Personal Info
- Country of residence: Portugal
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Issam Sweidan Sweidan, known as Shahdi Atieh, was born in the village of Al-Burghliya in southern Lebanon on July 5, 1960, to a Palestinian family whose origins trace back to the depopulated village of Beismoun in the occupied Safed district. He is married and has a son and a daughter. He studied primary school at the Al-Hawla and Al-Shajara schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), and secondary school at the Tyre Governmental High School, where he obtained his high school diploma in 1977. He completed a year-and-a-half course in socialism in South Yemen in 1981, and earned a bachelor's degree in topographic engineering in Czechoslovakia in 1989. He worked in Czechoslovakia between 1994 and 2018.
He joined the Fatah movement in his early youth and was active in its student work since 1974. He became the secretary of the General Union of Palestinian Students in the city of Tyre and its camps in 1976. He became involved in the military resistance work since 1976, then joined the Popular Struggle Front in 1978. He completed several military courses in the Yanta, Shatila and Air Defense camps, and participated in resisting the occupation army in Lebanon after the 1982 war in the Bekaa and Mount Lebanon regions.
He assumed a number of positions and posts within the framework of the Popular Struggle Front, including: membership in the leadership of the Lebanon region in 1980, the Front’s representative in Tunisia between (1989-1993), membership in its Central Committee in 2007, membership in its Political Bureau since 2015, and he became its official in Lebanon since 2015. He is also part of the leadership of the Alliance of Palestinian Forces in Lebanon (a national framework that includes a number of Palestinian factions).
Sweidan stood against the Oslo Accords, considering it a destructive turning point in Palestinian history and a miserable attempt to steal Palestinian rights, foremost among them the right of return.
Sweidan suffered in his life; he was expelled from Tunisia in 1993 because of his opposition to the Oslo Accords, and was arrested in Yugoslavia for six months in solitary confinement.
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