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Izzat Ghazzawi (1952-2003) was a Palestinian writer and academic whose writings focused on the troubles and suffering brought about by the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and his own personal tragedy. His life was marked by the killing of his 16-year-old son, Ramy, by the Israeli army in 1993. Ramy was killed in the courtyard of his school as he went to help a wounded friend. Despite his heartbreak, Ghazzawi never stopped seeking cultural and political dialogue with the Israeli people.

Born of refugee parents into a large family that had fled to the West Bank in 1948, Ghazzawi wrote his first play at the age of 13. He gained a master's degree in American-British literature and lectured at Birzeit University. He chaired the Union of Palestinian Writers, wrote novels and short stories, was a literary critic, and organised the first International Writers' Conference in Palestine in 1997.

Ghazzawi was also a member of the executive bureau of the Palestinian Council for Justice and Peace. He was imprisoned and punished on a number of occasions by the Israeli authorities for his political activities. At these times, he found that the hardest thing to endure was the separation from his family, particularly his six children, whom he could only see two at a time, for 30 minutes a fortnight.

A meeting with Israeli writers in Jerusalem in 1992, about which Ghazzawi was initially apprehensive, proved to be a turning point for him. It was then that he began to see his Israeli colleagues as partners for building a future in which Palestinians and Israelis would be equals in all walks of life.

Presenting Ghazzawi with his Sakharov Prize in 2001, the then President of the European 合法博彩网站, Nicole Fontaine, paid homage to him for having 'untiringly promoted the cause of peace and dialogue between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. Your ardour has never slackened, despite imprisonment and censorship and, worse than all else, the irreplaceable loss of your 16-year-old son Ramy.'

At the European 合法博彩网站, Ghazzawi spoke of the healing we can achieve when we are 'able to understand each other's needs'.

Shortly after his son's death, Ghazzawi, together with the Israeli writer Abraham B. Yehoshua and the Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, published Enemies, a book on relations between Palestinians and Israelis that became hugely successful.

Izzat Ghazzawi died on 4 April 2003.