Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Nabil Ali Rashid Shaath was born in the occupied city of Safed in the occupied interior on August 9, 1938. He is married and has two sons and two daughters. He studied primary school at the Tabia School for Catholic Sisters and Al-Amiriya School in Jaffa and Al-Raml Elementary School in Alexandria, Egypt. He completed his secondary education at Al-Raml Secondary School, graduating in 1954. He earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the Faculty of Commerce at Alexandria University in 1958. He trained at Union Bank of Switzerland in Switzerland between 1958 and 1959. He earned a Master of Finance and Banking degree from the University of Pennsylvania in the United States in 1961, and a PhD in Economics and Administrative Sciences from the same university in 1965.
He worked as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania between 1961 and 1965, and as a lecturer at the National Institute of Higher Administration in Cairo. He was also a researcher at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo between 1965 and 1969, and a lecturer at the American University of Beirut between 1969 and 1975. In 1975, he founded Dar Al-Fata Al-Arabi, an institution specializing in children's literature and culture, which continued operating until 1992. He founded and managed the Arab Experts Program in Engineering and Management (TEAM) from 1976, as well as the Arab Center for Administrative Development. He served as a consultant to several Arab governments, including Algeria and Kuwait, and contributed to the Arabization of industrial management in Algeria, the organization of the industrial zone in Kuwait, and the energy sector in Saudi Arabia. He served as Director-General of the Planning Center of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and later as its head until 1980. He held several ministerial positions in the Palestinian government, including Minister of Planning and International Cooperation between 1996 and 2006, and Minister of Foreign Affairs between [years missing in original text]. (2003-2005), Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Information between (2005-2006), and Personal Representative of President Mahmoud Abbas to Egypt in 2008.
Shaath joined the Fatah movement in 1961, and participated in its political, organizational and cultural activities; He was a representative of the magazine "Our Palestine" (published by the Fatah movement) in the United States, and president of the Arab Students Organization in the United States in 1963. He worked for the Voice of the Storm radio station in Cairo, and took over Fatah's external media in 1969. He became a member of the Palestinian National Council representing Fatah in 1969, and chaired the movement's general conference in 1971. He also became a member of the movement's Revolutionary Council in the same year. He participated in preparing Yasser Arafat's visit to the United Nations and in drafting his famous speech at the General Assembly in 1974. He served as Arafat's advisor on international relations between 1982 and 1994. He won membership in the movement's Central Committee in 1989, and was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council representing Khan Younis in 1996. He chaired the Board of Trustees of Al-Azhar University in Gaza from 2005, and was re-elected to the movement's Central Committee in 2009. He was appointed Commissioner for International Relations in the movement, then head of the Diaspora Affairs Department, and participated in He participated in the reconciliation talks in Cairo in 2011, and President Abbas appointed him as his personal representative in 2020. He was then relieved of his position as head of the Diaspora Affairs Department in the PLO, and became a member of the Board of Trustees of the Yasser Arafat Foundation and Chairman of its Board of Directors between (2021-2022).
Shaath gave lectures and participated in seminars and conferences in Palestine and abroad for many years, addressing the Palestinian issue and its files. He was hosted on various media outlets to talk about the latest developments in the Palestinian issue. He wrote a number of studies, research papers, and articles specializing in the Palestinian issue. He published three books that covered his social, political, and diplomatic life. The title of the first book was: My Life... From the Nakba to the Revolution: An Autobiography (2016). The title of the second book was: From Beirut to Palestine: The Middle East Peace Process (2019). The title of the third book was: Return to the Homeland: An Autobiography and Historical Vision 1994–2001 (2022).
Shaath believed in the democratic state solution, then he began to theorize about the two-state solution. He was one of the main Palestinian figures who played a role in the PLO dialogues with Western countries for many years, and he participated in the negotiations between the PLO and the occupying state, and he was at the head of some of its rounds such as: Wye River, Camp David, Taba, and Gaza-Jericho.
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