Personal Info
- Country of residence: Portugal
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Muhammad Suleiman Salama Abu Mizer, known as “Abu Hatem”, was born in Hebron in 1936. He studied the primary stage at the Al-Bakriya School in the Al-Masrara neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem, and the secondary stage at the Al-Rashidiya School in Bab Al-Zahra. He obtained his high school diploma from the Coptic Monastery School in Jerusalem in 1956, and received a bachelor’s degree in history from the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University in 1960. He worked as a history teacher at Derna Secondary School in Libya, and as an employee at Parsons Water Exploration Company in Kuwait in 1962, and as a teacher at the “Dor Dor” and “École Normale” schools in Algeria, and as a writer for the Algerian newspaper Al-Mujahid.
Abu Hatem joined the Arab Socialist Baath Party in 1951, frequented the Arab Youth Club founded by the leader Bahjat Abu Gharbiya in Jerusalem, and was elected president of the administrative body of the Jerusalem Brigade at the Second Jordanian Students Conference. He participated in a number of demonstrations, such as the demonstration protesting the arrest of Sultan Muhammad V by France in 1953, and the demonstration supporting the Algerian Revolution in 1955. He was an active member of the League of Palestinian Students in Egypt, and one of the Baath Party representatives in its administrative body in 1958. He was considered to be affiliated with the nationalist movement and a supporter of Gamal Abdel Nasser.
He sought refuge in Egypt at the end of 1961, breaking away from the Ba'ath Party that same year. He then moved to Kuwait and joined Fatah in 1962 through Farouk al-Qaddumi. He became Khalil al-Wazir's (Abu Jihad's) assistant in managing Fatah's office in Algeria, and then assumed responsibility for the office in 1965, succeeding al-Wazir. During this time, he worked to enroll Fatah members in military training courses in Algeria. He led a Fatah delegation to meet with Ahmed al-Shuqairi in Algeria in 1964 and also met with Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary and one of the most prominent leaders of the Cuban Revolution. He left Algeria for Damascus in 1967, where he was responsible for relations with Algeria, Syria, and Iraq. He visited several countries around the world as a representative of Fatah, including China, Paris, and India. He became the first representative of the Fatah movement in Europe in 1968, founded the Arab Committee for Palestine in Paris, managed the Fatah office in Paris, and drafted the statement of “The Democratic Secular State in Palestine,” which was adopted by the Fatah movement and broadcast on December 31, 1968. He left Paris in 1969 and took over the management of the foreign relations office with the Fatah leader Khaled al-Hassan. He was also responsible for media within Fatah and oversaw the publication of the Fatah newspaper in Damascus in 1971. He visited Palestine twice, the first time in 1997 and the second time in 1998.
He was a member of several Arab conferences, such as: the General Secretariat of the Arab National Conference, the General Secretariat of the National-Islamic Conference, the General Secretariat of the Conference of Arab Parties, and the Board of Trustees of International Jerusalem.
Abu Hatem suffered during his life; he was arrested in Jordan in 1953, arrested again in 1955, and a decision was issued to arrest him after he was accused of planning a military coup in Libya in 1961.
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