Hoshang Merchant lived in Nablus and Jerusalem between 1982-1986 where he taught at An-Najah and Hebrew Universities besides Abu Dis College of Science (now the University of Palestine). In this article, he reads some famous Palestinian poets like Darwish, Qabbani, Kanafani, Fadwa Tuqan, and Iraqi poets like Al-Malaika and Al-Sayyab. He links the poets to the struggle against Israel in the case of Palestine, and against Arab dictators in the case of Iraq. In order to be evenhanded as a witness to the conflict, he quotes poignant examples of both the Arab and Jewish life he observed in Israel. In conclusion, he refers to the Israeli modern poetry of Yehuda Amichai, which could be read for reconciliation between enemies. The postscript is on Genet, apostle of Love.

This is my telling of the Palestinian Revolution, in my order. There will be others, many others.In the early 20th Century, after the Treaty of Versailles (1919) that ended World War I, the old Ottoman Empire, which ruled the vast province of Syria from Istanbul, was broken up into various subject-nations by the colonial powers namely France and England. France took control of Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, while England got Palestine, Egypt and Iraq, where it set up puppet kingdoms.

When the British saw the rise of both the Arab and Zionist powers in Palestine, they put down both with a heavy hand. They quashed the Arab uprising of 1936 as well as the Zionist insurgency of the Stern Gang led by Begin among others, which perpetrated the massacre of Arabs at Deir Yassin, much commemorated in Arab painting and poetry. Pregnant women were disembowelled there; Palestinian children in the womb were killed. It is just outside Jerusalem. The Israelis have planted a beautiful forest, where once Arab homes were, now it is a Jerusalem joggers' paradise. To be evenhanded, the British drowned two shiploads of Jewish refugees returning to Israel after fleeing Nazi Germany in the Haifa harbor in 1945. The Zionist Conference at Basle had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams by having the superpowers accede to Israel being situated in the Biblical Promised Land (i.e., Palestine) rather than elsewhere, like Uganda.

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