Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Ghattas Jamil Suwaiss, known as “Nazih Abu Nidal”, was born in Amman, Jordan on January 20, 1943. He studied primary school at Al-Abbasiya, Prince Hassan and Al-Ahnaf Bin Qais schools, secondary school at Raghadan School and Al-Hussein College, and obtained his high school diploma in the literary branch from Al-Hussein College in 1963. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cairo University in 1972, and a postgraduate diploma in Arabic language and literature from Beirut Arab University in 1978.
He joined the Arab Nationalist Movement in 1960, then left his university studies in Cairo and joined Fatah immediately after the 1967 defeat. He received military training at the Hamah camp and completed a commando course in Egypt in 1968. He then became an instructor in several revolutionary camps, including Hamah and Maysalun in Syria, Mun'im in Iraq, and Camp 99 in Jordan. He participated in a number of resistance operations in the Golan Heights and Galilee. He composed Fatah's anthem, "Biladi" (My Country), which the movement adopted as its anthem for its cadres and members everywhere.
He served as a political commissioner in Fatah's al-Asifa forces, then moved to work in Fatah's media. He co-founded the daily newspaper Fatah in Jordan with Majid Abu Sharar and Hanna Muqbil, and worked as an editor and editor-in-chief of the magazine Falastin al-Thawra (Palestine Revolution) with Kamal Nasser and Hanna Muqbil. He also edited the magazines al-Hadaf (The Goal) and Nidal al-Sha'b (The People's Struggle). In addition, he worked for revolutionary radio stations such as Zamzam Radio in Amman, Daraa Radio, Beirut Radio, and the Voice of Arab Lebanon Radio (al-Murabitun). He lived in several Arab cities, including Cairo, Beirut, and Damascus, and left Beirut on September 1, 1982, months after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
Abu Nidal became involved in institutional cultural work, and he was a member of more than one association, union, and committee. He became the president of the Union of Palestinian Writers and Journalists in Lebanon between (1974-1982), a member of the Committee for the Defense of Democratic Freedoms in Jordan between (1980-1990), a member of the Jordanian Writers Association since 1991, the general director of the General Union of Arab Writers and Authors between (1993-1996), the rapporteur of the Arab Committee for Resisting Cultural Normalization in the Arab Writers Union between (1994-1996), a founding member and president of the Fuhais Cultural Forum (1994-1995), a member of the Committee for the Dictionary of Jordanian Writers in 2005, and a member of the Committee for the Dictionary of Jordanian Artists (2007-2008).
He has published over twenty-seven books, focusing on literature, criticism, and political and intellectual studies. These include: Palestinian Fighting Poetry: A Study in Revolutionary Realism (1974), The Debate on Poetry and Revolution (1979), The Notebook of Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, Prison Literature (1981), Confronting the Mentality of Compromise (1982), Milestones on the Path of the Novel in Jordan: Ghalib Halasa [and others] A Bibliography of the Novel in Jordan and Palestine (1912-1995) (1996 edition), Novelistic Testimonies on a Time of Transformations and Defeats (2008), The Female's Rebellion: On the Novel of the Arab Woman and a Bibliography of Arab Feminism (2009), The Gardens of the Female: Theoretical and Applied Studies in Feminist Creativity (2009), The Memoirs of Abu Ibrahim al-Kabir (2010), From the Papers of a Betrayed Revolution: Narrative and Critical Memoirs of the Era of Feminist Action and the Fatah Movement, in which he was interviewed by Ziad Muna (2011), and The Palestinian Revealer: A Dictionary of Writers Palestinian Writers (joint, 2011), The Satirists (2013), and Ghalib Halasa: The Circle is Complete (2021). He also wrote dramatic works including: Ibn al-Muqaffa’ and Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, in addition to a number of diverse radio series.
He received a number of awards, including: the Ghalib Halsa Award for Cultural Creativity in 1993, the Gold Medal of the Radio and Television Programs Festival in Cairo (1998), the Silver Medal of the Arab States Broadcasting Union Festival in Tunisia (2001), and the Bronze Medal of the Radio and Television Programs Festival in Cairo (2003).
Abu Nidal was known for his opposition to the political orientations of the official leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization, especially after the PLO adopted the phased program in 1974 and launched what became known as the Palestinian peace offensive in the second half of the 1980s. This prompted him to withdraw from political activity in Fatah after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, and he settled in Amman and lived there until his death on April 21, 2025.
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