Birth: NULL/NULL/1930 Death:NULL/NULL/NULL
Born in Nablus in 1930; nephew of Hamdi Kana‘an; left for Syria after the Nakba of 1948; became a member of the Ba’ath Party; returned to Nablus and headed the Ba’ath Party’s Nablus branch; was persecuted by the Jordanians and fled to Syria in 1958; then left the Ba’ath Party and moved to Egypt; returned with the amnesty of 1965; was elected mayor of Nablus in the 1976 municipal elections on a pro-PLO platform; served in the post until being dismissed by the Israeli authorities in 1982; supported non-cooperation with the Israeli military government; was a member of the National Guidance Committee from 1976-82; was imprisoned in Nov. 1979 for allegedly supporting PLO attacks on civilian targets; lost his legs in a bomb attack attributed to Israeli settlers of the Gush Emunim Underground on 2 June 1980; was banned from traveling by Israel in 1981; was dismissed and replaced with an Israeli official in spring 1982; became a business partner in the Nablus Soap Factory and the Ahmed Hassan Al-Shaka’a Co.; has been critical of the Oslo process and the PA, saying the negotiators are “connected to foreign interests that have nothing to do with the Palestinian-Israeli struggle;” announced the establishment of an Oslo-opposed ‘Palestinian National Group’ in Feb. 1995; was among the 20 signatories of a public statement titled “A Cry from the Homeland”, criticizing the “tyranny, corruption, humiliation and abuse of the Palestinian people” by the PA, in late Nov. 1999, for which he was put under house arrest by the PA; attended a conference that denounced attempts at normalizing ties with Israel in Jordan in 2000.
