a literary periodical published by the Israeli Workers Party (Mapam).

Darwish left Israel in 1970 to study in the Soviet Union (USSR). He attended the Lomonosov Moscow State University for one year, before moving to Egypt and Lebanon. When he joined the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) in 1973, he was banned from reentering Israel.

In 1995, he returned to attend the funeral of his colleague, Emile Habibi, receiving a permit to remain in Haifa for four days. That year Darwish was allowed to settle in Ramallah, but he said he felt he was living in exile there, and did not consider the West Bank his "private homeland."

Darwish was twice married and divorced. His first wife was the writer Rana Kabbani. After they divorced, in the mid-1980s, he married an EgyptianIsrael, of course. I have no reason to be. But I don't hate Jews." Darwish wrote in Arabic, and also spoke English, French, and Hebrew.

According to the Israeli author Haim Gouri, who knew him personally, Darwish's Hebrew was excellent. Four volumes of his poetry were translated into Hebrew by Muhammad Hamza Ghaneim: Bed of a Stranger (2000), Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? (2000), State of Siege (2003), and Mural (2006). Salman Masalha, a bilingual Arabic-Hebrew writer, translated his book Memory for Forgetfulness into Hebrew.

In March 2000, Yossi Sarid, the Israeli education minister, proposed that two of Darwish's poems be included in the Israeli high school curriculum. Prime Minister Ehud Barak rejected the proposal on the grounds that Israel was "not ready." It has been suggested that