Palestine Bids Farewell to Elias Khoury
CrossFireArabia- September 16, 2024
Palestine will miss him greatly. Elias Khoury, a leading Lebanese novelist and writers and a staunch advocate for the Palestinian cause, gave up and died, Sunday.
Khoury, a leading voice of Arab literature, had been ill for months and admitted and discharged from hospital several times over the past year until his death, the Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily for which he worked stated.
One of his best-known novels, Gate of the Sun, tells the story of Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes in 1948 during the war that coincided with heartache creation of Israel.
“The Catastrophe began in 1948 and it is still going on,” he once wrote referring to Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
On 16 July, he published an article, titled A Year of Pain, recounting his time bedridden in hospital and enduring “a life filled with pain, which stops only to herald in more pain”. He ended his piece by alluding to the Israeli war in the besieged Gaza Strip, which by had rthen aged on for more than nine months.
“Gaza and Palestine have been brutally bombarded for almost a year now, but they stand steadfast and unshakable,” Khoury wrote. “A model from which I have learned to love life every day.”
The Institute for Palestine Studies honored the late Lebanese novelist for his contributions in support of the Palestinian people.
“Elias Khoury was a staunch advocate for Palestine, contributing to the struggle nationally and intellectually,” the institute said in a statement posted on X.
“Even while hospitalised due to illness, Khoury continued to work on the publication of the institute’s Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya journal, “especially during the genocide in the Gaza Strip”, the institute pointed out in a statement
He “paid exceptional attention to the plight of prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons, devoting pages of the journal to this crucial cause”, the statement added according to the Quds News Network.
