Five Palestinian artists who enrich the Arab Culture Scene

For many Palestinians, their poets and authors are symbols of Palestinian resistance and pride.

They are the embodiment of the spiritual strength of Palestine despite the losses they have suffered.

Here are five Palestinian poets and authors who shaped the Palestinian dream.

1- Mahmoud Darwish 

Mahmoud Darwish (13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008) is considered Palestine's National poet, whose work is taught in schools all across the Arab world.

Darwish's words were influential enough to become an important part of the Arabian cultural texture.

Not just a poet, Darwish was an author, politician and, most importantly, a faithful lover of Palestine.  

He was a "Poet, author and politician who helped to forge a Palestinian consciousness after the six-day war in 1967’’, as the Guardian writes. 
 

2- Nagy El Aly

The unique Palestinian cartoonist Nagy Salim El Ali was admired by the millions of Arab people who truly believe in his art as their sincere tongue. 

When the pains exceed your probability, your ability to express your feelings is weakened.

Al-Ali appeared during a time when the Arab countries’ wounds were bleeding severely, people’s pains reined their tongues, to find in Al-Ali cartoons the tongue that reflected their pain the most at the time of wars.

3- Mourid El Barghouti 

His years of exile have influenced much his poetry, and that was clear in the poems he has written for refugees in camps. 

 Barghouti has an aversion to rhetoric and fine words. His collection Poems of the Pavement  was written, according to him, “with a camera − visual, concrete, no abstract nouns”. His dislike of rhetoric is also visible in his collection Midnight and Other Poems that was released in 2008.

4- Samih al-Qasim

Samih al-Qasim is regarded as one of the pillars of contemporary Arabic poetry and one of the most acclaimed poets of the Palestinian resistance.

He made the cause of his Palestinian people his own and illumined its humanitarian and universal aspects.

His poetry displays his pride in his Arab identity, attachment to the land, and religious tolerance. A number of his poems have been turned into revolutionary songs that circulated widely.

5- Ibrahim Nasrallah

 Nasrallah's books were an attempt to say something about his surroundings and the people around him, starting right from his family's tale of how they were 'thrown out' of their homeland in the year of the Nakba, through writing about his nation (Palestinians) in his literary project – "The Seven Novels of Palestinian Comedy", covering 250 years of modern Palestinian history – in addition to writing numerous poetry volumes. He was born in Amman, Jordan where he spent his entire life, living all its details as it matures and grows and he wrote about it in his three-novel project "Al-Shrfat" (The Balconies...of Delirium, of snow man, and of disgrace).