Flags were lowered to half-staff at West Bank government buildings on Sunday, ushering in three days of mourning for poet Mahmoud Darwish, who helped forge the Palestinians’ national identity and gave a voice to their yearning for independence.
Darwish died on Saturday, at age 67, following heart surgery at a Houston hospital.
The poet is to be buried on today in the West Bank city of Ramallah, rather than near his home village in what is now Israel, said his brother, Ahmed. The family had initially considered seeking burial close to home. However, this would have required Israeli approval, and would have made it difficult for people from across the Arab world to visit the grave.
“Mahmoud doesn’t just belong to a family or a town, but to all the Palestinians, and he should be buried in a place where all Palestinians can come and visit him,” Ahmed Darwish said.
Darwish will be buried next to Ramallah’s Palace of Culture, and a shrine will be erected in his honor, said Ramallah Mayor Jeanette Michael.
In the past year, Darwish had become increasingly concerned about the political infighting. Underscoring those divisions, it was not clear on Sunday whether the Hamas government in Gaza would join the three days of official mourning declared by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Gaza’s Culture Ministry planned to set up a mourning tent, starting yesterday, officials said. Hamas’ supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal, who is based in Syria, said that “with the death of Darwish, Palestinian literature lost one of its pillars.”
Moreed Bargouthi, a Palestinian poet, told the Voice of Palestine radio on Sunday that he had spoken to Darwish before his surgery and that Darwish had expressed his worry about the bitter political divisions.
In Ramallah, flags were lowered to half-staff on Sunday, to usher in the mourning period. Late on Saturday, as news of Darwish’s death spread, dozens of people lit memorial candles in Ramallah’s main square. Some radio stations played Darwish poems set to music.
Darwish’s works are taught in Palestinian schools and are also popular among the thousands of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel for security offenses. Prisoners traditionally spend their time in jail reading and organizing classes for each other. Darwish’s occasional readings in Ramallah drew overflow crowds.
Darwish’s poetry has been translated into more than 20 languages and he won numerous international awards. He first gained prominence in the 1960s with the publication of his first poetry collection, Bird without Wings.
It included the poem Identity Card that defiantly spoke in the first person of an Arab man giving his identity number — a common practice among Palestinians when dealing with Israeli authorities and Arab governments — and vowing to return to his land.
Many of his poems have been put into music — most notably Rita, Birds of Galilee and I Yearn For My Mother’s Bread — and have become anthems for at least two generations of Arabs.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS