About the author
Mahmoud Abbas is a Palestinian politician who has served as the President of the State of Palestine since 2005. He is a member of the Fatah party, and he is also the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Abbas was born in 1935 in the city of Safed, then part of the British Mandate of Palestine. He studied law at Damascus University in Syria, and obtained a degree in law in 1960. He then returned to the West Bank, where he became a member of the Fatah party and was appointed as the head of the Department of Refugee Affairs in the PLO. In the early 1990s, Abbas was involved in the negotiations between Israel and the PLO which led to the Oslo Accords. In 2003, Abbas was elected as the first Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). In 2005, he was elected President of the State of Palestine. As President, Abbas has worked to promote Palestinian statehood and the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has also sought to improve the living conditions of Palestinians living in the occupied territories.