Imran Abdullah

His death 11 years ago, on August 9, 2008, did not stop the long debate about his words and poems within Israeli society.The poet of the land, love and the Palestinian cause was able to penetrate with his innovative poems, dictionary and metaphors, Hebrew culture and become a subject of debate and debate within the occupation society.

In his poem "Rita's Long Winter," the late poet Mahmoud Darwish made the relationship of love between the Palestinian poet and the Jewish girl Rita a figurative symbol, in which he recounted the suffering of the Palestinian with the Israeli occupation, which is absent from the homeland, and uses authoritarian authoritarian expressions to express his absolute will and de facto, While the conscience of the speaker is absent signify the absence of the Palestinian from his homeland and the loss of his voice and right.

Although Samih al-Qasim, a close friend of Darwish, said that Darwish had an experience with an Israeli girl who was sympathetic to the Palestinian people, in Darwish's poem she gained symbolic connotations full of contradictions and paradoxes beyond his personal experience, while the girl loved by the late poet attended his poetry evenings and sympathized with him.

Despite his solid national stances, Darwish's poetic talent for the Palestinian poet has preserved his privileged position in the Israeli literary and cultural controversy. The Palestinian cultural presence became a reality after his works were translated into Hebrew and occupied by the Israeli reader, although he said clearly:

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I don't hate people

No one is robbed

But if I get hungry

I eat meat rapist

Beware .. Beware ..

From my hunger and from my anger

Hebrew translations of Darwish
Despite Israel's national, linguistic and cultural "fortification" policies, and the distortion of the image of the Arab in modern Hebrew literature, Hebrew translations of Darwish's poetry were numerous and resonated with an audience of Hebrew readers.

The knowledge of Arabic by Sephardic Jews in Arabic and its culture facilitated the translation of Darwish's works by Israelis of Arab descent, including a professor of Arabic literature at the University of Haifa of Iraqi origin, and Salman Masalha of 1948 Arabs.

In his search for echoes of the translation of Darwish's Hebrew poems, Egyptian scholar Ahmed Heikal quoted Israeli translators as saying that everything related to Arab affairs in Israel, including the translation of Arabic literature, was "supervised by Israeli security agencies."

Mahmoud Darwish and his Israeli girlfriend Tamar Ben-Ami, and the love story ended with the 1967 war and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

In his paper published in Comparative Poetry, Haikel considers that many Israeli critics have admitted that most of Darwish's translations "were for purely political purposes, even those that were politically motivated or for academic needs, were met with political reactions from monetary circles." And the Hebrew press. "

Darwish did not issue a full Diwan translation of Hebrew until early 2000, before the late Arab Arab translator and poet, Mohammad Hamza Ghanayem, sought to translate Darwish's entire works into Hebrew, including four poetry collections from various Hebrew publishing houses.

In 2006, a political and media crisis erupted in Israel when Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman summoned army radio director Yoram Dekel to denounce the radio broadcasting a program about the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.Liberman considered the broadcasting of the radio program "a serious matter concerning someone who wrote texts against Zionism."

Culture Minister Miri Regev launched an attack on Army Radio, saying that Army Radio broadcast a program that glorified the anti-Israel narrative and "provides a platform for the Palestinian narrative that denies Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic state."

But the Israeli newspaper Haaretz commented that Darwish is more complex than the goals and cultural wars of Regev and Lieberman, yet it is impossible to talk about Darwish's poetry without its political connotations, because since he started writing Darwish has been described as a poet of exile and a poet of refugees who They yearn for their homeland in a way that has made it a symbol.

In addition to his great success, which included his call to shed poetry throughout the country, according to the Israeli newspaper, he was arrested several times (for example after he violated an order preventing him from leaving Haifa and traveled to Jerusalem). In 1969 he left Israel to attend a political conference and did not return.

He moved between Paris and Moscow, before leaving for Egypt and then Lebanon. He joined the Palestinian National Council and as a result was not allowed to return.

In the 1980s, he joined the PLO and ran the Movement's Research Center in Beirut. In 1988, he wrote the Declaration of Palestinian Independence. After the Oslo Accords of 1995, the Israeli authorities allowed him to return to the funeral of his colleague Emile Habibi.

In 2007 he was again allowed to visit Haifa. He died in Texas the following year.

Although he traveled almost all his life and lived in Paris, Moscow, Cairo, Ramallah, Amman, Beirut, Israel and the United States, he was buried in Ramallah in the West Bank.

Maroon
Darwish was criticized by Naji al-Ali, Arab critics, activists, and artists who considered him to have departed from the borders of the Palestinian cause to a broad humanitarian vision, but this did not earn him any additional credibility in Israeli society.

In conjunction with the first Palestinian intifada at the end of the 1980s, Darwish came under fierce attack inside the Israeli Knesset and one of its members recited his poem.

In 1988, far-right MK Yitzhak Shamir launched a ferocious attack on Darwish inside the Knesset, reading to members of his poem "Passing Through Words in Transit" which says:

"Get out of our land

From our land .. from our sea

From our wheat, from our salt

Of our wounds

Of everything and took out

Of memory vocabulary

"Maroon between the passing words."

The Israeli MK said that Darwish incites the Palestinians to rebel against Israel, and the controversy returned again with the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Exit from the settlements under the disengagement plan:

You maroon between the words passing

Carry your names and leave

And withdraw your hours of our time, and leave

Take what you want from the blue of the sea and the sand of memory

Take what you like, so you know

You will not know

How a stone of our earth builds the roof of heaven

In 2000, Israeli Education Minister Yossi Sarid tried to include Darwish's poems as part of the high school literature curriculum, but the political controversy that ensued put an end to the plan.

Darwish's translated poems were not spared from reading them as a political statement. His poems were viewed in security terms as a supporter of the Palestinian intifada and a threat to the security of the Hebrew state. However, the poet of the besieged and oppressed was keen to address the Israelis in Kiir.

Stand on the threshold, come in,

And drink with us Arabic coffee

You may feel that you are human like us.

You who stand on the doorsteps of houses!

Get out of our morning,

We may rest assured that we are

Humans like you!

Darwish was aware that Israeli readers were not interested in his poetry and perhaps literature in general.``The Israelis don't want to teach students that there is a love story between an Arab poet and this land, '' he told the New York Times. 'I wish they had read me to enjoy my poetry, not as an enemy.'