Hanan Asrawi is appointed to the advisory…
July 1991 CE
Hanan Asrawi is appointed to the advisory committee to the Palestinian delegation, and serves as its official spokeswoman, to the new international Middle East peace initiative announced in mid-1991 by U.S. President George Bush.
Asrawi, née Mikhail, the youngest daughter of a prominent physician, who was a founder of the PLO, grew up in an Anglican family.
In the late 1960s, Ashrawi joined the General Union of Palestinian Students while attending the American University in Beirut, where she completed a master's degree.
Unable to return to her hometown after the occupation of the West Bank by Israel during the Six-Day War (1967), she later earned a doctorate in English literature from the University of Virginia.
Upon her return to Ram Allah in 1973, she had joined the faculty of Birzeit University as a professor of medieval and comparative literature and served as dean of the School of Arts until the Israeli army closed the university in 1988 after the outbreak of the intifadah.
Though Ashrawi has long been a supporter of the PLO, it is during the Intifada that she will becomeprominent internationally through frequent appearances as a guest commentator on American television news programs, on which she will present articulate appeals to the world to recognize Palestinian rights.