Success stories of Palestinian achievers from all over the world

Huwaida Arraf

Personal Info

  • Country of residence: Palestine
  • Gender: Female
  • Born in: 1976
  • Age: 40
  • Curriculum vitae :

Information

Huwaida Arraf is a Palestinian human rights activist, lawyer and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led organization focused on assisting the Palestinian side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict using non-violent protests. Her law practice is based in Ramallah.

Arraf is the daughter of a Palestinian mother and father. Her father has Israeli citizenship. Her parents moved from the West Bank to be able to raise Arraf away from the violence there. She and her parents were able to visit Israel every few years until Arraf was ten years old.

Arraf majored in Arabic and Judaic studies and political science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She spent a year at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and studied Hebrew on a kibbutz. Arraf later earned a J.D. at American University's Washington College of Law. Her focus was on International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, with a particular interest in war crimes prosecution.

In the spring of 2000, Arraf traveled to Jerusalem to serve as program coordinator for Seeds of Peace, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that seeks to foster dialogue between Jewish and Palestinian youth.

In 2001 her title at the Center for Coexistence in Jerusalem was Regional Coordinator. Arraf married Adam Shapiro, another ISM co-founder, in 2002. They met while both were working at the Jerusalem center of Seeds of Peace.

Arraf chairs the Free Gaza Movement, the organization behind the Gaza Freedom Flotillas - a series of groups of ships carrying Pro-Palestinian activists that were organized to break Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. She was aboard the 2008 Free Gaza boats as well as the 2010 flotilla that was raided by Israeli commandos on May 31.

At the time of the raid, Arraf was aboard the Challenger 1, one of the smallest ships (30 feet) of the flotilla. On Thursday, 3 June 2010, she provided her version of the events on Challenger 1 in an interview on Democracy Now.



Source

Achievements and Awards

- Spokeswoman for the ISM.

 - Arraf currently serves on the advisory board of KinderUSA, and on the steering committee of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

- Arraf is a member of the list of speakers that Global Exchange makes available for politically oriented events. Other notables on that list include Medea Benjamin, Kevin Danaher, Jodie Evans, Cynthia McKinney, and Stephen Zunes.

- In May 2010, Arraf was aboard one of the vessels in a six-ship flotilla that attempted to dock in Gaza and break Israel's naval blockade of the region -- a blockade that had been implemented to prevent Gaza's Hamas-led government from continuing to import weapons from Iran and other allies abroad. The flotilla was organized by the Turkish organization Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH) and was led by the Free Gaza Movement.

- In 2008, Arraf became chairman of the newly formed Free Gaza Movement. In this role, she and ISM worked closely with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). Arraf also worked closely with:

- former Palestinian Authority presidential candidate Mustafa Barghouti (cousin of Marwan Barghouti, who founded the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades)
- ICAHD founder Jeff Halper
- Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera reporter and a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay with ties to Osama bin Laden
- former Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney
- British journalist/Muslim convert Yvonne Ridley.


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