Personal Info
- Country of residence: Portugal
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Muhammad Saadi Subhi Al-Faqih was born in Nablus on June 14, 1936. He is married and has two daughters and a son. He studied primary school at Al-Hashimiyah, the National College, Sheikh Bashir Al-Bakri, and Al-Salahiyah schools, and secondary school at Al-Salahiyah Secondary School, from which he obtained his high school diploma in the science stream. He studied medicine at the Faculty of Medicine at Cairo University, and obtained a Bachelor of Medicine degree from the Faculty of Medicine at Moscow University in 1965. He was the first Palestinian doctor from the West Bank to obtain a medical degree from the Soviet Union. He obtained a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Liverpool in Britain in 1980.
He worked as a translator in the Arabic section of Moscow Radio during his university studies, and worked as a doctor in the Russian countryside. He was then appointed as deputy director of Jenin Governmental Hospital in 1964. He then opened a private clinic in Nablus, and worked as a doctor for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the Jerusalem area since 1967, whose medical services included the cities of Ramallah, Jerusalem, Jericho and its villages. He worked at Al-Maqasid Charitable Society Hospital in Jerusalem between (1968-1971), and was in charge of the diabetes clinic at the UNRWA Jerusalem Health Center. He became head of doctors at the UNRWA Medical Center in Al-Amari Camp in Al-Bireh in 1985, then opened a private clinic in Ramallah, and was appointed as deputy director of medical services for the Relief Agency in the West Bank in 1986, and remained in this position until his death. He also worked as a doctor at the Child Welfare Society in Jerusalem, and as a lecturer at Bethlehem University for two years.
In his early youth, he became involved in carrying out national activities, joined the Communist Party, and participated in its activities. He was one of the cadres of the Jordanian Students Union during his university studies in Egypt, and continued his student activity during his studies in the Soviet Union, where he attended the Disarmament Conference held in East Germany in 1961, the World Student Union Conference, and the Youth Conference in Russia. He joined the National Guidance Committee, which was the front for national action in the occupied territories after 1967. He was one of the Palestinian figures who saved Al-Maqasid Hospital when the occupation wanted to convert its building on Mount Al-Tur into a police headquarters at the beginning of the Zionist occupation of East Jerusalem, as he and a number of his comrades rushed to prepare and open it before the occupation began to implement its aims.
He chaired the board of directors of the Birzeit Charitable Society in 1978, joined the advisory board of Birzeit University, and was chairman of its board of trustees between (1985-1988). He was a member of the board of trustees of the Arab Intellectual Forum in Jerusalem in 1978, and a member of its administrative body between (1981-1982), and a member of the board of trustees of the Arab Studies Society in Jerusalem in 1980.
Al-Faqih wrote many analytical articles related to the Palestinian issue and its developments, in which he expressed his political vision and national hopes. These were collected in a memorial book issued by Birzeit University in 1989 entitled “Dr. Muhammad Saadi Al-Faqih: His Writings and the Opinions of Some of His Friends About Him.”
Al-Faqih suffered throughout his life, as the Egyptian authorities deported him along with a group of Palestinian students who were politically active while he was studying medicine in Egypt in 1958 without allowing him to complete his education at its universities. The Jordanian government stopped renewing his passport while he was staying in the Soviet Union, and he was relieved of his job at Jenin Governmental Hospital, then imprisoned. He was subjected to harsh interrogation by the Jordanian security services for one hundred days.
He died of a sudden heart attack during a meeting with members of the Board of Trustees of Birzeit University on January 26, 1988.
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