Meanwhile, in the Occupied Territories, thousands of Palestinians are gathering in Ramallah today for the state funeral of the poet Mahmoud Darwish. Darwish was considered one of the most important Arab poets. He died on Saturday at the age of sixty-seven years old at the Memorial Herman Hospital in Houston from complications following heart surgery. Darwish is the first Palestinian to receive a state funeral since Yasser Arafat in 2004.