A sad echo of the phase of disintegration that the Middle East is going through: the Lebanese writer and intellectual Elias Khoury, who never stopped fighting for an Arab political and cultural renaissance, died on Sunday 15 September at the age of 76. The man with the white hair and the voice of a smoker, a tireless defender of the Palestinian cause, succumbed to a long illness, at a time when Gaza is dying under Israeli bombing, when Beirut is sinking into an endless crisis and when Damascus is suffocating under the yoke of the Assad clan.
The late editor-in-chief of the Arabic edition of Journal of Palestinian Studies He leaves behind a rich literary oeuvre, rich in sixteen novels, acclaimed and translated throughout the world, which have contributed powerfully to the revival of the genre in the Middle East. His most famous book, The Gate of the Sun (Actes Sud, 2003), the tragic story of Palestinian dispossession, the Nakba, was adapted to film in 2004 by Egyptian director Yousri Nasrallah. But the commitments of this figure of the Arab left, convinced that the liberation of the Palestinians is inseparable from the democratization of the region and whose chronicle, every Tuesday, in the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds al-Arabiwhich was watched by all progressives in the region, ended with a painful recognition of failure.
“The people of the region are caught between Arab despotism and Israeli occupation. trusted in 2021 to World. We have never felt so alone. The so-called “first world” no longer considers us, the inhabitants of the so-called “third world,” a threat to white civilization that must be kept at bay.he added, in an unconscious foreshadowing of Western acquiescence in the crushing of Gaza three years later. “It is terribly sad, Elias’ disappearance corresponds to a moment of general collapse”points out Lebanese political scientist Ziad Majed, a professor at the American University of Paris, who was one of his closest friends.
And yet, despite this succession of defeats, both intimate and collective, what those around him also want to remember is a man with an infectious sense of humour, never short of witty or unpleasant jokes, “a bon vivant, fond of mezze and arak, the Levantine Pastis, inhabited by a profound love for all things Arabic.” “He was an incredibly lively, brave friend who went against the grain. We laughed a lot together.”recalls Elias Sanbar, former Palestinian ambassador to UNESCO.
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