Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Yousef Awad Al-Sharafi was born in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza Strip on April 15, 1963, to a Palestinian refugee family originally from the displaced village of Harbia in the occupied Gaza Strip. He is married with five sons and five daughters. He studied primary school at UNRWA schools in Jabalia camp, and secondary school at Al-Faluja School. He obtained a bachelor's degree in the fundamentals of religion from the Islamic University in 1986, a master's degree in Hadith and its sciences from the University of Jordan in 1992, and a doctorate in Hadith and its sciences from the University of the Holy Quran and Islamic Sciences in Sudan in 1997. He worked in religious scientific institutes in Yemen between 1987-1988, then as a lecturer at the Islamic University in Gaza between 1997-2005. He was the head of the Hadith and its Sciences Department at the Islamic University, and worked as a preacher at Al-Azhar Religious Institute and as a legal notary.
Al-Sharafi joined Hamas in 1987, and assumed some organizational tasks in it; he became a member of the movement's Shura Council in Jabalia camp, head of its Sharia Committee, and Secretary of the Hamas Oversight Committee. He won the legislative elections for Hamas in 2006, and became a member of the Economic Committee and the Refugee Committee in the Council, and rapporteur of the Education and Social Affairs Committee. He was a member of the Jerusalem Society for Research and Studies Foundation, head of the Book Society (part of the House of the Qur’an and Sunnah), and head of the Preaching and Guidance Department in the Association of Palestinian Scholars between (2010-2020), and became head of the Scientific Department in the Association and its treasurer.
Al-Sharafi visited a number of Arab and Islamic countries, and participated in a conference in Algeria in 2007. He also participated in the Fifth Jerusalem Conference in Tehran, and met with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Al-Sharafi is active in institutional social work. He is the Vice President of the Reform Committees in the northern Gaza Strip, and the official of the Social Committee in the northern Gaza Strip, which emerged from the Union of Workers at the Islamic University in 2004.
Al-Sharafi believes that the Palestinian cause is a major issue that requires the concerted efforts of all Palestinian factions in order for the results to be fruitful. He believes that Hamas is the largest vessel for uniting the Palestinian people. He describes the Oslo Accords as an ominous term that represented a second catastrophe for the Palestinian people, as the occupiers gave up 78% of the Palestinian lands to the occupation, and linked the Palestinian economy to the occupation. It also resulted in security coordination. Al-Sharafi attributes the division to the Fatah movement’s failure to recognize the results of the 2006 legislative elections. Despite the meetings between Hamas and Fatah in several countries, Fatah, in his opinion, did not seek reconciliation and stipulated Hamas’s recognition of the conditions of the International Quartet. He hopes to end the division and for reconciliation to be on the ground, not on paper, because reconciliation strengthens the bonds of the Palestinian people and provides efforts to confront the occupation.
Al-Sharafi supports all forms of resistance, especially armed resistance, and believes that the occupation only respects the language of force. Force drove it out of the Gaza Strip and is the only way to drive it out of all of Palestine. He also supports the entry of Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the PLO, but after reforming it. He believes in liberating Palestine from the river to the sea, while he believes that there is no objection to establishing a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, without giving up the rest of Palestine and without recognizing the occupation. He also believes in the return of refugees to the lands from which they were displaced, with full compensation according to UN Resolution 194.
He describes what happened in the Arab world in 2011 as an Arab Spring, but the deep states turned against this Spring. Nevertheless, the Arab peoples remain well and will support the Palestinian cause. He believes that the Palestinian regime is divided between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and that in the West Bank there is still suppression of freedoms and continued arrests, while in Gaza it is with the law that gives full positive freedom to citizens. Al-Sharafi believes in God’s promise to liberate the land of Palestine, and believes that the presence of occupation on the land of Palestine is a matter of time. He believes that what the Palestinian people need to do is stand with the right and do their duty, and not think about victory.
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