Hanan Ashrawi

Hanan Daoud Mikhael Ashrawi (born 8 October 1946) is a Palestinian scholar, activist and politician, born in Nablus to Palestinian Christian parents and raised in Ramallah; the Arabic article's lead describes her personally as a Palestinian Christian political activist. She studied English literature at the American University of Beirut and took her doctorate in medieval and comparative literature at the University of Virginia, taught at Birzeit University and deaned its faculty of arts, and came to world attention as the official spokesperson of the Palestinian delegation at the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference. She served as Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research in 1996, was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council for Jerusalem in 1996 and again in 2006, and became the first woman elected to the PLO Executive Committee, in 2009 and 2018, resigning in 2020. ^{1 2}

Ashrawi was born in Nablus, in British Mandate Palestine, on 8 October 1946, the youngest of five daughters of Daoud Mikhail, a physician and one of the founders of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Wadi'a Ass'ad Mikhail, an ophthalmic nurse. The family lived in Nablus and then Tiberias, fled to Amman in the 1948 war, and settled in Ramallah in 1950, where she attended the Ramallah Friends Girls School, a Quaker school. ^{1 2}

She received her bachelor's and master's degrees in literature from the Department of English at the American University of Beirut. When the Six-Day War broke out in 1967 she was a 22-year-old graduate student in Lebanon; Israel declared her an absentee and denied her re-entry to the West Bank for six years, during which she completed a Ph.D. in Medieval and Comparative Literature at the University of Virginia, rejoining her family in 1973 under the family reunification plan. ¹

Ashrawi began her career at Birzeit University, where she taught literature and became dean of the faculty of arts. A leader in the First Intifada, she served as a member of the PLO's Leadership Committee and as the official spokesperson of the Palestinian delegation during the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991, impressing all sides with her English and her negotiating manner. In 1996 she was appointed Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research in the second Arafat cabinet and was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council representing Jerusalem, and re-elected in 2006. She was elected to the Executive Committee of the PLO in 2009 and 2018, becoming the body's first female member, and resigned in December 2020. ^{1 2}

As a civil society activist she founded the Independent Commission for Human Rights in 1994 and served as its Commissioner-General until 1995; in 1998 she founded MIFTAH, the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, whose board she still heads; and in 1999 she founded the National Coalition for Accountability and Integrity (AMAN). She is the author of several books, articles, poems and short stories on Palestinian politics, culture and literature, among them This Side of Peace (Simon & Schuster, 1995), a personal-political account that earned worldwide recognition. ¹

On 8 August 1975 she married Emile Ashrawi, a Christian Jerusalemite who works as a photographer and theatre director; they have two daughters, Amal and Zeina. ^{1 2}

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