Birth: NULL/NULL/1943 Death:NULL/NULL/NULL
Born in Nablus in 1943; attended local schools in Nablus; received an L.L.B. from Beirut University in 1971; was employed at the Arab Bank in Ras Beirut from 1969-72; registered at the Bar Association in Amman in 1971; returned to Palestine in the same year; was arrested by the Israeli authorities in 1979 and imprisoned until 1980; became a member of the Exec. Committee of the Council for Higher Education; was representative of the Lawyers’ Union in Nablus in 1986; serves as head of the Bar Association in the West Bank since 1990; was appointed by the PA to head the Nablus Municipality Council in Oct. 1994; was elected PLC member (Fateh) for the Nablus district in the Jan. 1996 elections; is an independent member of the PLO Exec. Committee since April 1996 (one of three members from – for the first time – ‘inside’ the OPT), in-charge of National & International Relations Portfolio; serves as member of the PA’s High Council for Refugee Camps, established in 1997; became member of the PA National Security Council established in 2000; in 2003, his brother Buraq Shaka´a, visiting from Jordan, was killed by unknown assailants in Nov. 2003 in what was widely seen as an assassination attempt against the mayor himself; submitted his resignation as mayor to Pres. Yasser Arafat in Feb. 2004 to protest the PA’s failure to crack down on militants and to stop the security chaos; continues practicing law in his office in Nablus; ran unsuccessfully in the 2006 PLC elections (Fateh, Nablus district).
