page_title: Mahmoud Abbas
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Mahmoud Abbas / Personal life
context_page_description: Mahmoud Abbas, also known by the kunya Abu Mazen, is the President of the State of Palestine and Palestinian National Authority. He has been the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization since 11 November 2004, and Palestinian president since 15 January 2005. Abbas is a member of the Fatah party and was elected Chairman of Fatah in 2009.
  Abbas was elected on 9 January 2005 to serve as President of the Palestinian National Authority until 15 January 2009, but extended his term until the next election in 2010, citing the PLO constitution, and on 16 December 2009 was voted into office indefinitely by the PLO Central Council. As a result, Fatah's main rival, Hamas, initially announced that it would not recognize the extension or view Abbas as the rightful president. Yet, Abbas is internationally recognized and Hamas and Fatah conducted numerous negotiations in the following years, leading to an agreement in April 2014 over a Unity Government, which lasted until October 2016, and therefore to the recognition of his office by Hamas.
context_section_description: Mahmoud Abbas was born in 15 November 1935 in Safed, in the Galilee region of Mandatory Palestine (now Israel). His family fled to Syria during the 1948 Palestine war. Before going to Egypt, Abbas graduated from the University of Damascus, 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). His doctoral dissertation was "The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism".
  He is married to Amina Abbas and they had three sons. The eldest, Mazen Abbas, ran a building company in Doha and died in Qatar of a heart attack in 2001 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. Abbas has eight grandchildren, six of whom are part of the Seeds of Peace initiative bringing them in touch with young Israelis.
caption: Abbas with President of the United States George W. Bush and Prime Minister of Israel Ariel Sharon at the Red Sea Summit in Aqaba, Jordan, 4 June 2003
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