Rawhi Fattouh

Rawhi Fattouh (روحي فتوح), born in 1950 in the Rafah refugee camp, was elected to Fatah’s Central Committee in 2016. He has been a member of the Palestinian National Council (PNC) since 1983. In February 2020 he was elected PNC speaker, replacing Salim Zanoun. In this capacity, he also chairs the Palestinian Central Council (PCC).

Fattouh was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in 1996 and served as its speaker between 2004-2006. In 2003, he was appointed by then-prime minister Ahmad Qurei as PA minister of agriculture.

After Yasser Arafat’s death in 2004, he served as the interim PA president for two months until the election of Mahmoud Abbas in January 2005. In 2006, he became Abbas’ personal representative.

In 2008, he was caught at the Allenby border crossing with 3,000 mobile phones in his car which he was allegedly smuggling from Jordan to the West Bank thanks to his Israeli-issued VIP pass. The incident reportedly infuriated Abbas.

Fattouh was previously a member of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) in Syria. After the 1967 war, he moved to Jordan and joined Fatah’s armed wing, “al-Asifah”, and received military training in Iraq. He became a member of Fatah’s Commission for Popular Organisation in the 1980s, and a member of its Revolutionary Council in 1989. Within Fatah, he heads the party’s international foreign affairs commission.