Biography
Mahmoud Abbas was born in Safed in Galilee. He and his family fled to Syria during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He graduated from the University of Damascus before going to Egypt where he studied law.
Abbas later entered graduate studies at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where he earned a Candidate of Sciences degree (the Soviet equivalent of a PhD). The theme of his doctoral dissertation was "The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism".
He is married to Amina Abbas and they have had three sons. The eldest, Mazen Abbas, ran a building company in Doha and died in Qatar of a heart attack in 2002 at the age of 42. The kunya of Abu Mazen means "father of Mazen". Their second son is Yasser Abbas, a Canadian businessman who was named after former PA leader Yasser Arafat. The youngest son is Tareq, a business executive.
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