Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Tawfiq Muhammad Hussein al-Tirawi (born on November 15, 1948 in
al-Tira) is a Palestinian political leader, affiliated with the Palestinian
National Liberation Movement, and a security official who contributed to the
establishment of the Palestinian Intelligence Service. He obtained a number of
academic degrees and founded Al-Istiqlal University (the Palestinian Academy
for Security Sciences), where he heads its board of trustees.
His biography
Tawfiq Al-Tirawi was born on November 15, 1948 in Tirat Dandan,
Ramleh District, to a Palestinian family who emigrated because of the 1948 war,
and moved between the governorates of the West Bank and Lebanon, but he
returned to Ramallah and settled there. He studied elementary school in the
village of Rantis, then moved to the village of Sakaka in the city of Salfit,
then to the Aqabat Jaber camp in the city of Jericho, where he completed his
preparatory studies, then he obtained a high school diploma from the Abrahamic
College in Jerusalem. In addition, he obtained a degree in Arabic literature
from Beirut Arab University in 1967, and another degree in philosophy and
psychology from the same university. After returning to Palestine in 1994, he
continued his postgraduate studies, obtaining a master's degree in educational
administration from An-Najah National University in 2008.
Following his studies in Lebanon in 1967, Tawfiq Al-Tirawi
belonged to the Fatah movement, and headed the Lebanese branch of the General
Union of Palestinian Students between 1969 and 1971. At that time, he held the
position of Secretary of the Student Office of the Fatah movement, and he held
many official and movement positions after the establishment of the Palestinian
Authority in 1994. Al-Tirawi continued his advancement in the dynamic positions
within the Fatah movement, which made him in 1978 a member of the executive
body of the General Union of Palestinian Students, a member of the Palestinian
National Council, and the Fatah Region Committee in Lebanon. In view of this,
he was pursued and arrested by the Syrian forces in Lebanon in 1985, and was transferred
from Lebanon to Syria and then to Cyprus, where he was not released until 1990.
Following the signing of the Oslo Accords between the Palestine
Liberation Organization and Israel in 1993, he returned to Palestine in 1994
after a long diaspora, where he helped establish the General Intelligence
Service and assumed responsibility for it in the West Bank. Al-Tirawi is
considered one of the Palestinian leaders that Israel besieged with
then-Palestinian President Yasser Arafat at the Muqata’a headquarters in
Ramallah in 2002-2003. In late August 2007, he was appointed head of the
Palestinian General Intelligence Service, with the rank of major general, by
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. But he was dismissed after that on
November 21, 2008, and he said that his dismissal "came at the request of
an American-Israeli", and refused to appoint him as a security adviser to
the president with the rank of minister, considering it a "formal
position". At its sixth conference on August 12, 2009, Al-Tirawi became a
member of the Central Committee of the Fatah movement, and held the position of
General Commissioner for Popular Organizations in the movement until his
resignation from this file in 2011, and in 2013 he assumed the position of
General Commissioner for Intellectual Mobilization and Studies. Al-Tirawi also
heads the Board of Trustees of Al-Istiqlal University in Jericho, in addition
to the National Committee to investigate the circumstances of the martyrdom of
former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, which was formed in 2009.
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Achievements and Awards
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