He attended primary school in Gaza; secondary education as a boarder at the Arab College in Jerusalem and graduated in 1936.

During this period he worked closely with the Quakers [citation needed], who provided humanitarian relief for the refugees until UNRWA was established in 1951.

[3] He was also a delegate to the first all-Palestinian conference (Palestinian National Council) which convened in Jerusalem in 1964 and helped establish the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

He was later temporarily detained by Israel, suspected of support for the military activities of George Habash's new guerilla faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an offshoot of the Arab Nationalist Movement.

Deported again on September 12, 1970, this time to Lebanon for two months, along with five other prominent members of the Gazan leadership, in retaliation for a PFLP hijacking.

[5] During the First Intifada in May 1988 he was one of three Palestinians (the others were Saeb Erekat and Hanan Ashrawi) to participate in Nightline's Town Hall meeting from Jerusalem.

It was the first time that Palestinians and high ranking PLO members had directly addressed Israeli and Western audiences.

He broke with the Palestinian negotiating team over the Oslo peace agreement over the question of the Israeli settlements.

In 1996, he was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) with the highest number of votes as member for Gaza.

He resigned as a deputy in the PLC in late 1997 to protest what he described at the time as the failure to deal with corruption in the Palestinian Authority.