The Abu Ghazaleh family

أبو غزالة

Jaffa · 20th century to present

A Jaffa mercantile family scattered by 1948 — oil dealers and ice makers whose ten-year-old son Talal walked out of the city a refugee and built the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization in exile, spending a career insisting that the record show his birthplace as Jaffa.

The Abu Ghazalehs of Jaffa were people of trade. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh recalls his father Tawfiq as a Jaffa businessman — the Palestine dealer for oil companies including Shell and Mobil, and the first to run an ice factory in the city — and an elder brother as the owner of the first public transport company running buses between Jaffa and Jerusalem. In 1948, when Talal was ten, the family was forced from Jaffa and became refugees in the southern Lebanese village of Ghazieh; the boy walked four hours a day to school in Sidon.

That boy became the family’s best-documented member. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh (b. April 22, 1938, Jaffa) won a full scholarship to the American University of Beirut, graduating in business administration in 1960, and in 1972 founded the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization, the professional-services group he built into one of the Arab world’s largest, headquartered in Amman; he later sat in the Jordanian Senate. When he found his birthplace listed online as Tel Aviv, he founded his own encyclopedia to correct it — “We want correct facts,” he told Gulf News.

Other documented bearers of the name appear in the record, their kinship to Tawfiq’s branch unstated. Siham N. Abu-Ghazaleh, born in Jaffa in 1940, studied anthropology, psychology and political science and headed the Palestinian Cultural Centers in Jordan, writing Palestinian History in Costumes, Needle, and Thread and Sew to Speak — embroidery as memory. Dr. Samir Abu-Ghazaleh, born in Haifa, is a gynecologic oncologist whom President Clinton appointed to the US National Cancer Advisory Board (2000–2006).

Notable members

  • Talal Abu-Ghazaleh (b. 1938) — born in Jaffa; founder (1972) and chairman of the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization; Jordanian senator.
  • Tawfiq Abu-Ghazaleh — his father; Jaffa businessman, oil-company dealer and operator of the city’s first ice factory.

Sources

Cited works

5
  1. wto.org — talal abu ghazaleh bio e(opens in a new tab)https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/dg_e/dft_panel_e/talal_abu-ghazaleh_bio_e.htm
  2. gulfnews.com — from palestine refugee to achiever 1.1271058(opens in a new tab)https://gulfnews.com/lifestyle/from-palestine-refugee-to-achiever-1.1271058
  3. gulfnews.com — historic blunder gives birth to tagipedia 1.1213795(opens in a new tab)https://gulfnews.com/world/mena/historic-blunder-gives-birth-to-tagipedia-1.1213795
  4. palestinebookawards.com — siham n abu ghazaleh(opens in a new tab)https://www.palestinebookawards.com/authors/item/siham-n-abu-ghazaleh
  5. bufusa.org — board of directors(opens in a new tab)https://bufusa.org/board-of-directors/