The beauty of Gaza is that our voices do not reach it.
Nothing distracts him; nothing removes the fist from the enemy’s face.
Gaza is doomed to rejection…
Hunger and rejection, thirst and rejection, displacement and rejection, torture and rejection, siege and rejection, death and rejection…”
Excerpts from Silence for Gaza, Mahmoud Darwish (1973)
These are the words of famous Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, written 50 years ago and perhaps more poignant than ever as Gaza is devastated by more than five months of Israeli attack that has killed more than 31,000 people and destroyed vast sections of its infrastructure.
Born on March 13, 1941, Darwish is considered the Palestinian national poet for his lyrics expressing the longing of Palestinians deprived of their homeland, which was taken by Zionist militias to make way for today’s Israel.
His poetry gives voice to the pain of Palestinians living as refugees and under Israeli occupation for nearly a century.
Today, Tel Aviv Tribune remembers Darwish, whose words are relevant today as a hope for a free Palestinian struggle against growing Israeli control over the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Darwish died in 2008 after open heart surgery, leaving behind more than 30 collections of Arabic lyric poetry.
Translated into 39 languages, Darwish’s laments of loss, longing and exile spoke to people fighting against occupation around the world.
The power of poetry
For Palestinians, words are often the only weapon available to fight back, finding power to shape perception.
Atef Alshaer, a lecturer in Arabic language and culture at the University of Westminster in London, says Palestinian poetry “inspires people to act, to protest, to commemorate, to remember and to bear witness.”
“In the absence of an equitable response to Palestinian political protests, poetry has helped give shape and expression to what they have lost,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Darwish did just that, becoming the voice of the Palestinian people.
On this Earth, there is what makes life worthwhile:
On this earth is the Earth Lady, the mother of all beginnings, the mother of all endings.
Its name was Palestine.
Its name became Palestine.
My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life.
On this Earth (year unknown)
Who was Mahmoud Darwish?
The second of eight children, Darwish was born into a modest farming family in the village of Barweh, Akka (Acre) – an Arab town destroyed by Zionist militias in 1948, the remains of which were absorbed by Israel.
At the age of six, Darwish saw his village razed along with hundreds of others during the Nakba of 1948, when Israel was founded.
His family joined 750,000 other Palestinians forced into exile, fleeing violent attacks by Zionist militias and the newly formed Israeli army, in search of a safe home elsewhere.
Settlement camps in neighboring Lebanon have hosted 110,000 Palestinian refugees, including the Darwish family.
A year later, Darwish and his family returned to their village home to find it burned to the ground.
They moved to Deir al-Asad, a Palestinian village about 15 kilometers away, where they attempted to rebuild their lives as internally displaced people (IDPs), unable to return home.
Thousands of Palestinians who remained in Israel after 1948 were dubbed “absent present aliens” – physically present, but returning to their properties because they were absent when Israel took them, having fled in fear of violence.
Among the exiles was also the famous Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani, also from Akka, aged 12 in 1948.
They would join the wave of revolutionary Palestinian writers like Samih al-Qasim (How I Became an Article), Fadwa Tuqan (The Night and the Horsemen) and Tawfiq Zayyad (Here We Will Stay) who would continue to address themes of exile, identity and resistance. Darwish would later say: “Every beautiful poem is an act of resistance. »
Becoming the national poet of Palestine
Darwish, 14, read a poem he had written in class at his school in Kafr Yasif (11 km from Akka). The poem describes a Palestinian boy complaining to a Jewish boy:
You can play in the sun all you want and have your toys, but not me.
You have a house and I don’t.
You have celebrations, but I have none.
Why can’t we play together?
Israeli military officials decided to answer the question posed by the poem – by threatening Darwish that if he continued to write such poetry, his father might lose his job at the local quarry.
Undeterred, Darwish continued to write his poems, and his first works – shortly after finishing high school – were published in left-wing newspapers.
His poetry spread, it was then “sung by field workers and schoolchildren,” write Munir Akash and Carolyn Forche in the introduction to the English translation of his works: Unfortunately, it was paradise.
His writings were read by Palestinian children. His poems have been taken up in songs, painted on the walls of refugee camp buildings in Jordan, Lebanon, the occupied West Bank and beyond – camps built to be temporary.
In March 2000, Yossi Sarid, the Israeli Minister of Education, suggested including Darwish’s poems in the Israeli high school curriculum, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak rejected his decision.
At the time, Darwish responded: “Israelis don’t want to teach students that there is a love story between an Arab poet and this land…I would just like them to read me to appreciate my poetry, not as a representative of the enemy. .”
The Palestinian poet was part of the cultural mainstream of Mustafa Abu Sneineh who grew up in Jerusalem.
“His voice is there in the head of every young Palestinian poet,” Abu Sneineh, a poet and writer himself now living in London, told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“I know this because I had to work hard to get it out of my head and learn to protect my voice.”
Abu Sneineh believes that Darwish’s 50 years of writings documenting the history of Palestine starting in 1948 are what made him the national poet.
“At every moment of modern Palestinian history, Darwish was present… recounting the Palestinian experience in exile, in refugee camps and under Israeli occupation.
“He captured it all with a personal touch, with stories of love and friendship.”
Write to resist
Darwish’s status as a “present absent alien” meant he could not travel without the appropriate permit. This would lead to his imprisonment, which happened at least five times between 1961 and 1967.
His poem Identity Card – part of his 1964 poetry collection Olive Leaves – led to his house arrest, while Palestinians turned it into a protest anthem.
To write
I’m an arabian
And my ID card number is fifty thousand
And I have eight children
And the ninth comes one summer.
Does this bother you?
Identity card (1964)
In 1970, Darwish left Israel for the USSR, then moved to Cairo in 1971 to work for the Al Ahram newspaper, then to Beirut where he joined the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1973 .
A year later, he wrote PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly, which included the now famous phrase: “Today I have come with an olive branch and a freedom fighter rifle. Don’t let the olive branch fall from my hand.
But first, independence
In exile, Darwish worked with fellow Palestinian intellectual Edward Said on the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence in which the PLO announced its support for a two-state solution.
Declared at a summit in Algiers, it paved the way for the recognition of Palestine as a state and effectively made Yasser Arafat its president.
But Said and Darwish became the main critics of the 1993 Oslo Accords, saying the Palestinians had drawn the short straw. The poet resigned from the PLO executive committee.
The status of Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, Israeli settlements, security arrangements and borders were not resolved under the agreements, which disappointed Darwish who said it was a matter of a gesture of “camouflage and backstabbing” on the part of Israel which had no intention of honoring the agreement, according to Abou Sneineh.
But it was the Oslo Accords that allowed Darwish to return to Palestine and settle in Ramallah in 1996.
No longer politically aligned, he criticized political factionalism between Fatah and Hamas, the two main Palestinian parties, in 2007, saying that infighting between them made the creation of a Palestinian state even more unlikely.
“A single people now has two States, two prisons which do not greet each other. We are victims dressed as executioners.”
Are his words still relevant today?
Darwish’s poetry is being rediscovered by a new generation, as the hashtag #mahmouddarwishpoetry has gained nearly 18 million views on TikTok and social media is full of his poems.
“His eloquence and originality are unprecedented and still relevant to the conditions of Palestinians, especially now in Gaza, where Palestinians are suffering the consequences of a US-backed Israeli genocide against them,” says Alshaer.
“People find in his poetry representations of their most intimate feelings amid the carnage and sadness that engulf them. »
As Darwish wrote:
The war will end
Leaders will shake hands
The old woman will always wait for her martyred son
This girl will wait for her beloved husband
And these children will wait for their heroic father
I don’t know who sold our homeland
But I saw who paid the price.
The war will end
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