Region | Palestinian Territories
UAE sends aircraft to transfer Darwish's body
Famed Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish's body will be transferred to Jordan from the United States on a plane sent by UAE President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Palestinian Ambassador to Amman, Ata Allah Khairi said on Monday.
- Agencies
- Published: 23:22 August 11, 2008
Ramallah, West Bank: Famed Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish's body will be transferred to Jordan from the United States on a plane sent by UAE President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Palestinian Ambassador to Amman, Ata Allah Khairi said on Monday.
A ceremony will be held at Amman's Marka military airport at 0700 GMT (11am UAE time) on Wednesday, before Darwish is flown to Ramallah on a Jordanian military helicopter for the funeral.
Mahmoud Darwish, whose poetry encapsulated the Palestinian cause, will be buried in the West Bank tomorrow, a day later than planned, Palestinian officials said. The funeral had initially been scheduled for today.
Yearning
His grave will face the outskirts of occupied Jerusalem, where the Palestinians hope to create the capital of a future state which Darwish had yearned for in his poems written over a half a century.
The 67-year-old writer died on Saturday from complications following heart surgery in a hospital in Houston, Texas.
Officials in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's office said the funeral had been put back one day because of a delay in releasing Darwish's body in the United States.
Darwish, who gave a voice to the Palestinian decades-old struggle, is widely considered one of the Arab world's greatest writers, winning numerous international literary prizes.
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