Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Mohsen Adnan Abu Ramadan was born in Gaza City on August 9, 1963. He is married and has one daughter. He completed his primary education at Cairo Elementary School, Al-Karmel Elementary School, and Yarmouk Preparatory School. He attended Palestine Secondary School in the Gaza Strip, graduating in 1981. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Birzeit University in 1991 and a Postgraduate Diploma in Development from the University of East London in the UK. He served as Director of the Gaza branch of the Arab Center for Agricultural Development from 1994 to 2017, and later became an advisor to the Center and its Board of Directors. He was a member of the Advisory Committee for Sustainable Human Development Assessment, overseen by the UNDP. Since 2018, he has headed the Haider Abdel Shafi Center for Culture and Development, where he works in training on human rights, public freedoms, women's and youth participation, disability rights, and civil society. He also conducts workshops on development, economics, political issues, and civil society.
He was active in public work during the First Intifada between (1987-1993), and participated in forming volunteer committees and promoting national awareness. He was elected as a member of the Coordinating Committee of the NGO Network, and chaired the administrative body of the network twice. He is also a member of several associations, including: the Red Crescent Society in the Gaza Strip, and the National Society for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled. He heads the National Authority for Supporting and Assisting the People of the Occupied Interior, and participated in a number of national, cultural and academic conferences, including the Palestine Forum Conference in (2017 and 2019), and conferences organized by the Masarat Center in Ramallah and the Institute for Palestine Studies concerning issues of the future of the national project and national reconciliation.
Abu Ramadan appears in the media to comment on events in Palestine, writes analytical political articles, and has a number of books, including: Obstacles to Democratic Transition in Palestine (2007), and Hamas in Governance: Political and Social Effects - Gaza Strip 2006-2010: A Critical Reading (2010). He also has a number of published studies, working papers, and position papers, including: A Study on Assessing Poverty in Palestine (joint, 2003), and Living Conditions in the Gaza Strip after 2007 and Ways to Deal with Them Politically (2019).
Abu Ramadan believes that the Oslo Accords constituted a negative turning point in the course of the national struggle and were not a suitable entry point for achieving the rights of the Palestinian people. The occupying power exploited them to deepen settlement activity, impose a system of racial discrimination, and wanted the Palestinian Authority to be a functional entity that would not evolve into a sovereign state with the right to self-determination. He believes that the division poses a great danger to the national cause and the national situation in Palestine, by replacing the primary contradiction with a secondary one, entrenching a state of internal disputes and exploiting them to separate the Gaza Strip from the West Bank, and allowing the occupation to isolate the West Bank and impose concepts such as economic peace instead of the unity of the Palestinian geographical, political, and national situation. The division has also affected the democratic situation and led to the existence of central authorities whose mandates have expired and who rule without legal elections, whether for the presidency or the Legislative Council. Abu Ramadan calls for working on a phased vision agreed upon by the Palestinians based on the establishment of a Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, in implementation of international law and resolutions of international legitimacy, while preserving the right of return for refugees to the lands from which they were displaced, and not only to the lands of the Palestinian state. This solution is believed to have national consensus, but the self-aspiration goes beyond the state within the 1967 borders because historical Palestine belongs to the Palestinians.
Abu Ramadan believes that all forms of resistance are legitimate, but the most appropriate form in the current situation is popular resistance that ensures the participation of broad social sectors. He does not believe that negotiations and settlement are a means capable of achieving the demands of the Palestinian people. In his opinion, the most successful means is the unity of the Palestinian people, a unified national leadership, and the mobilization of the broadest campaign of popular solidarity forces, and diplomatic and legal resistance that highlights the occupying state as a state that violates international law and practices oppression and racial discrimination against the Palestinian people.
He believes that the state of the Arab nation is deteriorating, especially with the normalization process. This deterioration has resulted in weakening the Palestinian position, allowing the occupation to isolate the Palestinians, undermining their rights, especially regarding Jerusalem and refugees, deepening settlement activity, continuing the aggression against the Gaza Strip and its siege, and isolating the lands of 1948 through racist laws such as the Nation Law and the Citizenship Law. Normalization has also whetted the appetite of the occupying state to control Arab capabilities and wealth.
Abu Ramadan suffered throughout his life; he was arrested by the occupation in 1984, placed under house arrest in 1986 for a full year, arrested again in 1988 and remained in captivity for two years, and was prevented from traveling for twelve years.
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