Personal Info
- Country of residence: Portugal
Information
Basel Ghattas was born in the town of Rameh in the Upper Galilee in the occupied territories on March 23, 1956. He is married and has a daughter. He completed his primary and secondary education, and earned a bachelor's degree in environmental engineering from the Technion Institute in Haifa, a master's degree in business administration from Northwestern University in Illinois, USA, and a doctorate in environmental engineering from the Technion Institute in Haifa in 1995.
He worked as the executive director of the Galilee Society – the Arab National Society for Health Research and Services between (1995-2007), during which he contributed to the establishment of a research and development center in the town of Shafa’amr in the occupied interior, and founded a private office for economic consulting in 2007, and published the economic magazine “Malcom”.
In his early youth, he became involved in political and party activism, joining the ranks of the Communist Party and the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash). He co-founded the National Committee for Arab High School Students with Azmi Bishara and was a leading figure in the student movement for Arab students in Israeli universities, becoming its president in 1973. He was also one of the founders of the Galilee Fund in Britain, which provided hundreds of scholarships to Arab university students in the occupied territories. He was elected as a member and deputy head of the Rama Local Council for five years, beginning in 1983, and left the Communist Party in 1990.
He co-founded the National Democratic Assembly party in 1995, became one of its leaders, and contributed to the establishment of more than one association within the Palestinian community in the occupied territories, including the Adalah Association and Citizens for the Environment in the Galilee. He was a member of the Knesset for the National Democratic Assembly party between (2013-2015), and was elected as part of the Joint List for the Knesset elections in 2015, remaining a member until 2017.
Ghattas visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque in October 2015, despite the occupation government’s decision to prevent Arab members of parliament from entering it, and participated in the Freedom Flotilla to break the siege on the Gaza Strip in June 2015.
Visiting Palestinian prisoners in the occupation prisons was among his top priorities. He used to visit many symbols of the prisoners’ movement since 2013, including Walid Daqqa, may God have mercy on him, Karim Younis, and Marwan Barghouti. He tried to alleviate the suffering of the prisoners by smuggling mobile phones to them in 2016, taking advantage of his parliamentary immunity. However, the attempt was uncovered by the Zionist intelligence service, the Shin Bet, and Ghattas was arrested. He remained in captivity for about two years until he was released in May 2019. He lived in more than one Zionist prison, including: Ramon, Nafha, and Beersheba, all of which are located in the Negev desert, in addition to Hadarim near Tulkarm, and Megiddo and Gilboa near Beit She’an.
Ghattas writes political and cultural articles in Palestinian and Arab newspapers, including Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper published in Doha. He has a book in which he recorded his diaries in the occupation prisons, entitled: Prison Papers: From the Corridors of the Knesset to the Occupation Prisons (2022).
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