Mahmoud Abbas

Mahmoud Abbas (born 15 November 1935), whose full name is given as Mahmoud Rida Shahada Abbas and who is known by his kunya Abu Mazen, is a Palestinian politician born in Safed whose family fled to Syria in the 1948 war. A founding member of Fatah and the PLO and the organisation's chief negotiator, he signed the Oslo I Accord for the PLO on 13 September 1993, became the Palestinian Authority's first prime minister in 2003, succeeded Yasser Arafat as PLO chairman in 2004, and was elected President of the Palestinian Authority on 9 January 2005, an office he still holds. ^{1 2}

Mahmoud Rida Abbas was born on 15 November 1935 in Safed, in the Galilee region of Mandatory Palestine; his family fled to Syria during the 1948 Palestine war. He graduated in law from the University of Damascus and later took graduate studies at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, earning a Candidate of Sciences degree with a dissertation published as The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism. ¹

Abbas became involved in underground Palestinian politics in the mid-1950s, joining exiled Palestinians in Qatar, where he was Director of Personnel in the emirate's civil service. There in 1961 he was recruited into Fatah, founded by Yasser Arafat and others in Kuwait in the late 1950s. He was among the first Fatah members to call for talks with moderate Israelis, doing so in 1977. ¹

Abbas performed diplomatic duties, presenting a moderating contrast to the PLO's "revolutionary" policies. He was the first PLO official to visit Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War, in January 1993, signed the Oslo I Accord for the PLO on 13 September 1993, published his memoir Through Secret Channels: The Road to Oslo in 1995, and that year drafted the Beilin–Abu Mazen agreement with Israeli negotiator Yossi Beilin as a framework for a future peace deal. ¹

Under international pressure, Arafat appointed Abbas the Palestinian Authority's first prime minister on 19 March 2003. His short term was marked by power struggles with Arafat over the security services and by conflict with militant groups, and he resigned on 6 September 2003. After Arafat's death Fatah saw him as the natural successor; he was elected President of the Palestinian National Authority on 9 January 2005 with 63% of the vote, dedicated the victory to Arafat's soul in his speech, and has had his term extended repeatedly since, remaining in office. ¹

This section sets out positions as reported in the sources; it is not a verdict by the museum. Supporters describe him as a pragmatist, an architect of the peace process and one of the few surviving founders of the Palestinian cause. Critics accuse him and his administration of corruption, note that his term has been extended without elections since 2009, and — as the English article sets out — accuse him of distorting Jewish history and trivialising the Holocaust. After the Gaza war began he condemned the killing of civilians on both sides on 12 October 2023, and in April 2025 he attacked Hamas in his strongest terms, demanding it release the hostages, disarm and cede Gaza. ¹

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