Palestinians 

Palestinians are people with family origins mainly in Palestine. Their religion is primarily Islam, with Christianity, Judaism, Druze, and other minorities. Today, they are mainly Arabic-speaking. 

Under the Palestine mandate( British Mandate) period from 1918 to 1948, the term "Palestinian" referred to anyone native to Palestine, regardless of their religion; Muslim, Christian, Jew, or Druze. 

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics announced on October 20, 2004 that the number of Palestinians worldwide at the end of 2003 is 9.6 million, an increase of 800,000 since 2001. 

4,255,120 Palestinians are registered as refugees with The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) ; this number includes the descendants of refugees from the 1948 war, but excludes those who have emigrated to areas outside of the UNRWA's remit . Thus, if the estimates above are correct, almost half of all Palestinians are registered refugees.

Palestinian National Authority

Mahmoud Abbas

Mahmoud Abbas was elected President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) on January 9, 2005 and took office on January 15, 2005.

 He is a founding member of Fatah, the largest political party of the PLO. He is married to Amina and has three sons: Mazen, Yaser and Tareq. He has seven grand-children and another on the way. 

Abbas is also known familiarly as Abu Mazen ("Father of Mazen") in accordance with Arabic tradition which often refers to parents as Abu ("Father of') or Um ("Mother of") the first-born son. 

Abbas was born in 1935 in the town of Safad in northeastern Palestine. During Israel's campaign against Palestinian civilians in1948, Abbas and his family, together with most of Safad's Palestinian population, became refugees in Syria - Abbas walking all the way to the Syrian border on the other side of the Jordan River. Abbas worked as a day laborer laying floor tiles and as an elementary school teacher before earning his B.A. in law from the University of Damascus. He later earned a Ph.D. in history from Moscow's Oriental College. 

H.E. President Yasser Arafat

1929-2004

Arafat was born in 1929 to a successful merchant father and a religiously devoted mother. His birth name was Mohammed, but he was quickly nicknamed Yasser, which means "easy." 

As a teenager in the 1940s, Arafat became involved in the Palestinian cause. Before the Arabs were defeated by Israel in 1948, Arafat was a leader in the Palestinian effort to smuggle arms into the territory.After the war, Arafat studied civil engineering at the University of Cairo. He headed the Palestinian Students League and, by the time he graduated, was committed to forming a group that would free Palestine from Israeli occupation. In 1956 he founded Al Fatah, an underground terrorist organization. At first Al Fatah was ignored by larger Arab nations such as Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, which had formed their own group - the Palestine Liberation Organization. It wasn't until the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, when the Arabs lost the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and West Bank, that Arab nations turned to Arafat.

 After the Arab defeat in 1967 and the integration into the PLO of scattered Fedayn movements, Arafat became president of the Executive Committee appointed by the Palestine National Council (PNC) in February 1969 and, thus, chairman of the Organization. He then changed the direction of the PLO from being pan-Arabist to focussing on the Palestinian national cause. In 1973, he was appointed Commander-in-chief of the all-Palestinian/Arab guerilla forces.

 He addressed the UN General Assembly in New-York in November 1974 calling for a peaceful solution for Palestinel.

In 1983, in the turmoil of the Lebanese civil war, he was forced to flee from Beirut to Tunis where the headquarters of the PLO were then established. In November 1988, he proclaimed the independent Palestinian State and was elected by the PNC as the first President of the State of Palestine in April 1989. He lost considerable credibility on the international scene when he appeared to side with Saddam Hussein during the Gulf crisis in 1990.

He had secret negotiations with Israel from 1992 which led to the signing of the Declaration of Principles between PLO and Israel in September 1993 . Since then he has been negotiating with Israel on Palestinian self-rule. Received by the European Parliament in December 1993 (he already was in the Parliament in October 1988 but was not then officially received by the Parliament itself), he insisted Europe be part of the peace process. In 1993 Arafat recognized Israel's right to existence.

On September 13, 1993,  the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn, Prime Minister Rabin ,President Clinton and Chairman Yasser Arafat

 In December 1994, he received together with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres the Nobel Peace Prize. In July 1994, as a consequence of the Oslo agreements, he returned to Gaza where he set up and headed the Palestinian National Authority (PNA)

On Jan. 20,1996 he was elected president of the Palestinian Authority in public elections, with 88% of the votes.

Yasser Arafat the guerrilla leader turned Nobel Peace Prize winner who forced his people's plight into the world spotlight, died November 11,2004 at age 75.

 HAMAS 

The Hamas emblem shows the Dome of the Rock and other the Islamic symbols, Palestinian flags, and a map of the land they claim as Palestine (present-day Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip).

Sheik Ahmed Yassin

In 2006, Hamas became the majority party of the Palestinian Authority Legislative Council , having won a majority of seats in Palestinian elections.

Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, a Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist organization established in 1987. An offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, known as the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, is involved in building schools and hospitals in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and in helping the community in social and religious ways. but is best known in the West for its military wing, which has carried out numerous terrorist attacks on Israelis. The organization opposes the Oslo peace process and its short-term aim is a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories. Hamas does not recognize the right of Israel to exist. Its long-term aim is to establish an Islamic state on land originally mandated as Palestine - most of which has been contained within Israel's borders since its creation in 1948. Hamas opposed the 1993 accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which granted Palestinians gradual limited autonomy in the Gaza Strip (see Gaza) and the West Bank and called for complete Israeli withdrawal from both areas; Hamas claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bombings in Israel beginning in 1993 that were designed to derail the agreement. Hamas supporters have been prominent among those who have challenged the Palestinian National Authority led by Yasir Arafat, and its leaders have been subjected to mass arrests. The organization opposed the 1996 elections held in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank for the Palestinian National Authority but did not call for a boycott; some sympathizers of the group ran as independents. In 1996, Hamas carried out several bus bombings, killing 57 Israelis. It was also blamed for attacks in 1997 in Jerusalem which killed 15 people, and brought the peace process grinding to a halt. Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a founder of Hamas and its spiritual leader, was imprisoned by the Israelis in 1989. Following his release in 1997, Yassin vowed to continue the holy war against Israel.

He was killed by missiles fired from Israeli helicopters as he left a mosque at daybreak on Monday March 22,2004.

In a strike by helicopter gunships, Israel assassinated The new Hamas leader Abdulaziz Rantisi on April 17,2004.

Mahmoud al-Zahar  is a co-founder of Hamas, and is considered one of the current leaders of Hamas.

Since June 2007, after winning a large majority in the Palestinian Parliament and defeating rival Palestinian party Fatah in a series of violent clashes, Hamas has governed the Gaza portion of the Palestinian Territories.

Palestinian Organizations

Source: United States Department of State, CIA Factbook, Yale Law school