Darwish, Mahmoud

The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish was born in the village of al-Birweh in Western Gallilee to a landowning family. His parents were forced to flee on foot when Israeli troops invaded the village in June 1948. Like hundreds of other Palestinian villages, al-Birweh was razed to the ground in order to prevent families moving back to the land that was later occupied by Israel. The Darwish family settled in Deir al-Asad in 1949 and later moved to Haifa where Mahmoud grew up. His first poems were published in Al Jadid, the Israeli Communist party (Rakah) magazine that he would later edit. In 1970, Darwish was forced to leave Israel after years of persecution by the Israeli government.