In 1988, the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, the most celebrated Arab poet of the modern era, wrote The Trilogy of the Children of the Stones. The poem was dedicated to the children of the first Palestinian intifada, who, in hurling stones at Israeli soldiers, became symbols of the era. The intifada was triggered in 1987 by frustration over the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and was characterised by civil disobedience, non-violent protest and, most iconically, those children.

“O Children of Gaza, don’t mind our broadcasts”, Qabbani wrote, counting himself as part of an older generation whose attempts at compromise with Israel had failed to deliver freedom for the Palestinians. “Don’t listen to us / We are the people of cold calculation … The age of political reason has long departed / So teach us madness.”

Qabbani was part of an Arabic tradition of art and literature that channelled the despair of the Palestinians, and how their only recourse was the “madness” of children throwing rocks at a heavily armed force. How all they had left was a refusal to accept their defeat and to tilt against the powerful – without allies, at huge risk and without a plan. As long as that happened, Palestine still existed, a place kept alive through the assertion that its people were still here, still claiming their right to their identity, still free simply as a result of never abandoning that claim. Followed closely in a region ruled by autocrats, military men and absolute monarchies, the first intifada planted its message deep in the popular Arab psyche: political overlords could control everything but people’s right to nurse a vision of what they deserve.

To those from that........

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