Samih Al -Qasim .. The historian poet and “Munbi” Palestine Encyclopedia

Samih Al -Qasim is a Palestinian poet born in 1939 and died in 2014, he gathered in his career between the press, politics and literature, and his name was linked to confronting the Israeli occupation until he was called “the poet of the resistance”, and insisted on refusing to migrate from his homeland despite the cruelty of living under occupation since 1948.

He left a literary heritage that exceeded 70 books, many of which translated into international languages, which immortalized his name as a voice for the Palestinian issue in Arab and international forums.

Generator

Samih Al -Qasim was born in Zarqa, Jordan on May 11, 1939, and died in the city of Safed, occupied Palestine on August 19, 2014.

He comes from a Druze Palestinian family from the town of Al -Ramah, northern Palestine, in which he returned and settled with his family in 1941.

He grew up in a well -off and educated family.

Samih Al -Qasim lived deep transformations in the environment that he grew up.

The Nakba changed his life, as he was facing the occupation in its daily details, and one of the outstanding events that affected the visit of the Israeli military ruler to his school, as well as forced him to repeat the songs in the Hebrew language.

And because of the many events with the occupation, this experience affected a great impact, until he later described himself as “the most reliable source in the history of this Nakba.”

Samih Al -Qasim married Nawal Hussein, and they had 4 children, who are a homeland, an urgency, Omar and Yasser.

Study and scientific training

Samih Al -Qasim received his primary education at the “Latin Sisters” school in the town of Al -Ramah between 1945 and 1953, then he joined the preparatory stage at the “Tircanta” Foundation in the city of Nazareth between 1953 and 1955, and continued his studies until he won the high school diploma in 1957, and later traveled to the Soviet Union where he studied philosophy and political economy at the Moscow Academy.

Jobs and responsibilities

Samih Al -Qasim began his career with education in primary schools in the regions of Galilee and Al -Karmal, but the Israeli Minister of Education ordered his separation because of his literary and political activity at the time.

He later involved in political action by joining the Israeli Communist Party, and remained a member of it until the late eighties of the twentieth century when he resigned and devoted to journalistic and literary work.

In the early 1960s, Al -Qasim launched in his press career to join the Editorial Board of “Al -Ghad” magazine, a magazine that followed the Communist Party in Haifa.

In 1966, he took over the editor -in -chief of the “World World” magazine in Tel Aviv, and after his resignation, he worked as an editor in the newspaper “Al -Ittihad” in the city of Haifa, where he settled later.

He later took over the editor -in -chief of the “Al -Jadeed” magazine, issued by the Communist Party in the early 1970s, and continued in this position for 10 years, until a bear is a dispute between him and the party leadership.

Al -Qasim participated in the same period in the establishment of the “Democratic Front for Peace and Equality”, as well as politically and socially active in the “Druze Initiative Committee” and “The Qatar Committee for the Defense of Arab Lands”, contributing to defending the rights of Palestinians within the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948.

He presided over the “General Union of Palestinian Arab Writers” since its inception, and participated in the founding of the “Arabk” publishing house and the management of the “Popular Arts Foundation” in Haifa, and founded the newspaper “All Arabs” and the cultural “lights” magazine in the city of Nazareth.

Literary experience

Samih Al -Qasim began his literary journey at an early age, as he issued his first poetry collections at the age of 19, and was able to publish 6 poetry collections before he reached thirty.

His literature was associated with the revolution and the resistance of the Israeli occupation, and his writings were filled with the vocabulary and symbols of the country, the revolution, the testimony, the land, the victory, the stones and the childhood, expressing the suffering of its people and its hopes.

Al -Qasim claimed with his friend, the poet Mahmoud Darwish, the literature of the Palestinian resistance, and the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani described them as “the first generation of the poets of the Palestinian cause” alongside the writer Tawfiq Ziyad.

The poet was known for his national orientation, which is concerned with Arab unity and is proud of his affiliation with it, and for this reason his poems were not limited to the Palestinian affairs, but also expanded to express all Arab and humanitarian issues.

In his poetic beginnings, Samih Al -Qasim relied on traditional vertical poetry, committed to his weights and his role, then with the development of his poetic experience, he was freed from the traditional form without rejecting it, and directed towards what he called the name “Drubs”, which are lengthy poetic texts of an epic nature, whose contents are inspired by several sources such as the Holy Qur’an, the Torah, myths, mythology, Arab heritage, international literature and historical facts.

He was famous for his dependence on his works, artistic methods that drew critics, including the method of repetition, which is usually used to confirm a specific idea or highlight its urgency on the writer in a specific context, as it was distinguished by the employment of the “intertwining” method, a art in which writers borrowed quotes from religious, legendary or historical texts and give them a broader dimension.

The literary production of Samih Al -Qasim was widely appreciated at the global level, and it won a group of titles, most notably “The Poet of the Palestinian Resistance”, “Poet of Arabism”, “Faris Al -Shuara”, “Munbi of Palestine” and “the historian poet”.

Prizes and honors

Al -Qasim won prestigious prizes, the most important:

• The Spanish “Bayer of Poetry” award.
• Two awards from France for a selection of his hair translated by the Moroccan poet Abdel Latif Al -Labi into French.
• The “Naguib Mahfouz Award for Arab Writer” from Egypt.
• “Creativity in the field of poetry” from the Al -Babtain Foundation in Kuwait.
• The “Jerusalem Medal of Culture, Arts and Arts” award from the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, and he won it twice.
• “Palestine Poetry” award from the Palestinian Ministry of Culture.
• “Peace” award from the city of Lod.

Strong stature walk

Samih Al -Qasim was distinguished by a prolific literary production, as it published more than 70 books that varied in its fields between poetry, prose, theater, story, translation, research, criticism, biography and article, and many of them have been translated into several languages, including English, French, Turkish, Russian, German and Italian.

In the field of poetry, many poetry collections were published, 6 of which were issued before his thirty years, and it was a group of “sun processions” in 1958, and other groups were known to him, including “my blood on my palm”, “the fall of masks”, “volcanic smoke” and “I will get out of my image one day”.

Many of Al -Qasim’s productions were widely known in the Arab world, especially after some of them were transferred artists to the singing square, and the most famous of the songs of the famous song of the Lebanese artist Marcel Khalife:

It was also famous for a poem for him, inspired by the first intifada, expressing the confrontation of the occupier, followed by his voice, and says in it, “progressive … the transgressions of your hatred and the carriers of your soldiers … so every sky over you is hell … and every land is in Hell.”

Al -Qasim and his friend Mahmoud Darwish had correspondence published in the newspaper “Al -Ittihad” under the title “The Writings of the Shatri Orange”, and they expressed two tracks in the Palestinian experience: Darwish’s migration from the homeland, and Al -Qasim remained adhering to his land.

In the last years of his life, in 2011 Al -Qasim released his autobiography titled “It is just a shame”, in which he addressed himself, saying: “Here is your ashes falling into the world, who is the world of life.”

His political positions

Samih Al -Qasim believed that the Palestinians’ survival on the lands occupied by Israel in 1948 is the strongest impact of all Arab armies. Therefore, he refused to leave his homeland despite attempts to displace, and lived the successive Israeli wars on him, including the Nakba and the setback, the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip in the years 2008, 2012 and 2014.

Al -Qasim – who had ended the secondary stage at the time – refused to engage in the Israeli military service, and in 1958 he established an organizational organization to recruit the Druze youth under the name “Free Druze Youth Movement”, and became the first young man to stood in the face of the compulsory recruitment law directed to the people of the Druze community, and was arrested as a result.

This was not his first arrests.

Al -Qasim spent his imprisonment period in the Damoun detention center on Jabal Al -Carmel, where he got acquainted with a group of prisoners from the members of the Israeli Communist Party, and joined him since then.

The party included prominent writers such as Mahmoud Darwish, Tawfiq Ziyad and Emile Habibi, and Al -Qasim was elected years after a member of his central committee and remained there until the end of the eighties of the twentieth century.

Joining the Israeli Communist Party, and engaging in working with a group of Israeli social institutions, in addition to the lamentations of a group of Israeli soldiers after their helicopter, all of this sparked controversy over Al -Qasim’s political position on the Palestinian issue, and charged him with accusations of normalization with the Israeli occupation.

However, Al -Qasim was rejecting peace negotiations with Israel as long as it continues to kill and displace the Palestinians, and supports peace that guarantees the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state with the capital of Al -Quds Al -Sharif.

In a ceremony to honor him, Yasser Arafat (Abu Ammar) attended, Al -Qasim said, “By God, O Abu Ammar, if we saw a warning to his people with our pens.” So Arafat ordered that his weapon be brought to Al -Qasim, and he replied, “This pistol to confront the occupation, but I face you with my pen.”

The poet had opinions in the Arab affairs, as he supported what he considered the “liberation” of the Iraqi people from the regime of Saddam Hussein, and visited the late Syrian President Hafez al -Assad and described him as the “lion of Arabism” and then he called him after his death.

He visited Syria later to meet with the ousted Syrian President Bashar al -Assad, and because of this, the Assad regime opponents accused him of silence from the massacres attributed to the regime, and called him the “poet of the court”, but he constantly emphasized his independence from the regimes, countries and governments, saying, “I lived free and died free.”

Death

After 3 years of conflict with liver cancer, Samih Al -Qasim died on August 19, 2014 at the age of 75.

His body was raised two days after the foothills of Jabal Al -Jarmak in occupied Palestine, and the march presents the sheikhs of the Druze and Christian clerics and political figures, including members of his family and friends.

Al -Qasim mourned a group of politicians, writers and intellectuals, among them Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the Communist Party and the General Union of Palestinian Writers.

The poet had described a dialogue with him with death in verses in which he said, “I do not love you, death, but I do not fear you, and I know that your bed is my body and my soul for your quilt.”