Emile Habibi

Emile Habibi was born in 1922 in Haifa

Habibi was born in Haifa in 1922 to an Arab Anglican Christian family and grew up in the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood. His father came from Shefa-Amr. As a young man he worked at an oil refinery and later as a radio announcer and editor.

He joined the Palestine Communist Party in 1940 and became one of its leaders. He helped found the National Liberation League, which supported the UN Partition Plan. During the 1948 war he stayed in Haifa and became an Israeli citizen.

After the founding of Israel he helped form Maki and served in the Knesset from 1951 to 1959 and from 1961 to 1972. After a split in the party he joined Rakah. He edited the daily Al-Ittihad from 1972 to 1989 and left the party in 1991.

He left the Knesset in 1972 to write his novel The Pessoptimist, published in 1974, which uses satire and black humor to describe Arab life in Israel. He also wrote other novels, short stories and a play. In 1995 he founded the poetry journal Mashārif with Siham Daoud.

His acceptance of the Israel Prize in 1992 caused debate among Arab intellectuals and objections from parts of the Israeli right. He lived in Nazareth from 1956 and died in 1996. At his request he was buried in Haifa.