Birth: NULL/NULL/1929 Death:NULL/NULL/NULL
Born in Jaffa on 5 Nov. 1929; attended Al-Ayyubieh School in Jaffa then the Arab Higher College in Jerusalem, where he was inspired by the educator Khalil Sakakini; enrolled at AUB to study Political Science and Economics in 1947; his studies were disrupted by Nakba of 1948, during which his family became refugees in Amman; soon returned to Beirut and resumed his studies, changing his major to Business, graduating in 1951; was involved with Ba’athist politics; went to Jordan and taught at the Islamic Academy in Amman until 1953; then moved to Kuwait, where he worked as a teacher, then for the Ministry of Water and Electricity; in 1963, founded Al-Hani Construction Company, which soon became one of the major contracting companies in the region; co-founded the IPS in Beirut in 1963; accompanied PLO Chairman Ahmed Al-Shuqeiri to China in 1964; was a longtime PNC member; served as PNC speaker in its 4th session held in Cairo in July 1968 (a post he was to resign in protest over the absence of a unified command over military and financial assets); co-founded the Center for Arab Unity Studies in Beirut in 1978; contributed extensively to Palestinian development since the early 1980s; co-founded the Welfare Association in Geneva in 1983; served as Palestine’s representative to the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development (based in Kuwait) since 1985; resigned from the PNC in 1990 following the PLO’s pro-Saddam stance in the Gulf crisis; launched a University Students’ Loan Program for students in Palestine as well as the A.M. Qattan Foundation in London in 1994, devoted to fund educational and cultural projects in Palestine; visited Palestine for the first time since 1948 in May 1999 to receive an honorary doctorate from Birzeit University; serves as a Board member of MIFTAH.
