Tawfiq Ziyad

Tawfiq Ziyad was born in Nazareth in 1929, under the British Mandate, and lived through the Nakba as a young man in a city that became a refuge for Palestinians displaced from the surrounding villages. A communist organizer, he was elected to the Knesset in 1973 and became mayor of Nazareth in 1975 — a post he held until his death — leading the city through Land Day in 1976 and decades of struggle over land, budgets, and equality.

His poetry fused that political life with the idiom of sumud, steadfastness. His most famous poem, “Here We Will Stay” (Unadikum) — “In Lydda, in Ramla, in the Galilee, we shall remain” — became an anthem of Palestinian presence, later set to music and sung across the Arab world. He died in a car crash in the Jordan Valley on 5 July 1994, returning from Jericho after welcoming Yasser Arafat back from exile.

Selected works

• “Here We Will Stay” (Unadikum)
• “The Convergence of Roads”
• Diwan Tawfiq Ziyad (collected poems, Arabic)

Sources

• Tawfiq Ziad — Wikipedia
• Sumud, crucifixion, and poetry: The life of Palestinian leader Tawfiq Zayyad — Mondoweiss