Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Tawfiq Muhammad Hussein al-Tirawi (born on November 15, 1948 in al-Tira, Israel) is a Palestinian political leader, affiliated with the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, and a security official who contributed to the establishment of the Palestinian Intelligence Service. He received a number of academic degrees and founded Al-Istiqlal University (the Palestinian Academy for Security Sciences), where he chairs its board of trustees.
Tawfiq Al-Tirawi was born on November 15, 1948 in Tira, Israel, to a Palestinian immigrant family due to the 1948 war, and moved between the governorates of the West Bank and Lebanon, but he returned to Ramallah and settled there. He studied elementary school in the village of Rantis, then moved to the village of Sakaka in the city of Salfit, and then to Aqabat Jaber camp in the city of Jericho, where he completed his preparatory studies, and then obtained his secondary education from the Ibrahimiya College in Jerusalem. In addition, he obtained a degree in Arabic literature from Beirut Arab University in 1967, and another degree in philosophy and psychology from the same university. After returning to Palestine in 1994, he continued his higher university studies, obtaining a master's degree in educational administration from An-Najah National University in 2008.
Following his studies in Lebanon in 1967, Tawfiq Al-Tirawi belonged to the Fatah movement, and headed the Lebanese branch of the General Union of Palestinian Students between 1969 and 1971, and at that time served as Secretary of the Student Office of the Fatah movement, and he held many official and movement positions after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. Al-Tirawi continued his progress in the dynamic positions within the Fatah movement, which made him in 1978 a member of the executive body of the General Union of Palestinian Students, a member of the Palestinian National Council, and the Fatah Regional Committee in Lebanon. In view of this, he was persecuted and arrested by the Syrian forces in Lebanon in 1985, and was transferred from Lebanon to Syria and then to Cyprus, where he was not released until 1990.
Following the signing of the Oslo Accord between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel in 1993, he returned to Palestine in 1994 after a long diaspora trip. He helped establish the General Intelligence Service and assumed responsibility in the West Bank. Al-Tirawi was one of the Palestinian leaders who were besieged by Israel with then Palestinian President Yasser Arafat at the Muqata headquarters in Ramallah in 2002-2003. In late August 2007, he was appointed head of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service at the rank of major general by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. But he was subsequently dismissed on November 21, 2008. He said that his dismissal "was based on an American-Israeli desire." In its sixth conference on August 12, 2009, Tirawi became a member of the Central Committee of the Fatah Movement, and held the position of General Commissioner for Popular Organizations in the movement until his resignation from this file in 2011. In 2013, he assumed the position of General Commissioner for Intellectual Mobilization and Studies. Al-Tirawi also chairs the Board of Trustees of Al-Istiklal University in Jericho, in addition to the National Committee for Investigation into the Circumstances of the Martyrdom of Former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, which was formed in 2009.
Source
Achievements and Awards
- Years in active
: From
To