Birth: NULL/NULL/1916 Death:NULL/NULL/2004
Born in Syria in 1916 to a Christian family (Syrian father and Palestinian mother); attended school in Sidon; moved with his family (the father was a priest) to Al-Buseh village (near Tiberias) in 1924, then to Tiberias in 1930; studied Business Administration at the AUB, graduating with a BA in 1938; worked to help his five younger brothers through college; was head of the Palestinian branch of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party during the British Mandate; also served as an official for Beit Al-Mal, the Arab Higher Committee’s national fund; was arrested by Israel in 1948 and spent nine months in an Israeli prisoner-of-war camp; returned to Beirut and resumed his studies at the AUB, graduating with an MA in Economics in 1952; began teaching at the AUB’s Economics Dept.; was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study at Johns Hopkins University in 1954, earning his PhD in Political Economy in 1957; returned to Lebanon, became Assistant Professor at the AUB’s Economics Dept. and began establishing himself as a leading Arab economist concerned with social justice; was a Visiting Research Associate at Harvard University in 1959-60, and a Visiting Associate Professor at Princeton University in 1960; was Director of the AUB Economic Research Institute from 1962-1964 and promoted to full Professor at the Economics Dept. in 1963; remained faculty member of the AUB’s Economics Dept. until 1974, when he took early retirement; while on sabbatical leave, served as an advisor to the Kuwaiti government from 1964-65 drawing up a development plan for the country; became a member of the PNC in the 1960s; established the PLO’s Planning Center in 1968 and became its first Director until 1971; was a member of the PLO Exec. Committee from 1968-74; served as Exec. Committee member and treasurer of the Palestinian National Fund from 1971-74; served as consultant to the OPEC (1973-77), the Kuwait-based Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development (from 1976), as well as to the Arab League, the FAO, and the Arab Industrial Development Organization; was a founding member of the Center for Arab Unity Studies in Beirut since 1976, of the Arab Thought Forum in Jordan, and of the Economic Research Forum for the Arab Countries, Iran, and Turkey from 1993-96; served as senior economic advisor to the PLO and was its official representative to the World Bank; was head of the Palestinian delegation to the Multilateral Working Group on Economic Development in 1992-93; served as Pres. of the Cairo-based Arab Society for Economic Research from 1992-95; after the signing of the Oslo Accords, supervised the Program for development of the Palestinian national economy for the years 1994-2000, which included the creation of a seven-year economic plan for the PA; was also involved in negotiations for international assistance to the PA; was an honorary member in the Welfare Association and served on the Board of Governors of PECDAR; received many honors, incl. recognition from the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research for distinction in the field of economic development in the Arab World (1981), the title of Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (1984-85), and the Abdullah Al-Tariqi Award (2000); has written extensively on economic and development issues, incl. Entrepreneurs of Lebanon: The Role of the Business Leader in a Developing Economy (Harvard, 1962), The Israeli Economy (Beirut, 1967), Arab Development: Past Shortcomings and Future Prospects (Arabic), and the two-volume The Economies of the Arab World and Determinants of Arab Economic Development; died on 11 May 2004.
