Tawfiq Ziad

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Tawfiq Ziad

Tawfiq Ziad ( Arabic توفيق زيّاد, DMG Taufīq Zayyād ; Hebrew תאופיק זיא), also Tawfik Zayyad or Tawfeeq Ziad , (born May 7, 1929 in Nazareth , † July 5, 1994 in the Jordan Valley ) was a Palestinian politician and poet.

life and work

Ziad was born in Nazareth at the time of the British Mandate over Palestine. He studied literature in the Soviet Union . In addition to his own writing activities, he also worked as a translator of Russian works into Arabic. He also translated the works of the Turkish writer Nazim Hikmet .

Ziad is considered one of the most important voices of the Palestinian resistance. He wrote a large part of his poetic work during his imprisonment, whereby he did not focus on his personal suffering, but on the reprisals and the suffering of the people. His poemأناديكم / Unādīkum  / 'I urge you' has been set to music several times and has become one of the most popular songs of resistance.

After greeting Yasser Arafat on his return from exile, Ziad died on July 5, 1994 in a head-on collision on the way back from Jericho to Nazareth.

Political activity

Political interest at Ziad developed early on. As a 17-year-old, he led a student protest against the British occupation. After the Nakba in 1948, he joined the Communist Party.

After his return from the USSR, he was elected mayor of Nazareth on December 9, 1973 as head of the communist rakah . In the same year, he won a seat in the Knesset after the elections . He used this to actively pressure the Israeli government to change the situation of the Arabs in Israel and the occupied territories.

In 1987, after a visit to Al-Far'ah prison , he and Tawfiq Toubi submitted a report to the United Nations on the conditions of the Arabs imprisoned in Israeli prisons , which had previously been published in the Israeli newspaper Al HaMishmar . The report was quoted in a detailed report of the UN General Assembly of December 23, 1987 as "perhaps the best evidence of the truth of the reports of the hideous inhuman conditions of Arab prisoners".

Ziad has faced multiple attacks. On Land Day in March 1975 demonstrated when thousands of Palestinians against massive land expropriation and the Judification Galilee, and Ziad's house was attacked. In 1977 he became a member of the Chadash party . After the massacres in Sabra and Shatila in 1982, after the massacre at the Al-Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994, Ziad and his family were also targets of attacks.

literature

  • Tawfik Zayyad (Ed.): Bury your dead and stand up! - Poems from Palestine. Translated and with an introduction by A. Farouk S. Beydoun. Verlag Der Olivenbaum, Berlin 1977.

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