Hanan Ashrawi -- eloquent, tough Palestinian spokeswoman
By Mona Eltahawy
08/06/98

JERUSALEM, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Hanan Ashrawi, who resigned from Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's cabinet on Thursday, is known as a tough and articulate spokeswoman of the Palestinian cause and a role model for many Palestinian women.

She is also renowned for fearlessly taking stands against the veteran Palestinian leader and advocating democratic development in the West Bank and Gaza.

Ashrawi, a professor of English literature, made an international name for herself as the spokeswoman for the Palestinian delegation to the historic Arab-Israeli peace talks launched in Madrid in 1991.

Ever since, she has been a leading voice of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and a crusader for human rights who has challenged both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities.

Running as an independent, Ashrawi won a seat in the first Palestinian self-rule elections in 1996 for the 88-seat Palestinian Legislative Council created under an interim Israeli-Palestinian peace accord.

A leading Palestinian Christian, she was one of only 28 women among the 676 candidates.

Arafat offered Ashrawi a ministerial post in the nascent Palestinian Authority but she initially turned it down, saying she would rather manage a human rights watchdog group to monitor the Authority.

She later succumbed and gained the approval of lawmakers in June 1996 as minister of higher education.

In a long-awaited cabinet reshuffle demanded by lawmakers over alleged Palestinian Authority corruption and misrule, Arafat on Wednesday moved Ashrawi to the Tourism Ministry.

Ashrawi and other lawmakers derided the shake-up, which failed to remove ministers accused in an official auditors' report last year, as insufficient.

It was not the first time she handed Arafat her resignation. In December 1993, Ashrawi quit her post as Palestinian spokeswoman amid media reports she doubted Arafat's commitment to democracy and personal freedom.

In August 1993, at the height of crucial peace negotiations with Israel, Ashrawi and two other leading members of the Palestinian delegation threatened to resign unless they won a greater role in decision-making.

Last February, she quit her position on the committee preparing the West Bank town of Bethlehem for the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus.

That resignation came days after her organising committee was replaced by a panel headed by Arafat, who has named another Christian Palestinian, Nabil Qassis, as the minister of state for the so-called Bethlehem 2000 project.

Some Palestinian observers say Ashrawi was upset at receiving a tourism portfolio that did not include the Bethlehem 2000 project, the flagship of the Palestinian tourism sector.

Ashrawi was born in 1946 to a Christian family. She lives in Ramallah in the West Bank and taught English at the West Bank's Bir Zeit University.

She was studying at the American University of Beirut when Israel occupied the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East war.

Ashrawi said on Thursday she would stay on as a lawmaker to continue to serve her people.