Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Rawhi Al-Khatib Al-Kinani ( 1914 - 1994 ), Mayor of Al-Quds Al-Sharif.
His birth and upbringing
He was born in Jerusalem in 1914 to the Al-Khatib family, from a group of the Kenana Adnaniyah tribe. He finished his studies at the Rashidiya School , joined the English College and spent three years there. He obtained the Oxford and Cambridge examination certificates in 1929. He was appointed as a teacher in the Islamic Orphanage in Jerusalem, and in 1931 he was appointed He worked as an employee in the Immigration and Travel Department, and in 1943 he was transferred to the Labor Affairs Department, then he was appointed head of the Arab Bureau in Jerusalem. He remained in this job until 1949 when he devoted himself to economic and urban work in the city of Jerusalem, where he founded the Arab Hotels Company with some of his friends.
Mayor of Jerusalem
In 1957, he was appointed Mayor of Jerusalem. Under his rule, Jerusalem developed significantly in all facilities, the most prominent of which were:
Maintaining the sewage network and roads inside the wall
Establishing bus stops and planting mountains
Building schools and libraries
Deportation to Jordan
After the Zionist occupation of the rest of the Palestinian land in 1967, the occupation dissolved the Jerusalem Municipal Council and terminated the services of its president, Mr. Rawhi Al-Khatib, on 6/29/1967. On 3/7/1968, the Zionist occupation authorities arrested Al-Khatib and deported him from his city to Jordan. In 1968, he Al-Khatib visited Pope Paul VI in the Vatican and explained to him the Zionist threat to Christian and Islamic sanctities. He also visited New York and Paris and explained the Palestinian issue to international public opinion.
Establishment and Arabization of the Jerusalem Governorate Electricity
Company
On February 6, 1956, the municipalities of Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Beit Sahour registered the company as a limited joint stock company bearing the name (Jordanian Jerusalem Governorate Electricity Company Limited), after its name had previously been the Jordanian Jerusalem District Electricity Company. Ltd.
The terms of registration and the company’s bylaws stated: “This company was established on the sixth day of February 1956 in accordance with the announcement published in Appendix No. 1, Issue No. 2621 of the Official Gazette issued on Rajab 4, 1375, corresponding to February 16, 1956, by the following founders:
Municipal Council in Jerusalem
Municipal Council in Ramallah
Al-Bireh Municipal Council
Municipal Council in Bethlehem
Municipal Council in Beit Jala
Municipal Council in Beit Sahour
The General Assembly of Shareholders, at its first meeting held in the hall of the Palestinian Museum in Jerusalem, approved and blessed the steps taken to Arabize the company.
Among the figures who played an effective role in the Arabization of the company were the Chairman of the Company’s Board of Directors, Rawhi Al-Khatib, and the Secretary of the Council, Ahmed Zuhair Al-Afifi Al-Kinani. Lawyer Ibrahim Bakr Al-Nashashibi, engineer Elias Dahbour, and Ghaleb Al-Nashashibi. A committee was formed consisting of Messrs. Fadl George Antiba and Nihad Abu Gharbiyeh. This committee conducted a comprehensive study of the company’s assets and estimated its financial costs. It was agreed between the committee delegated by the Jordanian government and the British company to purchase this company for 250 thousand pounds sterling. In the general assembly meeting mentioned above, Rawhi Al-Khatib thanked Hamad Al-Farhan and Saad Al-Tall from Jordan for contributing to the Arabization of the company. The first board of directors of the company was formed after Arabization in the session of 7/20/1957 and included:
The Jerusalem Municipality is represented by Messrs. Rawhi Al-Khatib and Nihad Abu Gharbiyeh
The Ramallah Municipality is represented by Mr. Amin Haddad
Al-Bireh Municipality is represented by Mr. Abdullah Al-Jawdah
The Municipality of Bethlehem is represented by Mr. Elias Al-Bandak
Beit Jala Municipality is represented by Mr. Wadih Damas
The Beit Sahour Municipality is represented by Mr. Nicolas Abu Aita
In addition to the membership of Messrs. Ghaleb Abdel Razzaq, Jalil Harb, Kamel Barakat, Mustafa Al-Alami, Ghaleb Al-Nashashibi, Antoun Benayot, Aqel Mahmoud, Dr. George Farah, Beshara Kanawati, Ahmed Zuhair Al-Afifi Al-Kinani, and Abdel Mohsen Abu Maizar.
On 12/12/1962, a meeting was held in the office of the Mayor of Jericho, which included Engineer Ali Ensour of the Jordanian Ministry of Economy, the Director General of the Jerusalem Electricity Company, Ghaleb Al-Nashashibi, Saleh Abdo, and Rafiq Al-Nabulsi, owners of the Jericho Electricity Project.
On April 25, 1963, the Jordanian Minister of Economy was informed of the liquidation of the private Aqabat Jabr camp electricity project in favor of the Jerusalem Governorate Electricity Company in accordance with Article 49 of Temporary Law No. 28 of 1962.
On May 4, 1964, on the fourth Monday of May 1964, the Jericho Electricity Project and public interests were handed over to the Jerusalem Governorate Electricity Company.
The Secretary of Jerusalem delivers a speech at the Security Council in New York in 1968
In 1970, he was elected as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Industrial Development Bank in Amman. In the same year, at the request of the League of Arab States, he visited Spain, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, and Guyana, where he explained the history of the Palestinian issue and the persecution inflicted on the Palestinians by the Zionists .
Articles on the Palestinian issue
He sent many telegrams and wrote many articles explaining the Palestinian issue to the world, including:
Telegram from Mr. Rawhi Al-Khatib, Mayor of Jerusalem [1] , to King Hussein, regarding the necessity of seeking to stop the confiscation of properties and endowments adjacent to the Noble Sanctuary in Jerusalem Amman:
Jerusalem cries out to you and its Islam, and requests your orders to submit an immediate complaint to the UN Security Council to stop the confiscation and demolition of properties and endowments adjacent to the Holy Mosque and inside the city wall, and to stop construction operations on the usurped Arab lands outside the walls of the Holy City, and to stop the application of the Legal and Administrative Regulations Law to the Arabs of Jerusalem. Al-Aqsa, the Holy Rock, and the Prophet’s place of pilgrimage insist on calling for a very urgent invitation to hold an Arab-Islamic summit to confront the rapid threat that aims to liquidate the Arabs of Jerusalem and Islam in the Holy City, and history will record for you the initiative and the noble endeavor.
King Hussein’s telegram to Mr. Rawhi Al-Khatib [2] , in response to his telegram regarding the confiscation of Arab property in the city of Jerusalem.
Amman: I have received your esteemed telegram, which expresses the feelings of all our brothers in the Holy Land who are subjected to various types of violence and persecution, as their homes are demolished and their lands are confiscated in implementation of the Zionist plan to Judaize Jerusalem, which violates our most basic historical rights in the Holy City, and contradicts the principles of justice and the Bill of Rights. Human. Our government has asked our Permanent Representative to the United Nations to submit an urgent complaint to the UN Security Council to put an end to these terrorist acts and to take rapid measures to ensure the safekeeping of the lives and property of our people, respect for places of worship, and the freedom to perform religious rituals. As for our call for a summit conference, as you know, it is still standing, and we hope that it will receive a quick response from our brothers, kings and presidents. May God grant us all success in what is beneficial and good, with our best wishes for you and our appreciation and pride for our steadfast brothers in the Holy Land .
Mr. Rawhi Al-Khatib’s telegram to kings, presidents, and princes, Arabs and Muslims [3] about the necessity of seeking to stop the confiscation of properties and endowments adjacent to the Noble Sanctuary in Jerusalem Amman:
Jerusalem cries out to you and its Islam, and requests that you participate with Jordan in submitting an immediate complaint to the UN Security Council to stop the confiscation and demolition of properties and endowments adjacent to the Holy Mosque and inside the Holy City’s wall, and to stop construction operations on the usurped Arab lands outside the city’s walls by the occupying Israeli authorities, and to stop the application of the Legal Organizations Law. And administrative control over the Arabs of Jerusalem, in contravention of the Security Council resolution issued on May 21, 1968. Al-Aqsa, the Holy Rock, and the Prophet’s Missionary Site are insisting on demanding, in consultation with Jordan, a very urgent invitation to hold an Arab-Islamic summit conference to confront the rapid danger that aims to liquidate the Arabs of Jerusalem and Islam in The Holy City, and history will record your initiative and noble endeavour .
King Faisal’s telegram to Mr. Rawhi Al-Khatib, Mayor of Jerusalem [4] , in response to his telegram regarding the confiscation of Arab property in the city of Jerusalem, Riyadh:
We are ready to do everything in our power to save Jerusalem, and we will not delay in doing what we can to defend and liberate it. We were and still are ready to attend an Islamic summit to rid Jerusalem of the clutches of Zionism. Asking the Lord, the Most High, the Almighty, to unite the word of Muslims, and to guide us all to what He loves and is pleased with .
Portrait... My soul Al-Khatib: the trustee of Jerusalem and the guardian of its conscience
Hisham Odeh wrote an article about him and said: [5]
For more than half his life, his name remained attached to the Jerusalem Municipality and its secretariat, until the title of Mayor of Jerusalem became synonymous with the name of Rawhi Al-Khatib for more than thirty-five years, that is, from the time the Jordanian government adopted the Jerusalem Municipality as its secretariat in 1959 until he left in Amman in 1994.
A son of the city of Jerusalem, and the son of one of its ancient families, he was born in the year 1914, the year that witnessed the outbreak of the First World War that led to the end of the Ottoman rule of the Arab countries that fell under the Mandate, so that the awareness of the young Jerusalemite was opened to the beginnings of the British Mandate of Palestine, and it took place in the year 1929. He obtained his Oxford and Cambridge certificate, which qualified him to work as a teacher in an orphanage. A year after his job in 1931, he joined the English College, after which he worked for fifteen years in the Mandate government in various positions in a number of Palestinian cities.
The son of Jerusalem, who discovered the extent of the British Zionist conspiracy against Palestine, resigned from his government job in 1946 to work as head of the Arab Bureau in Jerusalem and then in the National Committee. He was a witness to the Nakba that led to the occupation of the western part of the city.
After the Nakba of Palestine, Rawhi Al-Khatib went to work in the economic field. He established the Al-Zahraa Hotel, which was the first hotel to be established in the eastern part of the city to attract Arab and foreign tourists. He was elected Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Arab Hotels Company, while he also served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Jerusalem Governorate Electricity Company . And other websites with economic titles.
After the unity of the two banks, the city of Jerusalem witnessed elections for its municipality four times in the years 1951, 1955, 1959, and 1963. The first three times he was elected as a member of the municipal council, and the Jordanian government chose him in 1957 as mayor of Jerusalem. When it decided to change the name of the municipality to the municipality, he was Rawhi Al-Khatib, the first mayor of Jerusalem in September 1959
He was not partisan, but his political presence prompted many political forces and movements to deal with him, so it was natural for him to have a prominent role in the birth of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964. The late Ahmed Al-Shugairi chose him to be a member of the preparatory committee for selecting members of the Palestinian National Council, and by virtue of His position as Secretary of Jerusalem was a witness and participant in the birth of the organization that chose to hold its first conference in the Holy City.
After the Zionist occupation of Jerusalem and the West Bank in June 1967, the Mayor of Jerusalem was active with the rest of the national figures in confronting the occupation policy, and Rawhi Al-Khatib, who was later arrested and deported to Jordan on March 7, 1968, did not calm down.
Those close to him described him as a “specialist in the city of Jerusalem.” Therefore, Abu Hani dedicated his life to defending the Arabism of Jerusalem and exposing the occupation’s practices aimed at Judaizing it. Until his last day, he continued to exercise his job as Secretary of Jerusalem from Amman, where he participated in a large number of meetings of Arab and Islamic cities and capitals. He was elected to leadership positions in these conferences, at a time when he oversaw the fraternization of Jerusalem with a number of Arab cities and capitals, most notably Baghdad.
He participated among official Jordanian delegations in numerous meetings in various international forums to clarify the dangers to which Jerusalem is exposed. The League of Arab States also sent him to a large number of countries around the world to explain the issue of the Holy City. In Amman, he published the Al-Quds Al-Sharif magazine, which was concerned with defending Jerusalem and confronting the measures of its Judaization . He also published a number of books that talked about the Zionist dangers threatening Jerusalem.
At the end of April 1993, a year before his departure, Rawhi al-Khatib returned to his city, among a number of deportees whom Israel agreed to return to their cities. Before returning, he delivered a speech in the presence of King Hussein on behalf of his returning colleagues, to see that Jerusalem, which he had forcefully left at the beginning of 1968, was completely different. Jerusalem, which he returned to in 1993 due to the occupation policy. In addition to his many missions, Abu Hani was elected as a member of the Board of Directors of the Industrial Development Bank in Amman and then as Chairman of the Board. He continued to hold this position until his death in 1994. Perhaps a man’s name was not associated with the name of his city, just as the name of Rawhi Al-Khatib was associated with the city of Jerusalem, which remained present in all the diaries of his life. Extending over an area of eighty years.
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