INDEPTH: MIDDLE EAST
Mahmoud Abbas (a.k.a. Abu Mazen)
CBC News Online | January 10, 2005
When he resigned as Palestinian prime minister on September 7, 2003 after less than five months in the job, Mahmoud Abbas said he’d had enough of being in government.
Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas are founding members of Fatah.
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That all changed in the days after Yasser Arafat’s death on November 11, 2004 in a military hospital in Paris.
Abbas was named PLO boss, replacing Arafat, his old friend and rival.
On Jan. 10, he was declared the winner of the presidential elections held the previous day, capturing more than 60 per cent of the vote.
Abbas had a reputation for being the Palestine Liberation Organization's anti-terror "ambassador of peace," and many Palestinians and Israelis viewed him as a moderate, someone who may have been able to bridge the rift of violence separating the two enemies.
Born in 1935 in the village of Safed, in what was then Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas moved with his family to Syria in 1948 upon the creation of the state of Israel.
He went on to earn a PhD in history at Moscow's Oriental College
Proper name: Mahmoud Abbas
Honorific: Abu Mazen
Born: 1935 in Safed, British Mandate Palestine
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and a BA in law from Damascus University.
In the early 1960s he joined Yasser Arafat and others in founding the National Liberation Movement, or Fatah.
By 1968 Abbas had become a member of the Palestinian National Council, one of two main decision-making bodies for the PLO (the Executive Committee is the other).
In 1980 he joined the PLO's Executive Committee, and was appointed head of department for national and international relations.
At the age of 58, Abbas acted on behalf of the PLO in signing the 1993 peace accord with Israel. One year later, he became head of the PLO Negotiating Affairs Department.
By then he had a long-established history of contact with Israeli leftists, something that won him a reputation as a PLO "ambassador of peace."
But to many ordinary Palestinians, Abbas seemed to be too appeasing when it came to Israel. He was among the first Palestinians to formally recognize Israel, and has been ideologically opposed to suicide bombings.
Nonetheless, he was confirmed as Palestinian prime minister after a majority vote was passed in parliament on April 29, 2003. The move came after some disagreement with Arafat over the composition of Abbas's cabinet.
Abbas and Arafat also disagreed over Abbas's plan to crack down on the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades; a plan some worried would spark civil war among Palestinians. Indeed, one of his first acts as prime minister was to pledge support for peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
Some experts said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon looked forward to working with Abbas. The two have known one another for years and have got along reasonably well.
Any détente between Abbas and Sharon, however, was tempered by pressure from extreme elements on both sides - right-wing hardliners in Israel, and Palestinian extremist groups like the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
Further limiting Abbas's power was the fact that any agreement he negotiated, by law, had to be approved by Arafat. That got to be too much for Abbas.
Abbas said he resigned because of a power struggle with Arafat, Israel's reluctance to implement the terms of the "road map to peace" and the United States' failure to "exert sufficient influence on Israel."
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