On Wednesday, August 18, 2021, by a decision of the Beersheba District Court, the Israeli authorities extended the solitary confinement of the head of the Islamic Movement in Palestine, Sheikh Raed Salah, until the end of his sentence.

For 40 years, Salah has served various sentences in Israeli prisons, and since 2017, he has been included in the so-called “constant file” and was subjected to two assassination attempts.


son of Umm al-Fahm

Raed Salah was born in 1958 in Umm al-Fahm (northern occupied Palestine).

Sheikh Raed received his first education in his city of Umm al-Fahm, then moved to the city of Hebron, where he completed his university education at the Faculty of Sharia.

Sheikh Raed Salah, 63, began his political experience early while he was in school. At the time, he was a young boy at the Sharia College in Hebron. His star soon rose by joining the Islamic movement within the 48 lands, which he heads the northern part of since 1996.

1981: Raed Salah was imprisoned after being convicted of belonging to a military organization called the "Jihad Family", with 21 activists participating, including the founder of the Islamic movement in the country, Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish.

After his release, he was placed under house arrest, during which he was prohibited from leaving the city and from leaving his home during the night, and he was obliged to prove his presence once or twice a day at the police station.

1989: He ran for mayoral elections in Umm al-Fahm for the Islamic movement, and succeeded in those elections with a percentage of more than 70%, and became mayor at the age of 31 years.

1993: He ran for the second time, and succeeded with more than 70% as well.

Since joining the Islamic movement, Sheikh Salah has opposed participating in the Knesset elections, so he and his deputy, Sheikh Kamal Khatib, led a separation from the mother movement after it decided to run for the Knesset elections in 1996. It was divided into two parts: a northern led by him, and a southern led by Hammad Abu Daabis.

1996: He was elected head of the Islamic Movement, and that period did not change his presidency of the Al-Aqsa Foundation for the Reconstruction of Islamic Sanctuaries until 2002, and he also became head of the Humanitarian Relief Foundation.

1997: He succeeded in the municipal elections for the third time.

Sheikh Raed Salah (second right) with some Palestinian leaders prior to the ruling against him (Al-Jazeera)

Prisons and assassination attempts

1998: He returned to lead what was known as the Al-Rawha events, during which the Israeli police stormed the city of Umm al-Fahm and injured nearly 600 citizens. In the same year, he announced what he called the “self-made society” project, which aims to build the self for the Palestinians inside.

Salah proceeded to establish productive institutions in the fields of commerce, industry and supply, and centers of an independent style in health and prevention affairs.

The project aims to cut off the dependence of the Palestinians inside Israel and its institutions, and is based on several pillars, including the revival of self-financial resources, and the establishment of the ongoing Charity Foundation and other agricultural institutions and companies that combine land, scientific capabilities and money.

The number of associations and institutions affiliated with the Islamic movement after the Al-Aqsa Intifada reached about 30 associations and institutions concerned with various fields, such as motherhood, childhood, students, relief, sports, youth, media, literature, art, research, studies, land and sanctities.

The experience of the Al-Aqsa Foundation for the Defense of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Al-Quds and the rest of the sanctities in Palestine - which he presides - represented a model for the success of the self-made society project as drawn by Sheikh Raed at the level of construction and values.

2000: He was subjected to an assassination attempt and was shot in the head by the Israeli forces.

2001: He submitted his resignation from the municipality to make room for others in the Islamic movement, and in the same year he was re-elected as the head of the Islamic movement.

- 2002: The Israeli Ministry of Interior issued an order banning him from traveling outside the country based on what it considered intelligence information to come from the Shin Bet security service. The High Court of Justice rejected his petition against his travel ban.

- 2003: Sheikh Raed Salah and some of his companions in the Islamic movement were arrested for two years after being convicted of charges of “communicating with an enemy and money laundering” of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). He was acquitted of the charge of disturbing public order, but he remained awaiting prosecution in other files related to his defense of Al-Aqsa.

2007: The Israeli security forces re-arrested him during his participation in the sit-in tent that was set up to protest the attacks and excavations on the Mughrabi Gate Road in Jerusalem.

2009: The occupation prevented him from entering Jerusalem, and Jordan prevented him from entering its lands as he was heading to perform Umrah.

2010: An Israeli court sentenced him to 9 months in prison.

2010: He spent 5 months in prison for spitting on an Israeli policeman who tried to provoke him.

May 31, 2010: He was subjected to an assassination attempt following the arrival of the Freedom Flotilla aimed at lifting the siege on the Gaza Strip to the port of Ashdod, after a naval piracy operation by the Israeli forces in international waters.

- 2011: The sheikh, a leader of the Israeli police, was prevented from inspecting his wife after performing the Umrah, and accused at the time of obstructing the work of the police, and the occupation prosecutor decided to imprison him for 8 months.

2011: He was arrested in Britain at the instigation of the Israeli establishment, but he was released, and upon his arrival in his hometown Umm al-Fahm on April 16, 2012, he was prevented from entering Jerusalem until the end of the same month.

May 8, 2016: Sheikh Raed entered prison to serve a 9-month prison sentence on charges of inciting violence, in the file "Wadi Al-Joz sermon".

- May 29, 2016: The head of the Islamic Movement warned before entering his prison that the Israeli security services were trying to “liquidate” a large group of active Arab leaders, claiming to “fight terrorism.” His deputy, Sheikh Kamal Al-Khatib, expressed fears of the occupation’s “liquidation” of Sheikh Raed Salah in prison.

- January 17, 2017: He was released and a patrol of the Israeli Prisons Authority placed him on the side of the road in the Negev desert near a Jewish town, which Sheikh Salah described as similar to the gangs’ approach to releasing their kidnappers.

– The Israeli establishment issues orders preventing him from leaving the country and from entering Al-Aqsa Mosque and occupied Jerusalem, and recommended filing an indictment against him for allegedly inciting “terrorism” and heading a banned organization.

House arrest

February 2017: The Israeli Prison Service submitted a request to extend the solitary confinement of Sheikh Raed Salah for an additional 6 months, which was condemned by the Arab Organization for Human Rights in Britain.

August 2017: The Israeli police arrested Sheikh Salah from his home in the city of Umm al-Fahm, and charged him with a 12-item indictment that includes “incitement to violence and terrorism in his speeches and statements.”

Sheikh Salah spent 11 months in actual prison, before being released to a home prison with house arrest.

February 10, 2020: He was sentenced by the Israeli Magistrate’s Court in Haifa to 28 months in prison for being accused of what is known as the “constant file.” Because the sheikh had already spent 11 months in pretrial detention, he was released to home prison.

August 2020: He was re-arrested and placed in solitary confinement in Jalameh Prison, and then "Ohli Kedar" prison in the Negev.

Sheikh Raed Salah and next to him Sheikh Kamal Khatib (left) before entering the courtroom (Al-Jazeera)

- August 16, 2020: The Israeli Magistrate's Court in Haifa sentences Sheikh Raed to 28 months in prison on the charges of "inciting terrorism and supporting a banned organization", and social media circulated videos of Sheikh Raed's mother saying goodbye to him with sadness and pain before he went to prison to serve his sentence of up to To 17 months in occupation prisons.

August 8, 2021: The Israeli Public Prosecution requested the extension of Sheikh Raed's solitary confinement for an additional 6 months.

August 18, 2021: The Israeli District Court in Beersheba, southern Israel, approved the prosecution's request to extend Sheikh Raed's solitary confinement for an additional 6 months.

Oslo agreement

- He expressed his rejection of the Oslo Agreement and considered it a heavy blow to Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque, and that it gave a longer opportunity to Judaize Jerusalem.

- He considered the events of the internal fighting in Gaza a harbinger of the looting of Al-Aqsa Mosque and prompted the Israeli establishment to scramble against it to implement all its plans.

At the level of the Israeli interior, Israelis refused to interfere in the religious affairs of Muslims and Christians, when the issue of the decision taken by the Knesset’s Law and Constitution Committee in 2001 to amend the Personal Status Law was raised. He turned to civil courts in matters of alimony, custody, adoption and others, and considered it an imposition of religious coercion on Muslims.