Issam Abdulhadi (1928âÂÂ16 August 2013) was an award-winning Palestinian womenâÂÂs rights activist. She was elected as the President of the General Union of Palestinian Women in July 1965.
Born in Nablus in 1928, she was educated at AâÂÂishiyyeh School and later at the Friendsâ School in Ramallah.
Abdulhadi began her career in Palestinian womenâÂÂs activities in the West Bank in 1949. She attended the first Palestinian National Council at which the General Union of Palestinian Women was formally established in June 1964. In 1949 she was elected Secretary-General of the Arab WomenâÂÂs Union in Nablus. By July 1965 she was elected as the President of the General Union of Palestinian Women.
In April 1969 Abdulhadi was imprisoned by Israeli forces and then deported with her daughter, Faiha Abdul Hadi, after arranging a sit-in and hunger strike at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in Jerusalem, where she had been protesting the Israeli armyâÂÂs killing of women in Gaza.
Abdulhadi worked through the Save Jerusalem Committee in Amman, Jordan. By 1974 she was appointed to the Palestinian Central Council, and then she re-established General Union of Palestinian Women in Lebanon. She then headed the Palestinian delegation to the first World Conference on Women in Mexico City in 1975.
By 1981 she was elected President of the General Union of Arab Women, followed by Vice-President of the International Democratic Union of Women from 1981âÂÂ92.
She was allowed to return to the West Bank in 1993, alongside 30 other leaders.
Abdulhadi was awarded the Ibn Rushd Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2001 and was one of eight Palestinian women nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize as part of the Project "1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005".
Abdulhadi married at the age of nineteen.
She died in Amman, Jordan, on 16 August 2013.