Personal Info
- Country of residence: Portugal
Information
Hafez Mahmoud Abdel Halim Abu Abaya was born in the village of Yasouf in the Salfit Governorate on October 1, 1945. He is married and has a daughter. He studied primary school in Yasouf School and secondary school in Hawara School, where he obtained his high school diploma in 1963. He worked in Kuwait, then was appointed head of the Civil Status Department at the Palestinian Embassy in Doha between 1989 and 1991. He worked in the media department of the Palestine Liberation Organization between 1991 and 1994, then as director of the financial department in the Palestinian Ministry of Information in 1994, then as director of administration, and then as director general in 2005.
He joined the Palestine Liberation Army, completed a military course at the Mansouriya al-Jabal camp in the Baquba region of Iraq in 1965, became a member of the Palestinian Thunderbolt Battalion (421), completed other training courses between (1966-1967), joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and crossed the Jordan River towards Palestine with a group of fedayeen. He became a leader within the Palestinian prisoner movement, breaking away from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and becoming a leader in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) inside Ashkelon Prison in 1973. There, he participated in planning and executing several activities against the prison administration. He joined other prisoners in the first hunger strikes in Israeli prisons, particularly in Ashkelon, including the famous 1970 strike. He represented the prisoners before the administration on numerous occasions until his release in a prisoner exchange with the PFLP-General Command in 1985.
He was among those released and sent outside of Palestine. In 1986, he and other released prisoners residing in Damascus formed the Association of Released Prisoners in Solidarity with Palestinian Detainees. He served on the Advisory Council for the Rehabilitation Program for Released Prisoners in 1995, and was a member of the Prisoners and Released Prisoners Association between 1998 and 2013. He was also a member of the Palestinian Consumer Protection Council, Vice President of the General Union for Consumer Protection, Secretary of National Institutions in Salfit Governorate, Secretary of the Popular Charitable Committee in Salfit Governorate, and founder of the Yasouf Children's Club. In 1999, and as head of the Yasuf village council in 2012.
He has published two books: The Sun at Midnight (2005) and Memorial (joint, in two parts, 2013). He has also written a number of articles and studies on the history of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.
Abu Abaya suffered in his life; he was arrested by the occupation in late 1967, sentenced to forty years in prison, and remained in captivity for eighteen years, and was deported from Qatar in 1991.
He died in Yasuf on January 2, 2019.
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