Elias Khoury.. The Lebanese writer who loves Palestine

Lebanese writer and literary critic Elias Khoury passed away on Sunday at the age of 76. He was one of the most prominent thinkers supporting the Palestinian cause.

People close to Khoury said that he died in the capital Beirut after suffering from intestinal health problems that required him to stay in a hospital for treatment for many months.

In his novels, Khoury addressed the suffering of the Lebanese and the Palestinians, from the civil war to the life of the Palestinian in the country of asylum and the experiences of alienation and displacement, according to the Lebanese newspaper, An-Nahar.

Khoury was born in Beirut in 1948, and continued writing until the last weeks of his life. During his long career, he produced prolific literary works that received wide international appreciation.

Born into an Orthodox Christian family in the Achrafieh district of Beirut, Khoury began to take an interest in reading at the age of eight, and was particularly influenced by the works of the Lebanese novelist Jurji Zaydan and novels from classical Arabic and Russian literature.

He obtained his high school diploma in 1966 from the Good Shepherd High School in Beirut. In 1967, Khoury (19 years old at the time) traveled to Jordan and visited a Palestinian refugee camp.

He studied history at the Lebanese University and graduated in 1971, then obtained a PhD in social history from the University of Paris.

War and Exile

Since his youth, Khoury has shown support for the Palestinian cause and resistance, especially when the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization was in Beirut, before the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

His works deal with diverse themes related to the Palestinian cause, including memory, war, and exile, and have been translated into languages including English, French, German, Spanish, and Hebrew.

His most prominent works include “The City Gates,” “The Collection of Secrets,” “The White Faces,” “The Smell of Soap,” and “The Journey of Little Gandhi.” However, his most famous novel is “The Gate of the Sun,” published in 1998.

With American support, Israel has been waging a war on Gaza since October 7, resulting in more than 136,000 Palestinian deaths and injuries, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.

In parallel with this war, the Israeli army and settlers escalated their attacks on Palestinian citizens and their property in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem; which led to the killing of 703 Palestinians, including 159 children, the wounding of about 5,700 and the arrest of more than 10,000, according to official Palestinian institutions.

(Anatolia)