Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Mohammed Said Baraka was born in the city of Shafa'amr on June 25, 1955, to a family displaced from the village of Saffuriya in the occupied interior. He is married and has three children. He studied primary and secondary school in Shafa'amr schools and earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Tel Aviv University.
He joined the Communist Youth Organization in 1969, and was active in its ranks among high school students. He became one of the leaders of the Palestinian student movement in universities in the occupied interior, and president of the Arab Students Committee at Tel Aviv University, then president of the Union of Arab University Students. He was a member of the Committee for the Defense of the Land in 1976, a member of the Political Bureau of the Israeli Communist Party, and one of the initiators of the establishment of the Popular Committee to Oppose the War on Lebanon in 1982.
Barakeh became a leader in the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality “Hadash”, its secretary in the early nineties of the last century, the head of its national council in 2002, one of its representatives in the Zionist “Knesset” between (1999-2015), the deputy head of the “Knesset” in the sixteenth session, and the head of the Follow-Up Committee for the Arab Public in the Interior in 2016.
Baraka was active in the Palestinian Relief Committee during the First Palestinian Intifada, and he is a member of the International Council for Peace in the Middle East.
Barakeh opposed the “Jewish State Law” and stood against the Zionist right wing. He called for “Israel” to be “a state for all its citizens.” He supported the settlement process and believed in the two-state solution. He had reservations about some clauses of the Oslo Accords. He called for an end to the internal Palestinian division and warned of the danger and repercussions of the Arab rush towards normalization, which paves the way for the implementation of the “Deal of the Century.” He emphasized that the American administration is striving by all means to liquidate the Palestinian cause and any Arab renaissance project.
He has written many articles, delivered a large number of lectures and speeches, and is a board member of Al-Ittihad newspaper and the Emile Touma Institute for Research.
Baraka suffered under the occupation; he was pursued by the Israeli security services in the late seventies and early eighties of the last century, and was interrogated on more than one occasion.
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