Birth: 1/1/1936 Death:1/1/1975
Born in Acre on 9 April 1936; grew up in Jaffa; became a refugee in 1948, being displaced to Beirut, then moved to Damascus; received an UNRWA teaching certificate in 1952; began studying Arabic Literature at Damascus University in 1952, but was expelled in 1955 for his involvement with the ANM, which he had joined in 1953; worked as a teacher in Kuwait from 1955-60, where he also began writing short stories; acted as editor of the ANM paper Ar-Ra‘ie from 1956-60; moved to Beirut in 1960 to edit the ANM’s official paper Al-Hurriyya; in 1963, became editor-in-chief of the new progressive Nasserite newspaper Al-Muharrir and editor of its weekly supplement Filastin; won the Lebanese Literature Prize in 1966; in 1967, joined the editorial board of another Nasserite paper, Al-Anwar, and worked as editor of its weekly magazine; was involved in the founding of the PFLP, which grew out of the ANM in 1967; was elected to the PFLP politburo and appointed its spokesperson in 1969; left Al-Anwar to establish and edit the PFLP’s own weekly magazine, Al-Hadaf (‘Target’); authored the PFLP’s Aug. 1969 program; renown writer of short stories, literary studies, theater plays and novels, focusing particularly on the theme of Palestinian refugees and exile, incl. Until we Return (1957), Men in the Sun (Beirut, 1963; London, 1978), and Return to Haifa (1969); was killed by an Israeli car bomb on 8 July 1972 in Beirut along with his niece; was posthumously awarded the Lotus Prize for Literature by the Conference of Afro-Asian Writers in 1975.
