Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Abd al-Aziz Ali Abd al-Majid al-Hafiz al-Rantisi (October 23, 1947 - April 17, 2004) was a physician, Palestinian politician, one of the founders of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), the leader of the movement in the Gaza Strip before his death, and a member of the administrative board of the Islamic Society and the Arab Medical Association in the Gaza Strip. And the Palestinian Red Crescent, and a writer of political articles published by Arab Jordanian and Qatari newspapers, as well as a writer, poet, intellectual, and a popular orator.
He combined a military, political and religious personality. He enjoyed prestige and was respected and loved by most segments of the Palestinian, Arab and Islamic people. He was also characterized by a strong, stubborn personality, his boldness, and his defiance of the entity’s leaders and torturers in the occupation prisons. In the prison in 1990, he managed to complete the memorization of the Book of God while he was in one cell with the Mujahid Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
He worked at the Islamic University in Gaza since its opening in 1978 as a lecturer studying science, genetics and parasitology. He was arrested in 1983 for refusing to pay taxes to the occupation authorities. Together with a group of Islamic movement activists in the Gaza Strip, he founded the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas in the Strip in 1987 and was the first One of the leaders of the movement was arrested on January 15, 1988. He was detained for 21 days after his movement ignited the first Palestinian Intifada on December 9, 1987.
Then the occupation deported him later on December 17, 1992 with more than 400 activists and cadres of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to southern Lebanon in the area known as Marj al-Zohour, where he emerged as an official spokesman for the deportees who were stationed in the return camp in the Marj al-Zohour area to force the Zionists to return them Upon his return from Marj al-Zohour, he was arrested by the Zionist occupation forces, and a Zionist military court issued a prison sentence for him, where he remained detained until mid-1997.
The total periods of detention he spent in Israeli prisons amounted to seven years, in addition to the year he spent in deportation in Marj al-Zohour in the far south of Lebanon in 1992. He is also considered the first Hamas leader to be arrested on January 15, 1988, and he spent three weeks in detention, then was released to be re-arrested on March 5 1988, and recalling those days, he said: "I was prevented from sleeping for six days, and I was placed in a refrigerator for twenty-four hours, but despite that, I did not confess to any accusation against me, by the grace of God." He was also detained in the prisons of the Palestinian Authority of the Fatah movement 4 times, isolated from the rest of the detainees.
After the martyrdom of the leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin by Israel, the movement pledged allegiance to him as the successor to Yassin inside, and in his first command he ordered the implementation of the Ashdod port operation, and this operation was the spark for the operation of his assassination and his martyrdom, as on the evening of April 17, 2004 an Israeli helicopter belonging to the Israeli army fired a missile On his car, his companion was martyred, then he followed him while he was on a hospital bed in the emergency room. Since then, Hamas has refrained from declaring a successor to Rantisi for fear of his death.
What Al-Rantissi wished and sought to achieve was the liberation of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, and he always said, “I will not rest until all the prisoners are freed.” One of the most prominent features of Rantisi’s characteristics was his strictness in his treatment of the Israeli occupation. He was modest in his work as a pediatrician and never closed his door to any patient.
In 2004, a book was published under the title The Memoirs of the Martyr Dr. Abdel Aziz Al-Rantissi. It was compiled and compiled by Amer Shamakh, a specialist in Islamic studies, and from his composition Ahmed Yassin's book Awakened a Nation was also published.
Foundation
his family
The family of Abdul Aziz Al-Rantissi comes to the village of Rantis, northwest of Ramallah. The family was forced to leave the village in the early forties due to a dispute with one of the village’s families, and also because of the 1948 war; When Al-Rantissi was a ten-month-old child, the Nakba erupted and he fled with his family from their homeland in the village of Yabna - between Ashkelon and Jaffa - refugees to Khan Yunis camp in the Gaza Strip and grew up between nine brothers and three sisters. He was also loyal and loving to the village of Rantis, where he mentioned that he visited The village in the early eighties of the last century.
his childhood
Al-Rantissi was born on October 23, 1947 in the village of Yabna - located between Ashkelon and Jaffa - and grew up between nine brothers and two sisters. At the age of six, he joined a school affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Al-Rantissi remembers his childhood and says: “My father passed away while I was at the end of middle school, so my older brother had to travel to Saudi Arabia to work. At that time, I was preparing myself to enter secondary school, so I bought shoes from the rabish, (bale), and when my brother wanted to travel, he was barefoot, so my mother said to me, give your shoes to your brother, so I gave them to him, and I came home barefoot... As for my life in high school, I don't remember How did I manage myself?”
the study
Al-Rantissi was able to finish his secondary education in 1965 and was one of the top performers in it, which qualified him to obtain a scholarship in Egypt at the expense of the UNRWA - so he went to Alexandria University to study medicine, from which he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in General Medicine in 1971 and then a Master’s in Pediatrics In 1975, what qualified him to work as a resident doctor at Nasser Hospital - the main medical center in Khan Yunis - in 1976. During his work as a doctor in Khan Yunis main hospital, Rantisi clashed repeatedly with the occupation forces, and during the period from 1983 to 1997 he spent about ten separate years in detention centers Occupation.
the work
Dr. Rantisi began working in the field of medicine in 1972, then worked as a resident doctor at Nasser Hospital - the main medical center in Khan Yunis - in 1976. He also held several positions in public work, including membership in an administrative body in the Islamic Society, the Arab Medical Society in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Red Crescent, and worked at the university Islamic.
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Achievements and Awards
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