Birth: NULL/NULL/1955 Death:NULL/NULL/NULL
Born in Al-Janiya village near Ramallah in 1955; educated at Al-Janiya village school, the Prince Hassan School in Birzeit, and the Al-Aqsa Shari’a Secondary School in Jerusalem; joined the Shari’a Institute in Jerusalem where he earned a diploma in Islamic Shari’a in 1978; received a BA in Shari’a from the Al-Da’wa Wa Usul Al-Din College, 1982; worked as Imam and teacher in Ramallah and Al-Bireh; became Director of the Zakat section of the Waqf in Ramallah; received prizes for his tajweed (the art of Qur’an recital) by the Islamic Waqf, and for his teaching skills by the Union of Palestinian Teachers; participated in dialogue sessions between the PA and Hamas, particularly in Cairo in 1994; served as spokesman for Hamas; co-founder of the Islamic charitable society in Ramallah and its Zakat Committee; was several times imprisoned by Israel for his political activity; among the over 400 deportees that were exiled by Israel to Marj Az-Zuhour, South Lebanon, in 1992; arrested by Israeli authorities after his return from a dialogue session between Hamas and the PA on his way to the pilgrimage to Mecca through the Jordan bridge; also arrested by PA security forces for six months; the Israelis arrested him again in Aug. 2002 during a large-scale operation and detained him at Ofer Detention Camp until 17 Nov. 2004; briefly arrested by Israeli forces on his return home after he illegally made his way from Ramallah to the Al-Aqsa Mosque to deliver a sermon on 10 April 2005, a day on which extremist Jewish groups had threatened they would break into the mosque; again arrested on 26 Sept. 2005 by Israeli forces and remains in administrative detention as of July 2006; senior Hamas official in the West Bank and head of the Hamas politburo in Ramallah; considered to be a moderate within the movement.
