He was born in the city of Ramallah in 1960, and comes from a displaced family from the village of Deir Tarif in the Ramla District. He was arrested at an early age and spent 11 years in the occupation prisons, before being released from them in conjunction with the first Palestinian Intifada. He rose through the ranks in the Fatah movement until he was appointed Secretary of the movement in 2002, and in 2017 he served as Minister of the General Authority for Civil Affairs and Chairman of the Supreme Civil Coordination Committee.
His name has emerged in recent years as one of the names nominated to succeed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and he is described as Abbas’s right arm and one of his close associates.
He is also described as a pragmatic person, and believes that “cooperation with Israel” is the way to achieve the rights of the Palestinian people, not conflict.
Birth and upbringing
Hussein Shehadeh Muhammad Al-Sheikh, whose nickname is Abu Jihad, was born on December 14, 1960 in the city of Ram in the West Bank.
He comes from a family working in trade that was displaced during the Nakba in 1948 from the village of Deir Tarif, Ramla district, and he is the father of 4 daughters and 2 sons.
Detention experience
The Israeli occupation arrested him in 1978 when he was 17 years old, and was sentenced to 11 years in prison on charges of belonging to a secret cell. His freedom coincided with the first intifada, which broke out in 1987.
He was persecuted and persecuted by the occupation during the second Palestinian Intifada, specifically in the period between 2000 and 2005.
He invested his imprisonment in learning the Hebrew language, which he mastered in reading, writing, and speaking, which facilitated his communication with the Israeli occupation during security coordination between the Authority and Israel.
Tasks in the Fatah movement
Hussein Al-Sheikh joined the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) at the end of the 1970s, and after his release from prison in 1989, he was elected as a member of the unified national leadership of the First Intifada, a member of the Fatah Supreme Movement Committee in the West Bank, and deputy head of the political committees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And Jerusalem, before becoming secretary of the Fatah movement in the West Bank in 1999.
The late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat ordered his arrest in 2003, after distributing a statement signed in his name and in the name of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which included an attack on a number of leaders of the Palestinian Authority. The Fatah Central Committee then decided to remove him from his position (secretary of the Fatah authority in the West Bank) and called for his arrest and trial.
After Abbas assumed the presidency of the Fatah Organization and the Palestinian Authority, Hussein Al-Sheikh was elected to the Fatah Movement’s Central Committee since 2008, then a member of the Palestinian National Dialogue Committee in the reconciliation file between the Fatah Movement and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in 2017.
He was elected a member of the Fatah Executive Committee in January 2022, and in May of the same year, Abbas assigned him the duties of Secretary of the Organization’s Executive Committee, succeeding Saeb Erekat, who died in November 2020 as a result of his infection with the Coronavirus.
Track in PA
After the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority following the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, Hussein Al-Sheikh worked in the Palestinian Security Forces with the rank of colonel from 1994 until 1997, then he worked in security coordination between the Authority and Israel, which qualified him to assume the position of Minister of the General Authority for Civil Affairs and Chairman of the Civil Coordination Committee. The Supreme Council, which is considered the official Palestinian link with the Israeli government, since 2007.
In this position, he is responsible for everything related to the relationship with Israel, such as managing clearing and reunification funds, economic facilities, and permits that Palestinians need to enter Israel for work or family visits, to obtain medical care, to import or export goods, or to obtain identity cards.
In late 2021, his ministry reached an agreement with the occupation authorities to reunite Palestinian families (about 5,000 individuals as a first batch), and to grant identities to those who were displaced or their parents during the years of the Nakba of 1948 and the Nakba of 1967, and Israel did not register them in the population registry.
A potential successor to Abbas
Hussein Al-Sheikh is seen as the right arm of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and one of his close associates, as he accompanies him on all his foreign tours and regional and international conferences. He also attends his meetings at the district headquarters, and the Western and Israeli press describe him as a potential successor to Abbas.
His appointment by Mahmoud Abbas to the position of Secretary of the Executive Committee in 2022 sparked controversy in Palestinian circles, and while some criticized his appointment directly by the President without resorting to the internal regulations that stipulate the election of the Secretary at the Executive Committee meeting, others saw that the law gives the President the right to Issuing appointments to fill vacant positions until they are decided by the organization’s Executive Committee.
Observers believe that his appointment to this position brings him closer to the presidency of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Authority, especially since the path he is following is the same that brought Abu Mazen to his current position, as he was holding the position of Secretary of the Executive Committee when Yasser Arafat died, and he succeeded him as head of the PLO. , before assuming the presidency of the Palestinian Authority.