BEIRUT: Palestinian literature, up to 1948, had been part of the Arab literary movement which flourished during the first half of the century which was influenced by Egyptian, Syria and Lebanese writers who led the literary movement at that period.

But after 1948, the beginnings of a new literary movement were witnessed, with poetry being its chief element which witnessed a remarkable progress in quality and technique.

The short period of literary silence after the 1948 (Arab- Israeli) war was soon followed by a great awakening, and national poetry poured out reflecting the people’s national fervour. It interacted with Arab and foreign literary trends and gradually broke the traditional rules of technique, rejected the old sentimental outbursts, and emerged with a unique feeling of profound sadness, more commensurate with the realities of the situation Palestinians found themselves in after 1948. Among some of the significant reasons which slowed the emergence and development of Palestinian resistance literature during the early decades of occupation, was the isolation of Palestinians in general from the Arab countries, their cultural standard, and the Zionist rule imposed upon them.

But what makes poetry the most popular literary genre in resistance literature?

It is mainly because, poetry spreads by recitation from mouth-to-mouth and thus lives without publication. Poetry is also the medium by which the members of a defeated nation expressed themselves. And it dominated every manifestation of this life. Weddings, mournings, evening sittings and all other gatherings were transformed by the influence of these lyrics into fierce demonstrations heedless of the firing squads.

With the advent of the 1970s, a remarkable new wave of literature appeared. The proponents of this new wave were courageous, full of vitality and optimism and highly-charged with the spirit of resistance and nationalism.

To get a clear idea about resistance poetry of the same period, it would be better to analyse some of its representative poems. Sulafa Hijjawi has in fact presented in his book a good collection of poems by the most outstanding Palestinian poets.

The collections open with Tawfiq Zayad’s “The Impossible”. The title of the poem expresses the poet’s belief that whatever the Zionists do, they will not succeed in forcing the Palestinians to leave their homeland. Their life begins and ends in Palestine:

Here we shall stay

A wall upon your breast,

Facing starvation,

Struggling with rags,

Defying

Singing our songs

Swarming the streets with

Our wrath,

Filling your dungeons with pride,

Rearing vengeance in new generations

Like a thousand prodigies

We roam along

In Jaffa, Lidda, Ramallah, in Galilee.

The poem also reflects the humiliation and suffering the Palestinians are undergoing under the Zionist occupation. In their homeland, listen as Zayad says, they do not find any job but washing dishes and sweeping kitchens.

Here we shall stay,

Cleaning dishes in your bars,

Filling cups for your masters

Sweeping your sooty kitchens

To snatch a bite from your blue fangs

To feed the hungry children.

For the poet, this is not a hopeless situation. Depression and frustration have created an “unconquerable” people of them, ready to die for the liberation of their homeland:

Here we shall stay with ice-hearts

Red hell in our nerves and hearts

We squeeze the rock to quench our thirst

And lull starvation with dust.

But we shall not depart.

Here we spill our dearest blood

Here we have, a Past, a Future

Here we are the unconquerable

So strike deep, strikeike deep,

My roots.

Another Palestinian poet who contributed a great deal to the poetry of resistance is Mahmoud Darwish. He lived in occupied Palestine up to the early seventies, then left for Lebanon, later to Egypt and then returned to Palestine. One of the major themes of Darwish is his emotional and intellectual alienation after the loss of Palestine. In his poem “Lover from Palestine” he tells us his bitter story of separation and suffering. His beloved here is Palestine, and the separation between them stands for the Zionist occupation of Palestine:

A thorn in the heart are your eyes,

Lacerating, yet adorable

I shield it from the storm

And pierce it deep through night and pain,

The wound illuminates thousands of stars,

Transforms my present into a future

Dearer than my being

And I forget as our eyes meet

That once we were twins behind the gate

The contact with his beloved has not come to and end at all, when the enemies stole her from him. Instead, she spiritually overwhelms his existence since he is imagining her with him in different forms and types:

I saw you last on the quay,

A lovely voyager without a bag,

I ran to you like an orphan searching

For an answer among ancestral wisdom

How could an orchard be banished to a quay

And yet remain as ever green

I saw you on the thorny peaks

A sheepless shepherd running a chase

And in the ruins where once you

Were the green branch

I stood strange knowing the gates

The gates, the windows and cemented stones reverberated

I saw you in night cafes washing dishes

I saw you in chimneys, in the streets.

In cattle fields, in blood dripping

From the sun

In the salt of the sea

In every grain of sand

And yet you were as beautiful as earth

The poet then plainly speaks of the name and nature of his beloved. He describes how she looks like and how her eyes, feel and words are:

Palestinian is your Name

Palestinian are your eyes, your Tatoo

Palestinian your Thought, your Clothes

Your Feet, your Forms

Palestinian the Words,

Palestinian the Voice

Palestinian you Live

Palestinian you Die.

The decision of the Palestinian nation to fight the Zionists who had raped their homeland is once again dealt with in Samih Al-Qassem’s poem “Report of a Bankrupt”.

The images here do not reflect the stand of the Palestinians only, but shows implicitly the methods the Zionists are following in order to force the Palestinians to submit:

Go and filch the final strip of my land,

Ditch my youth in prison holes,

Plunder my legacy,

Burn my books,

Feed your dogs on my fishes,

Go and spread your net of terror

Upon the roofs of my village,

Enemy of man,

I shall not compromise

And to the end I shall fight,

If you blow out all the candles in my eyes

If you fill my anguish.

Forge my coin,

Uproot the smile from my children’s faces,

If you raise a thousand walls,

And nail my eyes to humiliation,

Enemy of man,

I shall not compromise

And to the end

I shall fight.

Fadwa TouQan’s “To Christ” is another important poem. It deals with the situation of Al Quds (Jerusalem) under the Zionists. In fact Al Quds (Jerusalem) is another symbol for Palestine as a whole:

Lord, father of universe,

Jerusalem’s feasts are crucified

This year.

On your day,

All the dells, O Lord

Are silent!

They rang

For two thousand years

But now

They are dumbfounded,

The domes are black

Black news overwhelms all

Jerusalem walls

On the cross

Jerusalem bleeds

On the hands of torture.