Write down!
I am an Arab
I have a name without a title
Patient in a country
Where people are enraged
My roots
Were entrenched before the birth of time
And before the opening of the eras
Before the pines, and the olive trees
And before the grass grew
—Mahmoud Darwish, “Identity Card”<p id="n5cdy2maw3a">Vivian Eden, “The Mahmoud Darwish Poem that Enraged Lieberman and Regev,” <em>Haaretz.com,</em> July 21, 2016, <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/life/books/how-mahmoud-darwish-enraged-lieberman-1.5413700" title="">https://www.haaretz.com/life/books/how-mahmoud-darwish-enraged-lieberman-1.5413700</a>.</p>">undefined
Acclaimed Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish expresses the inherent frustration of the Palestinian condition of invisible visibility in his 1964 poem “Identity Card.”<p id="n6gfnyigck4">I would like to thank Professor John O’Brian and the graduate students who contributed to this seminar at the University of British Columbia for generating the conversations and critical interventions that led to the writing of this paper. I am also grateful to the support and suggestions of the editing committee and peer review from IVC.</p>">undefined Addressing an existence that is often negated, confined, and erased under Israeli colonial occupation, Darwish’s poetry speaks to a population that since 1948 has been constantly watched, but never seen. Half a century later, Darwish’s poetry maintains its relevance as the occupation continues to suppress and expand its hold on Palestinian territory. In 2002 during the Second Intifada, or Second Palestinian Uprising, Israeli Defence Forces launched “Operation Defensive Shield,” the largest military operation in the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War. Invading Ramallah, followed by Tulkarm, Galqilya, Bethlehem, Jenin and Nablus, the IDF infringed upon a territory of people that it continues to occupy today. <p id="nlccq6dibya">Alan Dowty, <em>Israel/Palestine</em>, 3rd ed. (Malden: Polity Press, 2012), 173-4.</p>">undefined Palestinian photographer Rula Halawani responded to the Israeli offensive with a photographic series that includes twenty-three images taken during a one-month period after the invasion.<p id="nhflchd11ri">Kristen Gresh and Michket Krifa, <em>She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World</em> (Boston: MFA Publications, 2013), 120.</p>">undefined
