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- Country of residence: Portugal
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Mu’in al-Madi was born in the village of Ijzim, in the district of occupied Haifa, in 1887. He studied primary school at the Ijzim School and the Rashidiya School in Haifa, and completed secondary school at the Royal College in Istanbul, graduating in 1912. He worked as a government employee in the town of Kashmunah in Anatolia, then was appointed mayor of Acre, then district governor in the city of Banias, then an employee in the governorate office in Beirut, and head of the intelligence department in the government of Prince Faisal bin Hussein in Damascus in 1920, and director of a law office in Haifa since 1920.
He began his political career by joining the Young Arab Society during the Ottoman era. He was active with the Arab movement in Beirut and was part of the Palestinian delegation to the General Syrian Congress, which declared Syria's independence in 1919. He participated in the founding of the Palestine Arab Society in 1920, which aimed to defend Palestine against the Zionist project and the British occupation. He was also part of the Palestinian delegation that met with Prince Faisal bin Hussein in 1920. He returned to Palestine and represented the city of Haifa at several political conferences and public meetings, including the Third Palestinian Congress in Haifa in 1920, the Fourth Palestinian Congress in Jerusalem in 1921, and the Fifth Palestinian Congress in Nablus in 1922. He was part of the Palestinian delegation that met with the British Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, in Cairo in 1921. He was chosen as a member of the Palestinian delegation to London in 1921 and became a member of the Arab Executive Committee in 1928, which was the representative framework for Palestinian parties and associations. He was one of the founders of the Arab Independence Party in 1932.
The National Movement sent him to Baghdad to gather support for the Palestinian revolution in 1936. He was among two delegations that visited Saudi Arabia for the same purpose. He was chosen as a member of the Arab Higher Committee, which was the political representative body for the Palestinians in the second half of the 1940s, and he represented it at two meetings of the League of Arab States in 1947.
Al-Madi suffered during his life; he was arrested by the Ottoman authorities during the First World War for a short period, and lived in hiding in Damascus until the Arab Army entered it in October 1918. He was pursued by the British during the Great Palestinian Revolt in 1937, and lived in exile in Syria and Lebanon. Then the French authorities deported him to the Sanjak of Alexandretta in 1938, so he took refuge in Istanbul, and remained there until he returned to Palestine in 1946. But he soon became a refugee and settled in Damascus, until he died there in 1957.
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