A year has passed since the martyrdom of youth activist Basel Al-Araj who sacrificed his life to serve as a proof to the truthfulness of his claim after he feared that resistance might be harmed by the acts of those who think betrayal is a point of view.
Al-Araj chose to ascend to heaven where Prophet Mohammed had ascended from the holy Aqsa Mosque. This ascension has never stopped for the people of Palestine. He ascended to heaven after he translated his words into actions on the ground turning his knowledge and culture into bullets and arms taken only by revolutionaries against the occupation despite that fact some people of his own abandoned him.
His biography
Al-Araj was born in 1986 in the village of Walaja in Bethlehem south of the West Bank. He received a degree in pharmacy and worked in the same field near the occupied city of Jerusalem.
Basel was known as a blogger and a researcher in the Palestinian history. He was known for his wide culture which he devoted to resisting the occupation in every possible means available. He resorted to writing about supporting the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation. He was one of the people who called for boycotting the Israeli occupation and confronting Israeli settlement activity.
One of his most prominent projects was orally documenting the most important stages of the Palestinian revolution since the 1930s against the British occupation and leading to the Israeli occupation where he organized trips for young people to document the most important stages of the Palestinian revolution.
Martyrdom
The final story of Basel Al-Araj which concluded by his murder by the Israeli occupation forces started with his arrest by the Palestinian Authority because of his educational tours and calls to boycott Israel.
Not only did the Palestinian Authority harass and prosecute him but also they arrested him again and accused him along with a number of his comrades of planning military attacks against the Israeli occupation. They as a result went on hunger strike after nearly five months of detention by the security services of the PA.
In September 2016 Basel and his five comrades who are now in the occupation jails were released from the PA’s prisons. Al-Araj however opted joining resistance against occupation.
On March 6 2017 Al-Araj clashed for two hours with a special Israeli force which stormed a house he was hiding inside in the city of Al-Bireh. He refused to surrender and chose to ascend to heaven after he ran out of ammunition.
