“If it is written that I must die
It will be up to you to live
To tell my story… ”
On December 6, 2023, these ultimate towards shared a month earlier by Refaat Alareer in English and Arabic turned into a disaster premonition. That day, this Palestinian poet, writer and teacher, professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, was killed in an Israeli bombardment which affected his home.
If i must die, let it be a tale. #Freepalestine #Gaza pic.twitter.com/odpx3tih1a
– Refaat in Gaza 🇵🇸 (@itranslate123) November 1, 2023
Consequently, the last lines written by Refaat Alareer circulate on the Internet and social networks in different languages. They are also reproduced on walls, t-shirts and signs during demonstrations. A year after the death of Refaat Alareer, a posthumous book appeared in early December 2024 and resumed some of his writings, under the title If I must die. Having become a symbol, the latest poem by the Palestinian author was also set to music by several singers around the world, such as the French rapper HK.
But Refaat Alareer is not the only Palestinian poet to have lost his life in the fighting between Israel in Hamas in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023. A few days before him, on December 2, 2023, the young poet Gazaoui Noor Aldeen Hajjaj also died under the bombs, in the Shuja’iyya district, in the east of the city of Gaza. On October 20, 2023, it was Hiba Abu Nada (32), a Palestinian novelist and poet, who was the victim of an Israeli bombardment in Khan Younès, in the south of the enclave.
A few days before her death, she posted on Facebook a poem on the climb to the Gazaouis paradise:
“Up there, right now
We build another city.
With doctors without injured and unleashed
Teachers without overloaded classes without cries on children
Families without suffering and without difficulty
Journalists who describe Eden
Poets that write eternal loves
They are all from Gaza, all.
In paradise, there is a new Gaza, without blockade
Which takes shape at the moment. “
Since the outbreak of Israeli operations which targeted the Gaza Strip, in October 2023, poetry occupies an important place in the speeches denounced the fate of the Gazan population. On site, activists organize themselves with their meager medium to ensure that the world receives the voices of Palestinian poets. This is the case of Gaza Poets Society which regularly publishes poems in English on social networks.
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Internationally, publishers flock to disseminate the authors Gazaouis. Arab literature journals, like Arablit, have published special numbers dedicated to Palestinian poetry and in particular that resulting from the Gaza Strip. In France, Libertalia and Points editions have each published an anthology of contemporary Gazaouie poetry, respectively in October 2024 (May my death bring hope – Gaza poems) and in April 2025 (Is there a life before death? – Anthology of today’s Gazan poetry).
Mosab Abu Toha, young (32) poet awarded several times, published in 2024 his second collection in English in the United States, where he is exiled. The same year, his first work, What you will find hidden in my earwas published in French at Julliard. The Palestinian thirties have been very successful since, with his texts mixing dreamlike, satire, fighter planes and documentary story.
“The poetry of the Gazaouis stands out for a minimalist language, like the destitution of the populationindicates Nada Yafi, former diplomat and translator of the anthology published by Libertalia. Since 2023, the style has often been lively. Several poems have an almost journalistic value. ”
Poetry, heart of Palestinian identity
“Poetry has occupied a special place in Palestinian culture for a long time”, underlines Yassin Adnan, Moroccan poet, collector and translator of Palestinian poems for several editions and anthologies in French and Arabic. Poets are at the forefront of the emerging fight against British colonization of Palestine in the 1930s. For many years, Mawtini (My homeland), written by the Palestinian poet Ibrahim Touqan and set to music by the Lebanese composer Mohammed Flayfel, plays the role of de facto anthem. In addition, this song advocating the unity of the Arab world has become the national anthem of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
“In the 1960s, poetry established itself as the Palestinian art par excellence with big names like Fadwa Touqan and Mahmoud Darwich”continues Yassin Adnan. If the poetess Fadwa Touqan (sister of Ibrahim Touqan) – let’s say the autobiography The cry of stone Was reissued in French in 2024-is little known, Mahmoud Darwich (1941-2008) is undoubtedly one of the most famous Palestinians around the world, with dozens of books translated into many languages.
“Register, I am Arab …” With his first famous verses, his poem Identity cardis imposed on its publication in 1964 as a central work for the Palestinians. The author evokes the spoliation of land and invokes Palestinian symbols: Keffieh, olive trees …
Subsequently, with texts like Athens AirportMahmoud Darwich becomes the author of Exile, a fate known by many of his fellow men. “Poetry has accompanied all the moments of the political life of the Palestinians”testifies to his counterpart Marwan Makhoul, whose first collection, May the bomber shut uphas just been published in French.
Poetry becomes a weapon for the unity of the Palestinians. The style in which their identity and their national story is written. It also allows them to publicize their cause in the world. In the 1960s, the Lebanese superstar Faïrouz seized the elegy We will come back one dayfrom Haroun Hachim Rachid to set it to music and broadcast it on the air.
Political leadership is not mistaken. Yasser Arafat, a charismatic leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), then president of the Palestinian Authority (1996-2004), insured in the 1990s of the financial survival ofIshtarpoetic review located in Gaza. The same Yasser Arafat repeatedly entrusts Mahmoud Darwich the writing of his most famous speeches.
Often political poetry
Is it possible, for Palestinian poets, to indulge in stanzas that are not political? “To write a poetry that is not political, I have to listen to birds / and to listen to birds, the sound of bombs must stop …”declaims Marwan Makhoul. “Among young Gazan feathers, if death is omnipresent, there is also a lot of love of love, of mysticism”develops Nada Yafi. The translator also notes a strong irony, “As if to put fear at a distance”.
The political character of Palestinian poetry sometimes holds up as a reception as much as it is to its intention. In his work Palestine as a metaphor (1997), Mahmoud Darwich, recognized writer of the feeling of nostalgia, author of famous lines on the taste of coffee and tobacco, noticed that her little Cantilene I languish my mother’s bread (Or To my mother1966) was read as an ode to the fatherland. “This poem has no connection with any cause what has not prevented it from upsetting and continuing to upset millions of human beings. However, I only speak of a very specific mother and not a homeland. But this mother manages, thanks to the poetic image, to transform herself into a multitude of other symbols, to which all poet unintentionally tends. ”
Often engaged, Palestinian poetry does not give in to a soothing or Manichean register. Since the start of the XXe A century, it has experienced ardent stylistic debates between ancient and modernists. “She is also subject to developmentsnotes Yassin Adnan. Figures from the classic Arab register or the Koran, like the Hpepe, and the great Palestinian symbols, like the olive tree, are groan. ” Palestine offered the Arabic language some of its greatest poems, which borrowed a lot from a culture shared by the peoples of Morocco at Iraq. Today, the authors often dialogue with major European references, such as Hisham Abou Assaker, who writes: “I have to borrow the imagination of Shakespeare / Baudelaire’s beauty …”
“Prose gained influence and central themes of the years 1960-1970, national identity and the action of the masses, give way to individual questions, to existential doubts”also decrypts Yassin Adnan. The Moroccan writer also notes that if the journals and publishing houses in Ramallah, in the West Bank, Lebanon and Jordan, always play an important role, “Part of the production is now online, on Facebook”.
Marwan Makhoul, in his forties, readily acknowledges that previous generations have shone with their talent. Some authors, such as Mosab Abu Toha, pay tribute to them as a line. “But young people have a voice to their own”insists Marwan Makhoul. Nada Yafi notes the richness of the language of young authors, which mobilize as much classic and Koranic references as words from current Palestinian Arabic. The poet of Jerusalem Najwan Darwich – a namesake without a family relationship with Mahmoud Darwich– whose collection You are not a pomegranate poet was published in France in September 2023, also plays with codes, sticking a raw and modern language with the classic theme of Islamic Andalusia.
The particular political situation of the Palestinians also leads the authors to initiate a reflection on the power of words and writing.
“I miss the wars before
Short wars
The wars from which we come back
With even a breath
This war is not a
This one
this one …
(I can’t find the word that would be suitable) “admits the young poet Gazaouie Shorouq Doghmosh.
“I can’t find words anywhere”also concedes Mosab Abu Toha. A few decades earlier, Mahmoud Darwich already observed the limits of poetic exercise. Can a homeland exist in the sole form of a metaphor, if it is known by heart by a whole people?
