Sheikh Raed Salah was born in Umm Al-Fahm in north Palestine in 1958. He received his primary education in the same city but moved to Hebron where he finished his university education from the Faculty of Sharia.
He is one of the founders of the Islamic Movement in the occupied lands in the early 70s. In 1989, he ran for mayor representing the Islamic movement in the Umfm Al-Fahm Municipality. He, 31 years old, won the elections with more than 70% and became mayor. He also won the elections in 1993 and 1997 but finally resigned in 2001.
In 1996, he was elected Chief of the Islamic Movement and was reelected in 2001. He also headed the Aqsa Foundation for Islamic Sacred Development and the Human Relief Foundation.
Israeli Restrictions:
The occupation forces restrained the movement of Sheikh Raed Salah imposing unlawful procedures such as arrests, house arrest and assassination attempts.
Sheikh Salah was arrested for claimed connection with a proscribed organization (i.e. Usrat Al-Jihad) in 1981, after that he was under house arrest.
In 1998, he led the confrontations when the Israeli police broke into Umm Al-Fahm and injured 600 citizens. In the same year, he declared the formation of Al-Mujtama’ Al-Issami which aimed to self-building the Palestinians living in the occupied lands.
There was an attempt on his assassination in 2000. The Israeli forces shot him in the head. In 2002, the forces issued a travel ban that prevented him from leaving Palestine. In the same year, the forces closed down ‘the Voice of Truth and Freedom’ Newspaper, which was the official representative of the Islamic Movement, for two years.
The incitement campaign against him continued until 2003 when he was arrested and was released two years later. He was accused of doing money laundry for Hamas’ Movement.
The occupation forces arrested Sheikh Salah in 2007 while he was participating in a strike against the assaults and excavation work near Al-Mughrabi Gate in Al-Quds.
In 2010, an Israeli court sentenced him 9 months in prison, and then another attempt on his assassination took place while he was participating in the flotilla which was heading to Gaza in May 2010.
He was also imprisoned for 11 months and was placed in solitary. In 2017, he was released under severe conditions, that included banishing him from his home and town.
He was under house arrest and banned from communicating with people except for his first and second-degree relatives. He was later sent to house arrest in Umm Al-Fahm on December 31st, 2018.
Why is He Under-trial?
Every time Sheikh Salah was arrested, he was accused of unrealistic crimes: He was accused of incitement, having ties with Palestinian organizations, and doing money laundry for Hamas.
These are all false accusations. Why, then, does the occupation want to remove the Sheikh from the scene?
Author Adli Sadiq said once that Sheikh Salah carries the torch of defending the Islamic holy sites that are under the control of the occupation forces, which claim that the properties are not claimed by anyone as their own.
Sheikh Salah once stated, “We will go to local and international courts. We will use experts in Islamic jurisprudence and in the international law. We will expose the racist truth of the Israeli entity and they will have to answer our question: Why do they confiscate our Waqf and act as their owners?”
In order to revive what Sheikh Salah calls ‘the civilizational aspect’ of Waqf, it is suggested that the Palestinian people once again present lands and property as Waqf. Sheikh Salah had already founded a charity fund that gathers donations in order to maintain and renovate Islamic Waqf.
For the above-mentioned reasons, Sheikh Raed Salah is arrested and under-trial.