Hanan Ashrawi
حنان عشراوي
Legislator, scholar, and peace negotiator
Palestinian legislator and scholar who became one of the most recognisable voices of the Palestinian cause during the 1990s peace negotiations.
Hanan Ashrawi was born in Nablus in 1946 to a Christian Palestinian family. She earned a doctorate in English literature from the University of Virginia and built an academic career at Birzeit University in the West Bank, where she chaired the English department and served as dean of the Faculty of Arts, publishing literary criticism on Palestinian writing under occupation.
She entered public life during the first intifada and became the official spokesperson of the Palestinian delegation at the 1991 Madrid peace conference and the Washington talks that followed. She later served in the Palestinian Legislative Council and as the Palestinian Authority’s minister of education, and sat on the PLO Executive Committee from 2009 until her resignation in 2020. In 1998 she founded MIFTAH, the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, and she helped establish the Independent Commission for Human Rights. Her memoir, This Side of Peace (1995), recounts the negotiations from inside the delegation.
Selected contributions
- Spokesperson of the Palestinian delegation, Madrid peace conference (1991)
- Founder of MIFTAH (1998)
- This Side of Peace: A Personal Account (1995)
Sources
Further reading
An external biography or archive holding more on this life than the entry above.