Tawfiq Ziad

Tawfiq Ziad (Arabic: توفيق زياد ), (Hebrew: תאופיק זיא ), also Tawfik Zayyad or Tawfeeq Ziad, ( born May 7, 1929 in Nazareth, † July 5, 1994 in the Jordan Valley ) was a Palestinian politician and poet.

Life and work

Ziad was born at the time of the British Mandate over Palestine in Nazareth. He studied literature in the USSR. In addition to his own writing career, he also worked as a translator of Russian works into Arabic. He also translated the works of Turkish writer Nazim Hikmet

Ziad is considered one of the most important voices of the Palestinian resistance. He wrote a large part of his poetic work during his imprisonment, which he did not put his personal suffering in the foreground, but the harassment and suffering of the people. His poem Unadikum ( أناديكم ) ( I urge you to dt ) was set to music several times and has become one of the most popular songs of resistance

After Yasser Arafat welcomes from his return from exile, Ziad died on 5 July 1994 on the way back from Jericho to Nazareth in a frontal collision.

Political activity

Already early on developed a political interest in Ziad. He has already led the age of 17 to a student protest against the occupation by the British. After the Nakba 1948 he joined the Communist Party.

After his return from the Soviet Union, he was elected as head of the Communist Rakah mayor of Nazareth on December 9, 1973. In the same year he obtained a seat in the Knesset after the elections. This he used to exert active pressure on the Israeli government in order to revise the situation of Arabs in Israel and the occupied territories.

In 1987, he sent along with Tawfiq Toubi after a visit to Al- Far'ah prison a report on the conditions of detention of those imprisoned in Israeli jails Arabs to the United Nations, which has previously been published already in the Israeli newspaper Al Hamishmar. The report was cited in a detailed report by the UN General Assembly of 23 December 1987 as " perhaps the best evidence for the truth of the reports about the disgusting inhumane conditions of Arab prisoners ".

Ziad was exposed to multiple attacks. On Land Day in March 1975, when thousands of Palestinians against massive land expropriation and the Judification Galilee demonstrated, even Karim Ziad's house was attacked. After the massacres in Sabra and Shatila in 1982 and after the massacre at the Al- Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994, Ziad and his family were also targets of attacks.