Bassam Shaka

Bassam Shakaa (Arabic: بسّام الشكعة‎‎, Bassām Shak’ā) (born 1930) was elected mayor of Nablus in 1976.

Bassam Shakaa is a member of one of the wealthiest and most distinguished families in Nablus. He became a member of the Jordanese Regional Branch of the Ba'ath Party in the early 1950s and as a consequence was wanted by Jordanian authorities, forcing him to flee to Syria. He was one of the fierce critics of Syria's independence from the United Arab Republic and after being jailed by the Syrian authorities following his resignation from the Ba'ath Party because of the 1966 split within the Ba'ath movement. Following his release, he moved to Egypt until amnesty from the Jordanian government when he moved back to his home-town Nablus. In 1976 he was elected mayor of Nablus, a position he held until 1982, when all Palestinian mayors were replaced with Israeli local rulers. Shakaa had been a Palestine Liberation Organisation supporter and outspoken critic of the Camp David accords, and was subsequently issued with an expulsion order in 1979. Felicia Langer successfully defended him from the charges in the court, which was accompanied with large scale popular actions consisting of big demonstrations and the collective resignation of all West Bank mayors.

On June 2, 1980 he became the victim of a bomb placed in his car by members of the Jewish Underground. They also planted bombs in the cars of Ibrahim Tawil, the mayor of El-Bireh, and Karim Khalaf, the mayor of Ramallah. Khalaf lost one leg, while Shakaa had to have both legs amputated. Moshe Zer, one of the first Israeli settlers in the northern West Bank, was the person who led the Jewish underground "hit team" that tried to assassinate Shakaa. Zer was convicted for causing serious injury and belonging to a terror group, but was sentenced to only four months in prison, the time he was in jail waiting for his trial, because of the state of his health and the fact that he was badly injured in an attempt of a Palestinian to murder him. The bomb was planted merely months after Ezer Weizman, Israeli defence minister at the time, threatened him with "physical harm" if he carried on with his resistance.

...
Wikipedia