2023-11-21 13:35:48
Friends and family of Mosab Abu Toha have reported that the famous Palestinian poet has been detained by Israeli forces while trying to leave Gaza. US officials had told Abu Toha that he could cross the border with Egypt with his family, since one of his children is a US citizen.
Israel surrounds Jabalia as negotiations for temporary truce progress
On Sunday, they were heading from the north to the south of the Strip, towards the Rafah border crossing, when at an Israeli Army checkpoint he was arrested along with other Palestinians. “The army took Mosab when it arrived at the checkpoint, going from the north to the south, as the Army ordered. “The American Embassy had sent him and his family to cross the Rafah border crossing,” the poet’s brother, Hamza, wrote on the social network. “We haven’t heard anything from him,” she added.
Palestinian-Canadian lawyer Diana Buttu, a friend of Abu Toha and former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization, explained that “his son, born in the United States, obtained evacuation permission a couple of weeks ago, but the name Mosab “It wasn’t on the list.” “They finally managed to add his name, his wife’s name and the other children’s names to the list, and they were waiting for it to be safe to leave,” according to Buttu.
“They were trying to evacuate from the north to the south, when they were stopped at a checkpoint along with many other people. They were told to raise their arms to show that they were not carrying anything. Mosab was ordered to leave his son on the ground and then the troops arrested him, along with many other men, about 200, according to his wife. His wife has not heard from him since that moment.”
Neither the US State Department nor the Israel Defense Forces have responded to questions from The Guardian about the arrest.
Abu Toha had written in the magazine The New Yorker about his experience under the bombs in the Jabalia refugee camp (in northern Gaza). The English translation of a collection of his poems, published in the US, was a finalist this year for the National Book Critics Circle award and won an American Book Award.
“He is one of our most prolific writers,” Buttu said. “Having published so much at such a young age and getting all those awards and accolades for his writing shows how powerful a writer he is.”
According to Palestinian journalist and editor Laura Albast, also a friend of Abu Toha, “he is an incredible poet.” “The poetry he writes is very accessible and also a representation of what happens to us, like the story of his bicycle ride to get to his house, while the bombs were falling.”
Abu Toha and his family were sheltering in Jabalia when they learned that their home in Beit Lahia had been bombed. In the essay that The New Yorker published On November 6, he described how he came home from Yabalia, on a bicycle, to try to save what was left of his small collection of books.
“I was hoping to find at least one copy of my collection of poems, perhaps near my neighbor’s olive tree, but there is only rubble, only the smell of explosions,” he wrote. “Now I am sitting in my temporary home in Yabalia camp, waiting for a ceasefire. I feel like I’m in a cage. Every day they kill me along with my people. Breathing and panicking are the only two things I can do. There is no hope here.”
“His whereabouts are now unknown,” he wrote on his website monday night The New Yorker , highlighting that Abu Toha is an award-winning poet and father of three children. The publication joined other organizations in calling for his safe return.
Translated by Francisco de Zárate
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