Mosab Abu Toha in the Los Angeles Review of Books:
“Palestine is a story away.” This is what Refaat Alareer wrote on my copy of the short story anthology he edited in 2014, Gaza Writes Back. The contributors were his students at the Islamic University of Gaza.
When I published my poetry book, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza, in 2022, the first person I gave a copy to in Gaza was Refaat. I signed the copy by writing, “Palestine is a poem away.”
Now Refaat is a world away. He was assassinated on December 6 by the Israeli army. The only weapon in his Gaza apartment was an EXPO marker. If the Israeli soldiers were to raid his house, he said, he would throw it at them, while crying, “We are helpless.”
Refaat and I loved strawberries. We used to go to Beit Lahia in North Gaza, pick strawberries, then sit and eat.
More here.