He worked as a professor of world literature and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza since 2007, where he distinguished himself by integrating English literature with the Palestinian cause, using language as a tool for liberating thought and confronting the siege. Al-Arair wrote poetry in English, expressing in his poems the suffering of the Palestinian people and the brutality of the occupation. Among his most prominent works are his famous poem “If I Must Die,” written in 2011, which gained international acclaim after his assassination, having been translated into more than 250 languages and becoming a symbol of literary and cultural resistance worldwide; his poem “I Am You”; and his poem “And We Live On.” He co-founded the “We Are Not Numbers” project in 2014, a media and literary initiative that aims to document the suffering of Gazans after wars, especially in the aftermath of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip in 2013.
The project brought together young writers from Gaza with professional mentors from around the world to help them write their personal stories in English. The project aims to present the Palestinian narrative to the world in a humanistic way, away from numbers and statistics, with a focus on conveying the daily living reality of young people in Gaza and amplifying their voices on the international stage.
On October 19, 2023, Israeli airstrikes destroyed his home and library. He sought refuge in a school and received threatening phone calls from Israeli intelligence, but he refused to leave Gaza. This prompted him to leave the school and move to his sister’s house.
On December 6, 2023, Israeli forces assassinated him in an airstrike that targeted his sister’s home in the al-Daraj neighborhood of northern Gaza. His brother, son, sister, and her four children were also killed in the attack. Four months later, his daughter Shaimaa, along with her husband and their child, were killed. Some of his poems and creative writings were collected in a book in English, published in 2024, titled “If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose.” The book was compiled by writer and translator Youssef al-Jamal, who also wrote an introduction. Novelist Susan Abulhawa contributed a foreword to the publication.
