WEST BANK: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas attends service for late Palestinian poet, Darwish

Record ID: 560394

  • Title: WEST BANK: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas attends service for late Palestinian poet, Darwish
  • Date: 15th August 2008
  • Summary: (MER-1) RAMALLAH, WEST BANK (AUGUST 14, 2008) (REUTERS) WIDE OF STREET NEAR GRAVEYARD OF LATE PALESTINIAN POET MAHMOUD DARWISH CLOSE OF DARWISH POSTER ON BUILDING PALESTINIAN FLAG WIDE OF GRAVESITE OF DARWISH SECURITY MEN AT SITE PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT MAHMOUD ABBAS ACCOMPANIED BY A GUARD OF HONOUR MARCHING ON RED CARPET CLOSE OF WREATH WITH ABBAS' NAME ABBAS LAYING A WREATH ON GRAVE ABBAS SAYING PRAYERS VARIOUS OF ABBAS LEAVING WREATH WITH ABBAS' NAME PHOTOS OF DARWISH GRAVESTONE READING (in Arabic): "MAHMOUD DARWISH" AND "IN THIS LAND, THE LADY OF THE LAND, THERE IS MUCH TO LIVE FOR" (EXCERPT FROM A SPEECH BY DARWISH ON 13/3/1941) DARWISH'S GRAVE
  • Embargoed: 30th August 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA6OGEWA38TGAJ6V53TO3KIQV6X
  • Story Text: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas attended a service on Thursday (August 14) in memory of poet Mahmoud Darwish, a day after he was laid to rest in a state funeral in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
    Accompanied by a guard of honour, Abbas placed a wreath on the gravestone of Darwish, a man who articulated the Palestinian sense of loss, exile and defiance.
    Darwish, 67, died on Saturday (August 9) from complications after heart surgery in Houston, Texas. His body was flown to the West Bank via Jordan.
    He penned the words Arafat spoke at the United Nations in 1974: "Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun.
    Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."
    The official funeral organised by the Palestinian Authority is an honour previously extended only to the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004.
    Darwish's widely translated poetry captured the feelings of many Palestinians and Arabs. Set to music, his poems were sung by Lebanon's Marcel Khalifeh and other Arab singers.
    In a rare political intervention, Darwish denounced Palestinian infighting after Hamas Islamists routed Abbas's Fatah faction and seized the Gaza Strip in June 2007.
    Hamas-Fatah enmity remains unhealed, but in death, Darwish drew tributes from both sides, with senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar calling him a symbol of Palestinian culture whose poetry crossed psychological and geographical lines.
    Born in territory that is now in Israel, Darwish was jailed several times by the Israelis for his political activities. He left in 1971 for the Soviet Union. Exile in Cairo, Beirut, Tunis and Paris followed. He made his home in Ramallah in the 1990s.
    While abroad he rose to prominence in the PLO, but resigned in 1993 over the Oslo accords that Arafat signed with Israel.
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