Personal Info
- Country of residence: Portugal
Information
Ataf Daoud Alian was born in Bethlehem on October 20, 1962, to a refugee family originally from the depopulated village of Khulda in the Ramla district. She is married and has a daughter. She attended primary school at the UNRWA-run Bethlehem Mixed School, Aida Preparatory School, and Bethlehem Preparatory School. She completed her secondary education at Bethlehem Girls' Secondary School, graduating in 1982. She earned a bachelor's degree in sociology with a minor in psychology from Bethlehem University in 2002.
She joined the Palestinian revolution in her early youth and received military training on the use of weapons and explosive devices in the training camps of the Western Sector (one of the Fatah movement’s branches) in Beirut at the hands of a group named Sultan (Hamdi) and Muhammad Bahis (Abu Hassan) in 1980. Her contact with her group was cut off in 1982, and she was able to re-establish contact with the group under the name of the Islamic Jihad Brigades in 1984. This group planned to carry out a suicide operation in which Alian would drive a car bomb and detonate it at the headquarters of the Zionist Prime Minister in occupied Jerusalem.
She was active on the national, social and institutional levels; she headed the Al-Naqa’a Islamic Women’s Association between (1997-2020), where the association opened a kindergarten and a school in 2002, and a center for daily surgical operations during the Second Intifada. She used to visit the families of martyrs and prisoners, and she is a member of the League of Women Imprisoned for Freedom, and a member of the Jerusalem Center for Literature.
Alayan embraces Islamic thought and believes that her national relations are open to all who strive for the homeland regardless of ideological differences. She rejects the Oslo Accords, considering that the settlement process has proven its failure. She believes that the Palestinian factions suffer from internal weakness and a lack of a strong vision in confronting the occupier, especially after Oslo. She supports resistance in all its forms and believes that the Palestinian Authority has eliminated the PLO and denied its effectiveness and existence. However, she supports any kind of genuine Palestinian partnership that seeks to end the occupation, regardless of its name.
It believes in the liberation of historical Palestine and the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes from which they were displaced. It believes that the Palestinian political system, represented by the Palestinian Authority, exists to serve the goals of the occupation. It affirms that the liberation of Palestine is a divine promise that must be fulfilled no matter how long it takes, and that the Arab race to normalize relations is evidence of the approaching fulfillment of this promise.
She made written attempts to chronicle her experience, and wrote part of her experience in the book "Hymns of the Dove" published by the municipality of Beitunia in 2021.
Alayan suffered throughout her life; She was arrested a week before she was to carry out her operation, and days after the arrest of the person responsible for preparing the car bomb in August 1987. She was subjected to harsh interrogation for over forty days at the al-Maskubiya interrogation center in occupied Jerusalem. She undertook her first hunger strike, refusing food, water, and speech for twelve days, in protest against the mistreatment and threats she received from the Zionist interrogators. The occupation courts sentenced her to five years in prison, which was later increased by ten years for her alleged involvement in confronting a Zionist prison guard at Ramla Prison. She went on another hunger strike demanding her transfer from Abu Kabir Prison to Ramla Prison. The Zionist Prison Service placed her in solitary confinement for four years, during which she was subjected to harassment related to family visits and the confiscation of her belongings. She went on a thirty-four-day hunger strike to break her isolation and was able to return to the general prison population. She joined the prisoners' strike in 1992, and was released in February 1997. The occupation forces re-arrested her in October. In 1997, she was placed under administrative detention. She immediately went on a hunger strike in protest against the administrative detention and was able to gain her freedom. She was re-arrested for nine months in 2002 on charges of her activity in the Al-Naqa Charitable Society. She was re-arrested again at the end of 2005 on charges of opening a surgical operations center and providing services to wanted individuals. She remained in prison until 2008, during which she spent a year in administrative detention. She declared a hunger strike to bring her infant daughter to her in 2006. She was able to embrace her daughter inside the prison for a year and a half. The occupation prevented her from traveling since her first arrest, and raided her house more than once. Her husband, the novelist Walid Al-Hudali, was arrested for many years and prevented from traveling.
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