Palestinian Figures
Send to a friendMahmoud (Abu Mazen) Abbas
Chairman of the Palestinian Authority
Mahmoud Abbas, the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority who is usually referred to as Abu Mazen, was born in Safed in 1935. He studied law in Egypt before doing a…Read more
Riad al-Maliki
Minister of Justice and Information
Born in 1955 and holds a PhD in Civil Engineering from the American University. He worked at the engineering department at Birzeit University in 1978 and became head of…Read more
Abdel Aziz Al-Rantisi
Hamas Founder and Leader in the Gaza Strip
Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi was born in Yabna village (between Ashkelon and Jaffa) on 23 October 1947. After the 1948 war, his family moved to the Gaza Strip and settled in…Read more
Yasser Arafat
Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (1969-2004) and President of the Palestinian National Authority (1996-2004)
Mohammed Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa Al-Husseini, more commonly known as Yasser Arafat was the fifth of seven children born to a Palestinian textile merchant on August 24, 1929. According to…Read more
Hanan Ashwari
Palestinian scholar and political activist
Born 1946 in Ramallah. Her father was a founder of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Ashrawi received her Bachelor and Master's degrees in literature from the Department of English…Read more
Marwan Barghouti
Imprisoned Fatah leader and founder of al-Mustaqbal (The Future)
One of the most popular figures of the current Palestinian uprising, Barghouti is a senior Fatah leader in the West Bank. Schooled in Hebrew during his time in Israeli jails,…Read more
Mohammed Dahlan
Fatah leader in Gaza and representative for Khan Younis in the Palestinian Legislative Council
Mohammed Dahlan was born in 1961 in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. He received a BA in business administration from the Islamic University of Gaza. …Read more
Saeb Erekat
Head of the PLO's Negotiations Affairs Department, member of the PLO Executive Committee and Fatah-Revolutionary Council, and representative for Jericho in the Palestinian Legislative Council
Born in Jerusalem in 1955, Saeb Erekat his higher education in the US. He obtained his M.A. in Political Science from the University of San Francisco and his doctorate in…Read more
Salam Fayyad
PA Prime Minister, Finance and Foreign Affairs Minister
Salam Fayyad was born in a village near Tulkarm in the West Bank and moved with his family to Jordan as a child. He earned a B.Sc. in…Read more
Ismail Haniyeh
TBC
Ismail Haniyeh headed Palestinian militant group Hamas' national list of candidates in the January 2006 elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), in which Hamas were the surprise victors. …Read more
Khaled Meshaal
Hamas leader and political chief
Meshaal was born in 1956 in the Silwad neighbourhood of Ramallah. In high school he formed friendships with other young people associated with the Egyptian-originated Muslim Brotherhood movement and consequently…Read more
Sari Nusseibeh
President of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem
Sari Nusseibeh was born in 1949 in Jerusalem. His father, Anwar, was a senior officer in the Jordanian army who lost a leg in the 1948 war and eventually became…Read more
Ahmed (Abu Ala) Qureia
Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority 2003-2006
Ahmed Qureia, known as Abu Ala, was born in 1937 to a wealthy family in Abu Dis, a village near Jerusalem. A banker by trade, he joined Fatah in 1968…Read more
Yasser Abed Rabbo
Member of the PLO’s Executive Committee and advisor to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas
Born in Jaffa, Yasser Abed Rabbo has an MA in economics and political science from the American University in Cairo. In 1968, Abed Rabbo was a founding member of the…Read more
Jibril Rajoub
Advisor for National Security
Born in 1953 in Dura near Hebron, Rajoub was first known as a top street fighter in the first Intifada in the late 1980s. He was sentenced by Israel to…Read more
Nabil Sha'ath
Palestinian International Co-operation Minister
Shaath was born in 1938 in Safad to a Gazan father and a Lebanese mother. He became an Egyptian citizen in 1965 and studied in Alexandria. He earned a PhD…Read more
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
Hamas Founder and Terrorist Mastermind
Born in British Mandated Palestine in 1938, Ahmed Yassin was a refugee in Gaza from 1948 onward and formed extremist Islamic views early on in his childhood. He was received…Read more
Nasser Yousef
Palestinian Interior Minister
Nasser Yousef was born in 1943 in Jisr al-Majama', near Bisan in the Jordan valley. Yousef holds a Masters Degree in Islam History from the University of…Read more
Mahmoud Zahar
Hamas Spokesperson
Mahmoud Zahar is one of the founding members of Hamas and a spokesman for the organisation. On 20 March 2006, following their suprising victory in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections,…Read more
Spotlight
The Issue of Borders
The demarcation of borders constitutes one of the core issues in peace negotiations between…Read more