Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Jamal Awad Zaqout was born in the Beach refugee camp in Gaza City in 1957 to a Palestinian refugee family originally from the displaced village of Ashdod in the occupied Gaza Strip. He is married and has a son and a daughter. He studied primary school at the Beach Elementary School and the New Gaza Preparatory School, and secondary school at Palestine Secondary School in Gaza, where he obtained his high school diploma in 1976. He joined the Faculty of Medicine at Ain Shams University in Cairo in 1976, then joined the University of Sofia in Bulgaria to study medicine, and obtained a bachelor's degree in political science from the Academy of Social Sciences in Sofia in 1985. He worked on the civil committee assigned by Yasser Arafat to assume the powers and civil affairs files in the Strip after the signing of the Oslo Accords, and was responsible for the population registry protocol between 1995-2000.
Zaqout became involved in national activities early in his life, and was active in the field of student work. He was the vice president of the General Union of Palestinian Students in Bulgaria, and joined the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1977, and became one of its cadres in the Gaza Strip. He became involved in national activities during the first intifada, and was a member of the Unified National Leadership that represented the factions of the PLO in leading the first intifada. He worked in the PLO offices in Egypt in 1988 and Jordan, and was a member of the subcommittee to support the intifada. He was also active at the organizational level, as he was part of the Occupied Territories Committee in the Democratic Front.
Aish Zaqout lived through the internal conflict in the Democratic Front, and was one of the Front’s cadres who split from it and joined the Palestinian Democratic Union - FIDA. He returned to Palestine in 1994, and participated in the Palestinian delegation to the Taba negotiations and was part of the Prisoners and Deportees Committee.
Zaqout has written a number of studies and research papers, writes political articles, and is hosted by the media to comment on developments in the Palestinian issue.
Zaqout suffered in his life; he lived in a camp, the occupation demolished his family home in 1970, his brother Bashir was deported in 1973, the Egyptian authorities expelled him from Egypt in 1977, which prevented him from completing his medical studies there, the occupation arrested him in 1980, arrested him again in 1985, arrested his wife twice, as well as three of his brothers and his mother, arrested him a third time, then deported him to Lebanon with a number of the First Intifada cadres in August 1988.
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