of the first confrontation that Palestinian farmers fought against Jewish settlers in the village of Malbis in 1877, it remains the first time that the Palestinians used force in defense of their land. Although it was a confrontation that was limited in space and time, it reveals the distant beginning in which Palestinians confronted who invaded their land. It means that the launch of the contemporary Palestinian revolution came based on a long legacy and a rich experience. Despite all that is said about the unpreparedness of the situation in Palestine to face the Jewish invasion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the pioneering organizational attempts that the country knew in the second decade of the last century remain remarkable, even when it did not achieve wide spread for many reasons, in the forefront of which is the strict secrecy on one hand, and the tendency of the main current in the Palestinian leadership at the time to focus on patterns of activity that exclude the use of force and weapons, on the other hand. On the other side, various “associations” and “organizations” operated under different names and with interfaces that do not reflect the reality of their activity, but their direct goal was military action, and they carried out some limited military activities, for which full details were not available.