Birth: NULL/NULL/1953 Death:NULL/NULL/NULL
Born in Dura, near Hebron, in 1953; sentenced to life in prison at the age of 15 for throwing a grenade at an Israeli army convoy; spent 17 years in Israeli prisons (1968-1985) before being released as part of a prisoner exchange; Fateh activist since 1970; Fateh Revolutionary Council member and head of Fateh in the West Bank, 1985-1988; expelled from the West Bank to Lebanon in 1988 for his role in the first Intifada; then based at the PLO headquarters in Tunis, acting as deputy to Khalil Al-Wazir and after his assassination as close aide to Yasser Arafat; acted as a middleman between Faisal Al-Husseini (‘inside’) and Arafat (‘outside’), in the debate over who should be in the Palestinian delegation to the Oct. 1991 Madrid talks; returned to the West Bank in May 1994; was appointed by Arafat to be in charge of security in Jericho in 1994; in 1995, appointed head of the Preventive Security Forces in the West Bank; known to have provided support to moderate leaders (e.g., Sari Nusseibeh, Mahmoud Abbas, Saeb Erekat) during the Oslo period; appointed Arafat’s national security advisor, with the rank of Brigadier-General in Aug. 2003 and head of the newly established Palestinian National Security Council; politically considered a moderate and pragmatist; was appointed in 2005 as national security advisor to Pres. Mahmoud Abbas.
