Najjada, al-
NAJJADA, AL-
name of several arab paramilitary youth organizations.
A group called al-Najjada (Helpers) was formed in 1936 in Beirut by journalist Muhieddine Nsouli as a Sunni Muslim counterpart to the Christian Phalange party. In the 1950s, it emerged as a proNasser party with about 10,000 members under the new leadership of Adnan al-Hakim; it clashed with the Phalangists in the 1958 Lebanese Civil War. It has since adopted an Islamist ideology.
Another group of the same name was established at Jaffa, Palestine, in 1945 by a Muslim lawyer, Muhammad Nimr al-Hawari, as a counterpart to the Jewish Haganah. The Palestinian group quickly grew to an estimated 6,000 members in at least ten cities. It played a prominent role in the 1947 Palestinian protests and the 1948 Arab–Israel War.
see also arab–israel war (1948); haganah; hakim, adnan al-; lebanese civil war (1958); phalange.
Bibliography
Hudson, Michael C. The Precarious Republic: Political Modernization in Lebanon. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1985.
Khalaf, Issa. Politics in Palestine: Arab Factionalism and Social Dis-integration, 1939–1948. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991.
elizabeth thompson