Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Zakaria Ibrahim Salim Al-Agha was born in Khan Yunis on January 1, 1942. He is married and has six children. He completed his primary and secondary education in Khan Yunis schools, and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Medicine from Cairo University in Egypt in 1965, and a Master’s degree in Internal Medicine from Ain Shams University in Egypt in 1971. He worked as Head of the Internal Medicine Department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis between 1974 and 1987, and as Head of the Internal Medicine Department at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City between 1989 and 1993. He was appointed Minister of Housing between 1994 and 1995 in the first government formed after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, and then assumed the presidency of Al-Azhar University between 2002 and 2005.
Agha joined the Fatah movement in 1967, and participated in implementing its national activities. He was part of the national leadership in the occupied territories involved in the first Palestinian Intifada between 1987 and 1993. He participated in the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991, and in the Washington negotiations between the PLO delegation and the occupying state until 1993. He assumed a number of organizational tasks within Fatah. He was chosen as a member of its Central Committee in 1991, after the assassination of Fatah leader Hael Abdel Hamid by a member of Abu Nidal’s group on January 14, 1991. He became head of the Fatah Supreme Movement Committee in the Gaza Strip in 1994, and was tasked by President Mahmoud Abbas with forming a leadership committee to supervise the Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip in 2007, and to follow up on all the movement’s political, organizational and financial activities. He was appointed as the General Commissioner for Mobilization and Organization in Fatah in the Gaza Strip until 2016. He also remained a member of the Fatah Central Committee until the movement’s sixth conference was held in Bethlehem in 2016.
Agha became a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1996, and head of its National and International Relations Department. His membership was renewed in 2009, when he assumed the presidency of the Refugee Affairs Department, and remained there until 2018.
Agha was active in the trade union field; he was a founding member of the Arab Medical Association of the Gaza Strip in 1977, and its treasurer between (1978-1984), then its president between (1985-1992), and he assumed the position of treasurer of the Higher Education Council in Jerusalem between (1985-1992), and he became a member of the Blood Bank Association and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Gaza, and the head of the Health Services Council in Gaza in 1990, and he assumed the chairmanship of the Board of Trustees of Al-Azhar University in Gaza between (2002-2005), and he headed the National Action Authority in Gaza in 2007, which is a political-representative framework that included the factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Agha suffered during his life; the occupation dismissed him from his government job at Nasser Hospital in 1987, arrested him in 1988 for six months administratively, arrested him again in 1995 for several weeks during which he was interrogated, prevented from traveling outside Palestine between 1981-1991, and summoned by the occupation intelligence several times.
Source
Achievements and Awards
- Years in active
: From
To