International
Palestinian Leader Farouk Qaddoumi Passes Away
Sudan Events – Agencies
Farouk Qaddoumi (Abu Lutuf), a member of the Central Committee of the Fatah movement and the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), passed away on Thursday in the Jordanian capital, Amman, at the age of 93.
Qaddoumi was known for his leadership of the PLO’s political department, a position he held since 1973, and for his staunch opposition to the Oslo Accords.
In his tribute to the late leader, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said, “I mourn the great national and historical leader, one of the founding leaders of Fatah and the contemporary Palestinian revolution, the fighter Farouk Rafiq Asaad Qaddoumi.”
Farouk Qaddoumi was born in 1931 in Nablus in the West Bank, and later migrated with his family to Haifa in 1948 before returning to Nablus. He attended primary and secondary school in Jaffa, and in 1954, he enrolled at the American University in Cairo, where he completed his studies in economics and political science.
Qaddoumi held various positions in several Arab countries. After graduating from the American University, he worked with the Libyan Reconstruction Council, then at the Ministry of Oil in Saudi Arabia, and later at the Ministry of Health in Kuwait.
Early in his political career, Qaddoumi joined the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party in the 1940s. During his studies in Egypt, he met the late leader Yasser Arafat (Abu Ammar) and Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), and together, they founded the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) in the late 1950s, alongside Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) and Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen).
Qaddoumi became a member of the PLO Executive Committee in 1969, a member of the Palestinian National Council, and head of the PLO’s Political Department in 1973. He also served as the head of the PLO’s Foreign Affairs Department in 1989 and contributed to developing the PLO’s relations with Arab countries, the former Soviet Union, and many other nations worldwide.
He was among the PLO leaders who left Beirut for Tunisia in 1983 after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
