Abdullah Franji

Born in Beersheba on 15 Nov. 1943; fled with his family to Gaza during the Nakba, and from there to Cairo during the 1956 Suez crisis; studied Medicine and Politics in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, from 1963-73; Fateh member since the mid-1960s; in 1967 he moves to Algeria, where he receives partisan training; soon after he is arrested in Hebron; upon his release returned to Germany; co-founder of the General Union of Palestinian Students and Workers in Europe; President of the Confederation of Palestinian Students in the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria from 1968-73; following the 1972 Munich attack he was - together with some 300 other Palestinians - expelled from Germany; elected PNC member since 1972; returned to Germany and worked at the Arab League office in Bonn in the mid-1970s; also helped establishing a Palestine Information Office in Bonn which functioned as unofficial PLO representation; was elected member of the Fateh Revolutionary Council since 1978; became in 1982 head of the PLO delegation to Austria and permanent PLO representative to UNIDO in Vienna (until 1985); elected to the Fateh Central Committee in 1989, with the assignment to advise Pres. Yasser Arafat on European affairs; since 1993 head of the General PLO Delegation to Germany; since 1998, member of the PLO Central Council; Fateh leader in Gaza; has authored The PLO and Palestine - Past and Presence (Frankfurt, 1982).