This paper contributes to the panel’s discussion of the cross-fertilization of anti-colonial ideas across the Maghrib-Mashriq region by examining the impact of Italy’s 1911 invasion of Libya upon political discourse and practice in Palestine. While the Italian-Ottoman war for Libya of 1911-12 is the subject of a wide body of historical scholarship, rarely does the literature place the conflict in a wider context of Arab and Islamic notions of an anti-colonial struggle. By zooming in on the war’s reception in the Palestinian territories of the Ottoman Empire, this paper will argue that Italy’s invasion of Libya was in fact an event of major significance for Arab politics in the Mashriq. It played an important role in shaping a new language of anti-European struggle that would become increasingly prominent during the Mandate period. The paper will draw upon depictions of the Italian invasion of Libya in the Palestinian Arabic press (particularly al-Karmil, al-Quds and Filastin) as well as the diaries and memoirs of Palestinian public figures such as Najib Nassar, ‘Awni ‘Abd al-Hadi and ‘Izzat Darwaza. Through these sources a sense of an encroaching European colonial threat to the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire can be sensed, binding the North African territories to the Ottoman-ruled Eastern Mediterranean in the Palestinian political mindset. The paper will argue this process must be viewed against the wider canvass of French occupation in Algeria and Tunisia, British rule over Egypt, and in particular the establishment in 1912 of a Franco-Spanish protectorate in Morocco. Finally, the paper will discuss the ways in which events in Libya played a major role in shaping a more specifically Islamic type of anti-colonial activism in Palestine. Here the legendary figures of ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam and Fawzi al-Qawuqji are exemplary - two men deeply affected by the Italian invasion of Libya. Although neither of them were Palestinian in the strictest sense, they both went on to play crucial roles in the anti-colonial uprisings in Palestine during the 1930s, and they both recognised at an early stage the power of Islam as a mobilising force in such struggles. The paper will therefore weave their stories into the history of the Libya war and its reception in Palestine, exploring the ways in which the war bound the Maghrib more closely to the Mashriq, as well as the limits to these new bonds.