QADIYA is an independent, noncommercial community project: an archive of Palestine’s history, built for the cause and open to everyone.
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Person · Folk poet and singer, “the voice of the Intifada”
Rajeh al-Salfiti
راجح السلفيتي
1921–1990
Born in Salfit in 1921 to a poor family, he left school when his father died in 1933 and worked as a muezzin, a road builder and a farm labourer. As a teenager he sang at weddings in Salfit and its villages, where it was said no wedding was a proper party without him. He joined a rebel group in the Nablus region after the revolt of 1936 broke out, and later composed verses for the First Intifada; Yasser Arafat called him “the voice of the Intifada”. He died in Salfit on 27 May 1990.
An introductory profile. The source material below provides the fuller record.
A popular uprising across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, from 9 December 1987 to the signing of the Oslo agreement on 13 September 1993: mass demonstrations, strikes and civil disobedience, led on the ground by a clandestine unified leadership.
PalQuest · Institute for Palestine Studies · supports · section: “Palestinian President Yasir Arafat gave him the title of “the voice of the Intifada.””