Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, declared victory in this week's elections for Palestinian Authority chairman, replacing former leader Yasser Arafat, who died in November 2004.
Abbas was elected leader of Fatah after the death of Arafat. He emerged as the leading candidate to succeed Arafat as the president of the Palestinian Authority and urged Palestinians to pursue peaceful means in their uprising against Israelis and promised to renew peace talks with Israel if elected.
In March 2003, Abbas was appointed prime minister by the late President Arafat. At the 11th hour, Arafat reluctantly approved Abbas' cabinet in April, paving the way for the U.S. to restart the long-stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. As prime minister, Abbas oversaw domestic matters, while Arafat handled foreign relations. Abbas enjoyed close ties with Israeli and American officials.
Before being named Prime Minister, Abbas led the PLO's Negotiations Affairs Department. He served as Prime Minister of the PA from March to October 2003 when he resigned amid a power struggle with Arafat.
He was one of the first Palestinian leaders to recognize Israel and co-wrote, with Israeli justice minister Yossi Beilin, a power-sharing plan for Jerusalem. In June 2004, Abbas and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon agreed to begin implementing the so-called "road map to peace", but a series of suicide attacks on Israeli targets by Palestinians and the assassination of Hamas leaders by Israeli troops thwarted any real progress. Abbas resigned in September, saying Sharon and Arafat had undermined his government.
Abbas was born in 1935 in Safed, then part of the British Mandate of Palestine. After the creation of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent occupation of the rest of the former Mandate by Jordan and Egypt, Abbas left for Syria, where he taught school and graduated from the University of Damascus, before going to Egypt, where he studied law.
Abbas is one of the few surviving founder members of Fatah - the main political grouping within the PLO. Arriving in Qatar during the late 1950s, he helped recruit a group of Palestinians to the cause.
He co-founded Fatah with Arafat and accompanied him into exile in Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia. In the early days of the movement, he became respected for his clean and simple living.
Abbas became a successful fundraiser for the PLO and took on an important security role in the early 1970s, before being appointed head of the PLO's department for national and international relations in 1980.
Subsequently, Abbas entered graduate studies at the Oriental College in Moscow, where he earned a Ph.D. in history. In 1982, Abbas wrote a doctoral dissertation, referring to so-called "Holocaust deniers", claiming secret ties between the Nazis and the Zionist movement. In 1984, a book based on Abbas' doctoral dissertation was published in Arabic by Dar Ibn Rushd publishers in Jordan. His doctoral thesis later became a book, which, following his appointment as Palestinian Prime Minister in 2003, was strongly slammed by some Jewish groups.
In his book, Abbas raised doubts that gas chambers were used for the extermination of Jews, and suggested that the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust was "less than a million."
Widely regarded as the architect of the Oslo peace process, Abbas accompanied Arafat to the White House in 1993 to sign the Oslo Accords.
