Mahmoud Darwish's verse has always been controversial, outraging the PLO, the Palestinian Authority and successive Israeli governments in equal measure. The reason for this outrage is Darwish's articulation of the experiences of a helpless people thrown out of their country and deprived of their right to determine their own destiny. 'We travel like other people' and other poems written after the Palestinian exodus from Beirut in 1982, for instance, offended many in the Palestinian diaspora when read for the first time in London in 1983; in Israel's case, offence was the rule rather than the exception.
