Hasib Sabbagh

Hasib Sabbagh
Born	1920 Tiberias, Palestine
Died	January 12, 2010
Nationality	Palestinian

Hasib Sabbagh (Arabic: حسيب الصباغ‎‎), (also spelled Hassib) (1920 – 12 January 2010) was a Palestinian businessman, activist, and philanthropist.

Sabbagh came from a Palestinian Christian family in Safed in Palestine, although he was born in Tiberias. He graduated from the Arab College of Jerusalem in 1938, and in 1941 gained a civil engineering degree from the American University of Beirut.

Sabbagh attended the Government Arab College of Jerusalem, which only the top public school students in Palestine attended. It was headed by Ahmad Samih al-Khalidi and staffed by some of the finest teachers in the Arab world. It was a boarding school with regimental discipline, where the highest standards were set for the students. They were expected to study night and day, and were allowed only one day off for sports and other recreation. It was there that he established some of the friendships that have lasted to this day.

In 1938 Sabbagh enrolled at the American University of Beirut, as a sophomore, in the college of engineering; attending AUB was to be one of the more significant experiences of his life. Not only was he being trained for his future profession, but he was also exposed to a rich and varied political life. AUB students came from throughout the Arab world, and represented many political currents: there were the Syrian nationalists, followers of Antun Sa'adeh, the communists led by Khalid Bikdash, the Arab nationalists whose ideologue was Professor Constantine Zureik of AUB, and the Arab Ba‘thists who adhered to Michel ‘Aflaq’s ideas.

Sabbagh died on 12 January 2010 after a long illness.

In 1970, Sabbagh met Yasser Arafat, chairman of the PLO, at the house of a mutual friend, Abdul Majid Shoman, in Beirut. Since that time, he developed a close relationship with Arafat and other members of the PLO leadership. Sabbagh, Basel Aql, and Walid Khalidi became intermediaries between the PLO and the Lebanese government, trying to inform and explain the complexity of Lebanese confessional politics to Arafat and his colleagues and interceding on behalf of Palestinian refugees with the Lebanese authorities. It was the Lebanese civil war, however, that made Sabbagh an activist — an activist for peace and reconciliation between the various Lebanese parties and between the Palestinians and the Lebanese.

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