Birth: NULL/NULL/1940 Death:NULL/NULL/NULL
Born in the Galilee in 1940 to a Christian family; was educated in an Israeli school; moved to Jordan in 1957, renouncing her Israeli citizenship; married Daoud Tawil and lived in Irbid for a while, then moved to Nablus; joined the Arab Women’s Union in Nablus but was critical of its segregation between men and women; organized acts of defiance against both the Israeli occupation and the social structure, incl. organizing concerts and sit-in strikes in Nablus; gathered different intellectuals, politicians, journalists and diplomats in her house in Nablus and advocated the Palestinian cause, soon turning her home into a cultural and political salon; her different activities opened the door for her journalistic activity, incl. reporting for the Jerusalem Star; was put under administrative detention by the Israeli army for 30 days after 1967 and under house arrest; was criticized by some Palestinians for her advocacy of dialogue with Israel; discussed the two-state solution in the late 1970s; established the Palestine Press Service; her books include: My Home My Prison (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1979); Director of Al-’Awda biweekly and of the weekly Filastin; mother of Suha Tawil (wife of late Pres. Yasser Arafat); went into sporadic voluntary exile – often to Paris – to escape Israeli reprisals for her activism.
