In late 1935, a small band of irregulars led by a Syrian-born Islamist cleric launched a guerrilla campaign against the British mandatory government that had the establishment of a Jewish “national home” in what was then predominantly Arab Palestine, as part of its purview. The campaign was swiftly suppressed by British forces, and its leader, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, was killed as were the majority of his men.
But Qassam’s readiness to take up arms and die in the service of the Palestinian cause made a deep and lasting impression on Palestinian society, and his “martyrdom” became a symbol of sacrifice that has continued to resonate throughout the past 90 years, eventually providing both inspiration and a name to Hamas’s armed wing in the late 1980s. The fact that Qassam failed was essentially irrelevant. More important was his embodiment of the spirit of dogged and selfless resistance to foreign domination despite the imbalance of power and the unlikely prospects of success. Qassam also set the Palestinian national movement down the path of “armed struggle” that was eventually adopted by Yasser Arafat’s “mainstream” Fatah movement from the late 1950s onwards but whose role has diminished since the 1993 Oslo accord with Israel.
