Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Sayel Aref Khalil was born in the town of Deir al-Ghusun in the Tulkarm Governorate on December 26, 1949. He is married and has five children. He completed his secondary education in 1968, studied at the Agricultural Institute at Khadouri College, and earned a bachelor's degree in history from Al-Quds Open University in 2014. He worked as a teacher in the Attil and Deir al-Ghusun schools for 19 years.
Khalil joined the Democratic Front in 1975 and participated in its activities ever since, focusing on union activity, especially within the Democratic Teachers Union. He was one of the leaders of the famous teachers’ strike in Tulkarm Governorate in 1982, and one of the cadres of his region in the First Intifada, where he planned and carried out with his comrades many militant activities against the Israeli occupation.
Khalil held several positions within the Democratic Front; he was a member of the Front’s leadership body in the Tulkarm Governorate, the head of the Sha’rawiya area, a member of the Democratic Front’s central leadership and its coordinator in the factional coordination committee in the governorate, and the head of the coordination committee for national action factions.
Khalil’s family suffered under the occupation, as their home and lands were seized in 1948. He was arrested several times before and during the First Intifada, and in 1989 he was notified of the demolition of his house on the pretext of lack of a permit. He was arbitrarily dismissed from his job in 1989, and house arrest was imposed on him more than once. He has also been banned from traveling for a long time.
Khalil adopts Marxist-Leninist thought, which believes in equal human rights, social justice, steadfastness on the land, and standing against the injustice of occupation.
Khalil opposes the Oslo Accords and describes them as the first disaster for the Palestinian people after the Nakba of 1948, as they allowed the occupation to seize large areas, reaching 60% of the West Bank lands on which we dream of establishing the Palestinian state. The motivation for resistance among the people has declined, and one of the negatives of Oslo is that our people did not rise up to resist settlement as they did before the existence of the Authority, relying on the Authority to confront the practices of the occupation, which in turn does not have the capabilities to resist this settlement.
He believes that the Palestinian division is as damaging to the people and the national project as the Nakba, the Naksa, and Oslo. It is a dispute over positions, and there are no justifications for its continuation, especially after the signing of agreements and the affirmation of constants by all factions. Therefore, it is necessary to reunite the Palestinians and agree on a unified program to serve the higher interest of the Palestinian people, under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization, as it is the comprehensive front framework that includes all factions of national action, with the necessity of including the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements in it, and accepting the holding of legislative, presidential, local, and National Council elections, and the winner of the elections has the right to implement his electoral program.
Khalil believes in resistance against occupation, which is permitted by heavenly and earthly law, and which begins with boycotts, then stones, then bullets, then artillery, then airplanes if available, but each stage has its own particularity and a specific type of resistance according to the regional and global situation.
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