Birth: 1/1/1956 Death:NULL/NULL/NULL
Born in Silwad near Ramallah in 1956; educated until secondary level in Silwad; was displaced with his family in 1967 to Kuwait; studied at Kuwait University, graduating with a BA in Physics; became a leader of the Palestinian Islamic bloc at Kuwait University and co-founder of the Al-Haq Islamic faction, which competed with Fateh for the GUPS leadership; worked as a physics teacher in Kuwait until the 1990 Gulf Crises; then moved to Jordan; became member of the Hamas politburo since its establishment and served as elected head of Hamas in Jordan since 1996; survived an assassination attempt with a time delayed nerve gas by Israeli Mossad agents in Amman on 25 Sept. 1997 (the attack was discovered and two Mossad agents were arrested by Jordanian authorities; Jordan’s King Hussein demanded that then Israeli PM Netanyahu turn over the poison antidote, which he did after pressure from the US; soon after Jordan released the Mossad agents in exchange for the release of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison); was arrested by Jordanian authorities in Amman on 30 Aug. 1999 and expelled from Jordan to Qatar for harming the Kingdom’s stability in Nov. that year; relocated to Damascus; was one of six senior Hamas leaders named by US Pres. Bush in Aug. 2003 as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, freezing any assets in the US and prohibiting transactions with US nationals; was involved in the PA-Hamas ceasefire talks and the inter-Palestinian dialogue for national unity between different factions; was elected as Hamas’ overall leader after the assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin on 22 March 2004
