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
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Connected in the archive
10 connected records10 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
born in — 1 record
- Nablusنابلس
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: birthplace: "Nablus, Palestine" → Nablus (Nablus Governorate, northern West Bank)
names this person — 1 record
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- The Women of the Movement
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: The scholar who became the negotiating era's most recognisable Palestinian voice — and one of the few who kept explaining, in public, what was actually being signed.
on a related subject — 8 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- Diana Buttuديانا بطو
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "negotiations".
- Diana Buttu on Negotiations and Media Framing
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "negotiations".
- Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "politics".
- Ghassan Kanafani: A Conversation Between the Sword and the Neck
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "negotiations".
- Haidar Abdel Shafiحيدر عبد الشافي
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "negotiations".
- Haydar Abd al-Shafi at Madrid: We Come to You From a Tortured Land
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "negotiations".
- and 2 more
Cite this page
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- Chicago
“Hanan Ashrawi.” Figures, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/figures/hanan-ashrawi.- MLA
“Hanan Ashrawi.” Figures, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/figures/hanan-ashrawi. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-hanan-ashrawi, title = {Hanan Ashrawi}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/figures/hanan-ashrawi}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }