Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Bassam Al-Salhi was born on January 16, 1960, in the Al-Amari refugee camp near Al-Bireh in the West Bank, to a Palestinian refugee family originally from Lod in the territories occupied in 1948. He is married and has four daughters and a son. He studied at schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), and earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from Birzeit University in 1983, and a master's degree in international studies from the same university in 2000.
In his early youth, Al-Salehi was influenced by the prevailing national atmosphere and the rise of the national movement in the occupied territories. He joined the Palestinian Communist Party and became active within its ranks during his studies at Birzeit University, where he served as president of the student council from 1979 to 1981 and as the student movement's representative on the National Guidance Committee in the late 1970s. In 1982, he was elected to the Central Committee of the Palestinian Communist Party. He also served on the Unified National Leadership during the First Intifada, a clandestine leadership affiliated with the PLO factions. During the Second Intifada, he was a member of the leadership of the National and Islamic Forces. He was elected Secretary-General of the Palestinian People's Party in 2003 and was the party's candidate in the 2005 Palestinian presidential elections. He was also active in addressing international public opinion and international NGOs to garner support for the Palestinian cause. He won a seat in the Palestinian Legislative Council on the "Badil" list in the 2006 legislative elections and became a member of the Palestinian National Council, the Central Council, and the PLO Executive Committee, as well as head of the PLO's Department of Social Affairs. He also participated in the national unity government in 2007 as Minister of Culture, and served as a member of the Palestinian delegation to achieve a truce after the aggression against the Gaza Strip in 2014.
Al-Salehi believes that the Palestinians have now lost their strength as a national liberation movement, and after Oslo, they have begun to emulate the pattern of Arab regimes. The Oslo Accords changed the priorities of the Palestinians, and the Palestinian political class began to see Western powers as essential allies. The important thing became returning to negotiations instead of focusing on ending the occupation. Al-Salehi believes in a political settlement despite his reservations about the Oslo Accords and the mechanisms used in dealing with the occupation by the Palestinian leadership, including the absence of a reference point for the political negotiation process. However, he considers the Palestinian Authority an entry point that can be built upon to achieve the independent Palestinian state, which was approved by international legitimacy on the 1967 borders, and to achieve a just solution to the refugee issue in accordance with Resolution 194. Al-Salehi believes that the division has harmed the Palestinian people, holding Hamas responsible for what happened in 2007, calling for the necessity of ending the division through a comprehensive Palestinian dialogue and popular intervention to protect the signed agreements and obligate everyone to implement them. He believes it is necessary for the Palestinian factions to adhere to the Palestine Liberation Organization. As the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians, and to implement what was previously agreed upon regarding the joining of all Palestinian factions to the organization, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Al-Salehi suffered under the occupation; he was arrested by the occupation forces and placed under house arrest in the late seventies of the last century, and the occupation authorities arrested him from 1990 until 1993.
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