Dareen Tatour

Dareen Tatour was born in 1982 in Reineh

Dareen Tatour was born on 16 April 1982 in Reineh. Her mother, Ikhlas, is a homemaker and her father, Tawfiq, is a carpenter. She studied software engineering, communications and film, and once ran a shoe store.

Tatour writes in Arabic, and much of her poetry deals with the suffering of Palestinian women. She published the poetry book The Last Invasion in 2010 and combines her poems with her photographs. She has shown an exhibition of her work in Nazareth.

In October 2015 she posted the poem Resist My People, Resist Them on YouTube and Facebook and was arrested. She was indicted for incitement to violence and support of a terrorist organization over the poem and other Facebook posts. She spent about 3 months in detention and then long periods under house arrest.

In May 2018 the Nazareth Magistrate's Court convicted her, and on 31 July 2018 she was sentenced to 5 months in prison. She was released in September 2018. In May 2019 the Nazareth District Court overturned the conviction for the poem but upheld the convictions for other posts, and the Supreme Court rejected the state's request to appeal.

Writers' groups and human rights organizations campaigned for her release, while Israeli officials described the case as protecting security against incitement. In 2018 she co-wrote the play I, Dareen Tatour with Einat Weizman, and in 2019 she published a book about her arrest and imprisonment.