The first of December 2024 marks the 21st anniversary of the martyrdom of Saleh Mahmoud Talahmeh, a liberated prisoner and one of the leading engineers of the al-Qassam Brigades and the Palestinian Resistance, alongside his fellow strugglers Sayed Abdel-Karim Sheikh Qassem and Hassanein Rummana, in a fierce armed clash with invading Zionist occupation forces.
Born on 24 April 1966 in Douar, Saleh grew up in the village of al-Burj, around 15 kilometers southwest of Dura, in al-Khalil governorate of occupied Palestine. Al-Burj is an agricultural village, one of many in the Dura area, and Saleh grew up alongside his five older sisters there. From his early years, he excelled in school, attending high school in the city of Dura and obtaining a score of 92% in the science branch of the Tawjihi, the Palestinian national exam, one of the top ten students in occupied Palestine that year. While he was offered a scholarship to study in the Soviet Union, he attended Birzeit University at the request of his parents, who wanted him to remain close to home.
In 1984, Saleh Talahmeh entered Birzeit University, where he studied electrical engineering and became involved with the Islamic Bloc, following in the footsteps of his father, who preached as an imam at the mosque in Al-Burj, and in 1987, he joined the Hamas Islamic Resistance Movement upon its founding and immediately became involved with the great popular Intifada blossoming throughout Palestine.
His sister, Haniya, later said that she helped to support her younger brother during his studies, as she worked as a science teacher at Al-Burj secondary school and did not marry. Recalling Saleh, she said, “He was affectionate, tender, and soft-hearted with those he loved, and fierce against his enemy and the enemy of God. He was a man created by the Qur’an, and everyone in our village and city who knew Saleh loved him with a deep affection.”
On 15 November 1988, he married his wife Majida, and as he pursued his studies and his path of jihad and struggle for the liberation of Palestine, they also developed their family life, and had five children: Musaab, Israa, Kataeb, Sukaina and Mohammed. Majida and Saleh lived together for only four years out of their 15 years together, due to the pursuit of the occupation forces and his years of imprisonment by the PA and the Zionist regime.
He graduated from university in 1990 with a degree in electrical engineering and in 1992, joined the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades upon their founding in 1992. From the beginning of his jihadist work, he was a companion of the engineer of the Resistance, the martyr Yahya Ayyash. Both had studied electrical engineering at Birzeit University and they shared common interests in study and struggle, advancing the foundation of the military work of the resistance. Saleh Talameh was also a close companion of Muhyi al-Din al-Sharif, the second engineer of the al-Qassam Brigades, the brothers Adel and Imad Awadallah, and fellow early leaders of Hamas and the Al-Qassam Brigades, Abdel-Samad Ahrizat, Jamil Jadallah, Nashat Jabara and Hani Rawajbeh. All of their work was closely coordinated with the leaders, Hassan Salameh and Ibrahim Hamed, today serving multiple life sentences behind occupation bars, and both of whom are key priorities in a prisoner exchange for the Palestinian Resistance.
Saleh was imprisoned by the Zionist occupation regime in 1993 and imprisoned for 14 months in occupation prisons on charges of resisting the occupation. After his release, he was placed on the occupation’s wanted list in 1996, living underground and as a fugitive while remaining involved in the development of the resistance.
He encountered the treachery of the Oslo Accords and the Palestinian Authority created by them in order to serve the interests of the Zionist regime and its imperialist backers, the United States and the European states. Like so many Palestinian resistance strugglers and leaders, he was imprisoned by the PA under its “security coordination” regime in order to protect the occupation from the resistance of which Saleh was a leader. He was arrested by the Palestinian Authority “security” forces, tortured under interrogation, and imprisoned by the PA for four long years, only released alongside the start of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000.
Immediately upon his release, he worked with a number of his fellow leaders to restructure the al-Qassam Brigades in the central West Bank for more effective work, and participated in planning a number of military operations carried out by the Brigades. He returned to life underground, pursued by the occupation, who described him as one of the most important leaders of the al-Qassam Brigades and the bridge between the political and military wings of Hamas. On multiple occasions, troops of occupation soldiers violently invaded his family home, threatened his relatives, and even abducted and imprisoned his wife, but they failed to find him for over three years.
On 1 December 2003, after three years following his liberation from collaborationist PA prisons, Zionist occupation special forces invaded the Al-Shurafa neighbourhood in Al-Bireh, surrounding the building where he was with his comrades, Sayed Abdel-Karim Qassem and Hassanein Rummana. They refused to surrender themselves to the invading forces, fighting the occupiers until their martyrdom, when the occupation forces exploded the building around them. Occupation forces initially claimed that Ibrahim Hamed had been martyred as well in the attack; however, this was an attempt to deceive the resistance. Hamed was later arrested by the occupation and is currently serving one of the longest sentences of all Palestinian prisoners in occupation colonial jails.
Hassanein Hamdi Rummana was also a former prisoner, born a Palestinian refugee from al-Lyd in the ‘Amari refugee camp, and part of a large family. Like Saleh, he joined Hamas and participated in the Intifada from 1987 onwards. Between 1987 and 1993, he was arrested on 11 occasions by the occupation forces, and they were never able to extract a confession from him on himself or any of his brothers. On the day of the assassination of Muhyi al-Din al-Sharif in 1998, Hassanein was also arrested by the Palestinian Authority, severely tortured and beaten by groups of jailers, and spent three years in PA prisons. He was so badly injured by the torture that he was unable to eat regular food for two months after his interrogation due to his injuries.
Like Hassanein Rummana, Sayed Abdel-Karim Sheikh Qassem was a Palestinian refugee from al-Lyd, who grew up asking his father about their home and dreamed all his life of his return to al-Lyd, and the return of all Palestinians to their homes and lands, from which they were forcibly displaced in the Nakba. He was deeply religious and spent much of his time at the Omari Mosque in Al-Bireh, later taking up the path of jihad in the Al-Qassam Brigades. He was arrested twice by the occupation forces; first spending 40 days under military interrogation, while refusing to confess, and then spending several months under administrative detention. Like Saleh, Sayed was wanted by the occupation forces since 1998, and he was arrested by the Palestinian Authority under “security coordination” and imprisoned in Jericho, where he was subjected to severe physical and psychological torture. He met Saleh inside PA prisons and they developed their firm relationship as brothers in resistance, continuing after their release.
Saleh’s body was carried from Al-Khalil Hospital in a massive funeral procession to his hometown in Al-Burj village. As mourners filled the streets, supporters of the movements pasted posters throughout occupied Palestine bearing his image, all denouncing the occupation, vowing revenge against the Zionist occupation and its agents, and pledging to follow in his path. As thousands arrived with his body at the Al-Burj mosque, its governing council announced that, henceforth, it would be known as the Martyr Saleh al-Talahmeh Mosque, bearing his name as an icon of resistance.
Saleh Talahmeh’s life of resistance and enduring legacy of struggle underlines the alliance of enemies faced by the Palestinian liberation movement — the Zionist regime and its imperialist sponsors, led by the United States, at the forefront, but also the reactionary Arab forces that work in concert with them, particularly the Palestinian Authority and its “security coordination” with the occupation, which continues to this day even as the occupation carries out a genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. He and his brothers in arms helped to forge the path of today’s resistance fighters, in Palestine and throughout the region, who continue to lead the struggle for the liberation of Palestine, and of humanity, from Zionism, imperialism and their agents.
