Farouk Kaddoumi

Farouk al-Kaddoumi (alternative transliteration, Faruq al-Qaddumi; Arabic: فاروق القدومي‎; born 1931), also known as Abu al-Lutf, has been Secretary-general until 2009 and between 2004 and 2009 Chairman of Fatah's central committee and PLO's political department, operating from Tunisia.

Farouk Kaddoumi was born in the town of Jinsafut near Nablus and later his family moved to Jaffa in present-day Israel. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War they fled to Nablus in the West Bank. For three years in the early 1950s he worked in Saudi Arabia for the Arab-American Petroleum Company (ARAMCO). In 1954 he moved to Egypt and while studying economy and political science at the American University in Cairo, he joined the Baath party.

In 1958, he joined Yasser Arafat and others in forming student groups calling for the liberation of Palestine. Finally, they formed Fatah (Palestinian National Liberation Movement) that was officially declared beginning of 1965. During the time, he was working for the ministry of health of Kuwait but in 1966 was expelled from the country for political activities connected with the PLO. By 1969 he became one of key figures in the PLO and after 1973 he headed its political department in Beirut, Lebanon.

In 1976, Arafat and Kaddoumi met with Meir Vilner and Tawfik Toubi, heads of Rakah (New Communist List), which had developed after the 1965 split in the Israeli Communist Party, and from which Hadash eventually developed. This meeting led to a close cooperation.

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