Dunyā al-Amal Ismāʿīl

Dunya al-Amal Ismail (; also transliterated as Dunyā, Donia, and Dunia; born 1971 in Gaza) is a Palestinian poet, journalist, researcher, and feminist.

Early life and education Al-Amal Ismail was born in the Gaza Strip, but her family relocated to Egypt in 1981. She attended Al-Arish Girls’ School, where she began her political activism by organizing a photo exhibition at her school at the inception of the First Intifada in 1987. Her father, who was politically involved, encouraged her activism.

Al-Amal Ismail holds a degree in journalism and communication from the University of Jerusalem, a degree in Arabic from Egypt's Cairo University, She was also a cultural writer for the newspapers Al-Hayat and Al-Ayyam, publishing interviews with authors and analysis of published works. Al-Amal Ismail has encouraged Palestinian solidarity with Kurdish women. However, Al-Amal Ismail has also said she sometimes feels pigeonholed by the media, and has received pushback from news agencies for wanting to discuss politics more generally, rather than with an emphasis on women. She has published some of her more general political analysis through the Center for Arab Unity Studies. the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Press House, and the United Nations Population Fund.

She is the director of the Gaza-based Creative Women's Association, which aims to support female creatives and cultural events.

Her poem "A Moment of Mourning" was published in the 2001 anthology The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology. She has also been published in Magazine 28. In 2014, she was invited to read at the Poetic Interludes of Palestine, hosted by the Franco-Palestinian Cultural Institute in Paris.

Al-Amal Ismail is also the author of a short story anthology about the 2008-2009 Gaza War.

In 2024, al-Amal Ismail and fellow Gazan poet Elham Hamedi received the international and jury prize from the Spoltore Awards at its Festival scrittura d’amore. She has four children.