Today, 19 August 2026, marks the twelfth anniversary of the passing of Samih al-Qasim, one of Palestine's most prominent literary figures and a cornerstone of the historic triumvirate of resistance poets alongside Mahmoud Darwish and Tawfiq Zayyad. Born in Zarqa, Jordan, on 11 May 1939 to a Palestinian family from the Galilean village of Rameh, Al-Qasim studied in his hometown and in Nazareth, northern Palestine. He initially worked as a teacher and was a political activist within the Israeli Communist Party before transitioning into journalism and eventually devoting himself entirely to literary production. The occupation forces arrested him multiple times and placed him under house arrest due to his unyielding nationalistic and pan-Arab stances. He presided over both the Arab Writers Union and the General Union of Palestinian Arab Writers in Palestine since their inception, edited the cultural quarterly Ida’at, and served as the honorary editor-in-chief of the Nazareth-based newspaper Kul al-Arab until his passing.

Recipient of the Yasser Arafat Achievement Award in 2013, Al-Qasim authored over 60 books spanning poetry, short stories, theatre, essays, and translations. His collected works were published in seven volumes by various publishing houses in Jerusalem, Beirut, and Cairo. A vast collection of his poems has been translated into English, French, Turkish, Russian, German, Japanese, Spanish, Greek, Italian, Czech, Vietnamese, Persian, Hebrew, and other languages. Samih al-Qasim passed away on 19 August 2014 at the age of 75 after a fierce battle with cancer.