Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Palestinian diplomatic and media work is considered an important tributary to the development and strengthening of the Palestinian national identity in the face of the false Zionist-Israeli narratives about the occupation of Palestine, not to mention the large and influential role of the work of diplomats and the media in spreading and transmitting the Palestinian narrative, and subsequently the rights of the Palestinian people in their only homeland, Palestine, and in this context we recall A biography of a Palestinian icon in media and diplomacy at the same time; He is Hassan Balawi, may God grant him long life and care.
Biography of Hassan Balawi
He is a Palestinian journalist and diplomat. He was born on July 20, 1965 in Nablus. His father is Fathi Qasim Al-Balaawi from the village of Balaa, near the city of Tulkarm in the north of the West Bank, whom the late poet Ahmed Dahbour described as (the father of Palestinian patriotism), while Hassan’s mother is Zahira Omar Sharif Saad Al-Din from the city of Nablus. He currently resides in Belgium.
Hassan Balawi lived in the State of Qatar until the age of eighteen; His father and mother worked in the field of education until 1990. Hassan moved to France to complete his university studies at the end of 1983, in the city of Bordeaux, then the city of Besançon. In 1990, Hassan obtained a diploma in translation between the French and Arabic languages, and a bachelor’s degree in linguistics. There he belonged to the Palestinian and Arab student movement, and to Palestinian political action.
From 1991 to 1994, he worked in the Unified Media Service of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Tunisia, as an editor and correspondent from Paris for the magazine “Palestine Al-Thawra,” the central magazine of the Palestine Liberation Organization at the time.
He returned to Palestine, and specifically to Gaza, and remained there until August 2006, where he first worked in the Ministry of Information, as a foreign press officer. During the same period, he founded the French program on Palestine TV, and was a presenter of the French-language news bulletin. Then he moved to the presidential office, and worked In the Department of Political Affairs, then the Department of Protocol. He was charged with translating and following up with French delegations.
After that, he was sent to France, where he worked as a media officer at the Palestine Mission in Paris, then the Palestine Mission to UNESCO until the end of 2010, and during that period he was assigned to manage the media file at the “Jerusalem, Capital of Arab Culture 2009” celebration, in Ramallah.
At the beginning of 2011, he returned to Ramallah, and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as Director of the Media Unit until the end of 2012, when he returned to study at the National School of Administration (ENA) in the French city of Strasbourg, and in the summer of 2013 he obtained the school’s diploma, in addition to a Master’s in European Studies from the Sorbonne University. During the same period, he took a course in the Media Department of the Louvre Museum. Since June 2014, he was sent again to work diplomatically in the Palestine Mission to the European Union, to Belgium and Luxembourg, as an advisor for bilateral relations.
Its releases
At the end of 2008, writer and journalist Hassan Balawi published a book in French entitled “Gaza Behind the Scenes of the Palestinian National Movement” by one of the most important French publishing houses in Paris. It was also published in October 2017 by Dar Al-Shorouk in Jordan, entitled “Gaza and the Palestinian National Movement.” He is currently working on more than one book project, one of which is entitled “Palestinian Belgium,” and he participated in more than one documentary film related to the Palestinian issue. The first concerns the relationship between the national liberation movements between Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and the second is about the martyr Naim Khader, the first director of the office of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Belgium.
He contributes to some community cultural activities, such as the “Mediterranean Citizens Council”, as he is a member of the advisory board of this Mediterranean institution that seeks to develop cultural, academic and community ties for the peoples of the Mediterranean.
During the year 2021, Al-Shorouk Publishing and Distribution House in Jordan published a book entitled “Gaza and the Palestinian National Movement.” I had the honor to meet him in the Dutch city of Utrecht on Saturday, the seventeenth of last September, as a commentator and interlocutor on my recently published e-book titled (The Process of Palestinian Identity, Nationalism, and Culture); The questions and additions of the journalist and diplomat had a great impact and impact on the possibility of developing my work on the encyclopedia in the coming days, based on several recommendations at the end of the book presentation and the discussions that took place with the audience, the most important of which was the establishment of a research network of Palestinian youth in all places where the Palestinian people reside inside Palestine and nearby immigrants. And far away, with the aim of documenting the products of the Palestinian people in all walks of life, as it is one of the elements of the Palestinian national identity rooted in the depth of the homeland and history.
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Achievements and Awards
- Years in active
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