BelAhdan with Dr. Hanan Ashrawi

Hanan Mikhail Ashrawi has been called one of the most influential women in the Arab world. A former professor of English literature, Ashrawi is best known for her advocacy of Palestinian self-determination and peace in the Middle East. As a leader in politics and civil society, she has worked tirelessly for an end to the Israeli occupation and for democracy and gender equality in Palestine.

Hanan Mikhail was born on October 8, 1946 in Nablus, Palestine, which is now part of the occupied West Bank. Hanan was the youngest of five daughters in a middle class Christian family. Her mother, Wadia Assad Mikhail, was an ophthalmic nurse and her father, Daoud Mikhail, a physician. In the 1948 war that established Israel, the family fled to Amman, Jordan. Once Jordan had taken control of the West Bank two years later, the Mikhails settled in Ramallah, where Hanan attended a Quaker school for girls. Hanan was inspired to activism by her father, who favored a greater role for women in society and was repeatedly imprisoned by the Jordanian authorities for his activities with the Arab Nationalist Socialist Party and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

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News & Politics

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• Palestinian Israel conflict
• Arab Israeli peace
• Arab American TV