Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Nabhan Abdul Rahman Al-Hajj Asaad Othman Ghanem was born in the town of Silat al-Dhahr in the Jenin Governorate on March 4, 1949. He is married and has two daughters. He completed his primary education at Silat al-Dhahr School and his secondary education at Jenin Secondary School. He graduated from Irbid Secondary School in 1968 with a scientific specialization. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from Košice University in Slovakia in 1977, and a doctorate in mechanical engineering from the same university in 1982. He also received a doctorate in economics from Ostrava University in the Czech Republic in the same year. He worked in the Economic Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization from 1982 to 1989, and was then appointed as an economic advisor to the Palestinian Ministry of Finance in 1994, a position he held until his retirement in 2010.
Influenced by his family's history of struggle and the evolving Palestinian national movement, Othman joined Fatah in 1968. He was active in the national student movement in Turkey, where he was elected president of the Arab Students Association at Trabzon University and served as a regional member of Fatah in Turkey. He joined the movement's political guidance apparatus in Damascus in the early 1970s and represented the Palestinian News Agency (WAFA) in Czechoslovakia from 1977 to 1979. In 1991, he was elected Secretary-General of the General Union of Palestinian Economists, which granted him membership in the Palestinian National Council and the Palestinian Central Council.
Othman held membership in several bodies and institutions, including the Board of Directors of the Palestine Employment Fund between (2004-2009), the Board of Directors of the Standards and Metrology Organization between (2004-2010), the Union of Palestinian Writers and Authors, and the General Union of Palestinian Engineers.
Osman supervised numerous master's theses in the fields of economics and mechanical engineering at An-Najah and Al-Quds/Abu Dis universities from the 1990s until 2017. He also appears as a guest on the media as an economic expert, in addition to authoring a number of books, including the book "The Israeli-Palestinian Agreement: Between Politics and Economics," the sixth edition of which was published in 2018.
Othman believes that the conflict in Palestine will continue with the occupation for at least another 60 years. Therefore, it is necessary to keep the people on their land, strengthen the position of the Palestinian cause globally, and maintain the strategy of conflict with the occupation. He believes that Israeli society is destined to disintegrate, as the international community has begun to lose confidence in it, and therefore it will not continue to be accepted in light of the state of racism that the occupation is trying to impose. The world will impose the establishment of one state that includes everyone on the land of Palestine.
Othman opposes the Oslo Accords, and believes that resistance is one of the rights granted by international law to the people living under occupation. He believes that the use of the form and tools of resistance is subject to the requirements of the stage, and that popular and peaceful resistance is the most effective at this stage. He believes that the division is a stab in the back of the homeland, and everyone bears responsibility for it. He rejects the political partnership based on partisan and factional quotas, and believes that the required and real partnership is only through the democracy of the ballot boxes, provided that the Palestine Liberation Organization remains the umbrella for everyone.
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