Mahmud Darwish’s Prose and Poetry as Means of Peaceful Resistance for the Palestinians: The Importance of Re-Writing the History of Palestine

Abstract

Mahmud Darwish was undoubtedly one of the major Palestinian poets of the peaceful resistance against Israeli aggression, expulsions of Palestinians from their own lands, their houses and their other properties. Darwish also wrote prose, like for example Fi Hadrat al-Ghiyab (In the Presence of Absence) work in which he emphasized the need to re-write the history of Palestine, since Israel has constantly destroyed Palestinian villages, and has expelled the Palestinians from their own towns. Israel has systematically substituted these villages and their names by Hebrew ones. This way Israel conveys the notion that they are Hebrew villages. On the other hand, it is possible to notice that Israel denies the pre-existence of the Palestinian settlements, towns and villages in those places. For Darwish, therefore, there is a clear need to re-write the history of Palestine, in order to show that where there are nowadays many Jewish towns, there were Palestinian villages in the past. [Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2023 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]