Birth: NULL/NULL/1931 Death:9/9/2000
Born in Deir Ghassaneh village near Ramallah in 1931; educated in Deir Ghassaneh, then Al-Bireh Secondary School, and the Friends School in Ramallah, from where he graduated in 1949; enrolled at the AUC and earned a BA in Political Science and Economy in 1956; became a GUPS member while studying in Cairo; went to Jordan and became active in the Jordanian Communist Party; owner of the communist paper Al-Jamahir (The Masses) from 1956 until it was closed down in Feb. 1957 and he was arrested by the Jordanian authorities and detained for eight years at Al-Jaffar Prison; was refused a license after his release in 1965 and wrote under an assumed name; returned to the West Bank in 1974 via family reunification; in 1975, took control of Jordanian Communist Party when Suleiman Najjab was deported; became chief editor of Al-Fajr newspaper from 1975-77; chief editor of At-Taliah weekly newspaper in Jerusalem from 1978-94; founded the Palestinian Communist Party (now: Palestine People’s Party) in the OPT on 10 Feb. 1982 and remained its Sec.-Gen. until his death; was put under house and town arrest by the Israelis in the early 1980s and was banned from traveling abroad until 1988; became member of the PLO Exec. Committee in 1987; had an active role in the Oslo negotiations process; became Minister of Industry in the first PA cabinet in June 1996; suffered a stroke in 1997; was reappointed as Minister without portfolio in 1998; died on 9 Sept. 2000.
