The Palestinian writer Saeed Al-Mishal passed on Sunday, in the Jordanian capital, Amman, at the age of 86, after a long struggle with illness, and he is considered one of the first founders of the “Fatah” movement. Saeed Al-Mishal was born in the village of Al-Joura in the year 1933 to a struggling family, as his father was an activist of the Palestinian national movement, a nd held several leadership and avant-garde positions in it. Al-Mishal followed in his footsteps, as he took up arms at the age of 14.
Al-Mishal studied petroleum engineering at Cairo University, graduated in 1957, and then worked as a mathematics teacher at Palestine Secondary School for about nine months. Then he moved to work in Saudi Arabia, where he and his companions printed the first statement of the Fatah movement in Akhwar, in 1958. In 1962, Al-Mishal moved to work in , and in addition to his work as Director of the Petroleum Department, he supervised the establishment of the Fatah movement in the Arabian Gulf.
Al-Mishal and his two companions, the two martyrs, Kamal Adwan and Abdel Fattah Hammoud, participated in the Faculty of Engineering since 1965, in “an attempt to form a revolutionary Palestinian movement whose main goal is the liberation of Palestine,” as Mishal wrote in his autobiography. Al-Mishal had an important role on the Palestinian cultural scene, and had established a cultural center that bore his name in Gaza: “The Saeed Al-Mishal Foundation for Culture and Science,” and a thriving theater in Gaza, which had a profound positive impact on the Palestinian youth of Gaza, as stated by many of them, after the occupation planes bombed the institution last year and reduced it completely destroyed it.
In a press statement, the Palestinian Ministry of Culture mourned Al-Mishal, saying, “With more sadness and sorrow, we mourn the great writer, thinker and fighter Saeed Khalil Al-Mishal, who passed away this afternoon in Amman after a bitter struggle with illness.” And the ministry added, “If the Ministry of Culture mourns this high stature, it confirms the heavy loss of Al-Mishal’s departure, who devoted his efforts to serving the national cause, through his early affiliation with Fatah movement, and devoting his efforts in Gaza after returning to serve his people, specifically in the cultural context.” The statement added that the Foundation “formed, over two decades, a vital role for the national cultural action, and the occupation bombed it at the end of last year because it is an institution of great importance in activating and exporting the enlightened national culture.”
The ministry added, “Our condolences are that Saeed Al-Mishal passed away after leaving us with many books that chronicle the march of the contemporary Palestinian revolution, holding on to the national dream towards Palestine, history and man and the covenant, that the Palestinian culture remains faithful to the history of the national intellectuals who paved the road with their efforts and their blood.”
