Renowned Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish died on Saturday evening at the age of 67 after undergoing open-heart surgery in Houston, Texas.
 
Darwish, who has been struggling with heart problems for several years, developed complications some 24 hours after the procedure and was rushed to intensive care, where doctors put him on life support. However his situation continued to deteriorate and he passed away in the early evening.
 
Darwish, the Palestinians' national poet, was born March 13th 1941 in the village of al-Birwa in the Galilee. The destruction of his childhood home and the evacuation of his village were themes Darwish revisited often in his writings.
 
He joined the Israeli Communist Party after high school and began writing poems for the party newspaper "Al Ittihad" and the communist literature quartely "Al Jadid". He left the country in the early 1970s to study in the former Soviet Union.
 
He was a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization and he moved to the West Bank city of Ramallah in 1996.
 
His poetry is considered to have given voice to the Palestinian experience of exile, occupation and infighting. "Exile," he said in a 2001 interview, "is more than a geographical concept."
 
A Palestinian cultural icon, Darwish was a vocal critic of both the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian leadership. Darwish's influence was keenly felt among Palestinians. Last year he recited a poem damning the deadly infighting between rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah, describing it as "a public attempt at suicide in the streets." His work has been translated into more than 20 languages and won numerous international prizes.
 
"He felt the pulse of Palestinians in beautiful poetry. He was a mirror of the Palestinian society and he was a great friend of the Communist Party and his Front – Hadash" said yesterday, during a CPI's Central Committee meeting, Muhammad Nafa'h, a well know Arab writer and the General Secretary of the party.
 
The Palestinian national poet and writer Darwish participated last year in a literary and political event held in Haifa by Hadash and the CPI, for the first time since leaving Israel more than 37 years ago. The event, hold jointly with Masharaf magazine, was focus on the poet and his work. Darwish worked and wrote in Haifa for many years at "Al Ittihad" headquarters.
 
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