Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Youssef Mahmoud Al-Khatib was born in the city of Dura in the Hebron Governorate on March 6, 1931. He studied the primary stage in Dura School, and the secondary stage in Hebron schools, and obtained a Bachelor of Laws degree from Damascus University in 1955. He worked in Jordanian Radio between (1955-1957), and worked in Syrian Radio until the beginning of the 1960s, and also worked in Cairo Radio, and in the Arabic section of Radio Netherlands Worldwide for two years, and was the Director General of the General Authority for Radio and Television in Syria between (1965-1966), and worked in other Arab radio stations such as Voice of the Arabs, Kuwaiti, and Iraqi, and he founded the Palestine House for Culture, Media and Arts in 1967 and worked in it until his death.
He joined the Baath Party in the early 1950s, participated in the founding of Radio Palestine from Damascus in 1965, and in the founding of the Arab Writers Union in Syria in 1966. He became a member of the Palestinian National Council in 1968, and was a founding member of the Union of Palestinian Writers and Journalists in 1972, and its deputy secretary-general.
He published his poems in Arab magazines, including the Beirut-based Al-Adab magazine. He has several published poetry collections, including: *The Eyes Thirsting for Light* (1955), *Returning* (1959), and *Oasis of Hell* (1964). He also published a collection of short stories titled *Destructive Elements* (1964), which was translated into English, French, and German. He authored a book titled *The Anthology of the Occupied Homeland* (1968), which includes a collection of poems by poets from within the occupied territories. He also published *The Palestinian Diary*, which documented Palestinian daily life between 1967 and 1976. This diary was published in five languages: Arabic, English, French, Spanish, and German. He also wrote a screenplay titled *The Kafr Qasim Massacre* (1971). His first audio poetry collection in the Arab world was published on four cassette tapes under the title *The Madman of Palestine* in 1983. He also published two poetry collections: *My Family is in Damascus, My Heart is in Baghdad*, and *I Saw God in Gaza*, both published in [year missing]. 1988.
His poem, "Eyes Thirsty for Light," won first prize in the Literature Magazine competition organized at the level of the Arab world in 1955, and he received the Jerusalem Medal for Literature in 1991.
Several studies and research papers have been published about him, including: Youssef Al-Khatib: His Life and Poetry (Master's Thesis, 2002), Youssef Al-Khatib: The Memory of the Earth... The Memory of Fire (2004).
He died in Damascus on June 16, 2011.
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