Palestine´s Mahmoud Abbas visits Cuba

HAVANA, Cuba, May 10 (ACN) The President of the State of Palestine and the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Mahmoud Abbas, will arrive in Cuba today on an official visit.

During his stay, Abbas will hold official talks with the President of the Councils of State and Ministers, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, and will carry out other activities.

Mahmoud Abbas was born in Safad, Galilee, on November 15, 1935. As a result of the 1948 war between Israel and neighboring Arab countries, he and his family emigrated to Syria as part of the forced emigration of more than one million Palestinians from Historic Palestine, later known as the "Nakba" (the disaster in Arabic).

At the age of 13, he was forced to work to help his family, then completed his secondary education and worked as a teacher, while in high school.

He studied law at the University of Damascus, Syria, where he obtained his law degree in 1958. He received his PhD degree from the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies in 1982.

In the mid-1950s, he participated, along with other Palestinian fighters, in the foundation of a clandestine patriotic organization, which led to the creation on January 1st 1965 of the Palestine National Liberation Movement (Fatah).

He has been a member of the Fatah Central Committee since 1964, and is currently its Chairman, a position he was elected to in 2009 and re-elected to the 7th Fatah Central Committee Congress of this organization, held in November 2016 in the City of Ramallah.

In 1968, he was elected to the Palestinian National Council, the legislative body of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which functions as the parliament of all Palestinians, including those in the Diaspora.

In 1980 he joined the PLO Executive Committee, and in 1984 he became head of the organization's Office of National and International Relations.

He headed the International Relations Department of the PLO between 1984 and 2000. In 1996 he served as Secretary of the PLO Executive Committee and in November 2004 he was elected Chairman of the PLO Executive Committee.

In April 2003 he was appointed Prime Minister, and was subsequently elected President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in January 2005.

The PLO Central Council, at its session of 14 October 2008, elected him as President of the State of Palestine.
On May 4, 2018, he was re-elected President of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and ratified as President of the State of Palestine.