Raymonda Hawa Tawil (, born Raymonda Hawa in 1940 in
Acre
The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...
in
Mandatory Palestine
Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine.
After ...
) is a Palestinian writer and journalist. She is the mother of Suha Arafat.
Life
Raymonda Tawil is a poet, writer and Palestinian journalist born in Acre in a prominent family of Palestinian Christians. She spent part of childhood as a boarder with French Catholic sisters. Her public life began with an intellectual show that was held in
Nablus
Nablus ( ; , ) is a State of Palestine, Palestinian city in the West Bank, located approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 156,906. Located between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a ...
, northern
West Bank
The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...
. Independent-spirited columns earned her the nickname "The Lioness of Nablus". In 1978, Raymonda Hawa Tawil opened a Palestinian news agency in
Jerusalem
Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
. Because of her political activities as a journalist, she was placed under house arrest for six months by Israeli military decision. She was also imprisoned for forty-five days for subversive activities during clashes with Jewish settlers and vigilantes. These experiences pushed to write about Palestine in collaboration with the Israeli journalist Peretz Kidron. She is a Christian who visited churches of multiple denominations, she has always advocated dialogue and reconciliation between the two peoples, a position that sometimes earned her hostility.
Politics
Having narrowly escaped a targeted attack whose perpetrators were never found, she fled to France while
Yasser Arafat
Yasser Arafat (4 or 24 August 1929 – 11 November 2004), also popularly known by his Kunya (Arabic), kunya Abu Ammar, was a Palestinian political leader. He was chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from 1969 to 2004, Presid ...
, head of the PLO in Tunis, married Suha, Raymonda Tawil's daughter. In 1994, she returned to Gaza and attended the establishment of the
Palestinian Authority
The Palestinian Authority (PA), officially known as the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), is the Fatah-controlled government body that exercises partial civil control over the Palestinian enclaves in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, ...
(PA), while remaining very close to her French and Israeli friends. In 2000, at the outbreak of the
Second Intifada
The Second Intifada (; ), also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, was a major uprising by Palestinians against Israel and its Israeli-occupied territories, occupation from 2000. Starting as a civilian uprising in Jerusalem and October 2000 prot ...
, she lived in
Ramallah
Ramallah ( , ; ) is a Palestinians, Palestinian city in the central West Bank, that serves as the administrative capital of the State of Palestine. It is situated on the Judaean Mountains, north of Jerusalem, at an average elevation of abov ...
, not far from the Muqata, the headquarters of the PA. She had an office next to that of Arafat, whom she saw often. The Israeli government decided to confine Arafat's freedom of movement. IDF tanks surrounding the Muqata and partially destroyed the area with bulldozers. A month later the situation worsened and towns run by the PA were reoccupied. Living alongside the President, Raymonda Tawil become Arafat's confidant and a close acquaintance.
From 2004 to 2007 she lived with her daughter Suha Arafat in Tunisia. The family was evicted from Tunisian territory by then-president Ben Ali in August 2007 and subsequently took refuge in
Malta
Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...
. She wrote about her life experiences in memoir-like accounts. One of her quotes was the line: "This is a strange one country where we live. Power outages are in his image. Palestine is in the night, deprived of light as freedom. From time to time the light returns. So hope returns too. And then everything stops again, everything is off. In the dark, looking for some hope and comfort. Candles are lit to try to convince yourself that all is not lost. Is this going to last? This will be the end?"''Palestine mon histoire'', p. 15
Published books
Listed with original French edition first, and the English edition second.
* 1979: ''Mon pays, ma prison, une femme de Palestine''. Paris,
Éditions du Seuil
Éditions du Seuil (), also known as Le Seuil, is a French publishing house established in 1935 by Catholic intellectual Jean Plaquevent (1901–1965), and currently owned by La Martinière Groupe. It owes its name to this goal "The ''seuil'' (th ...