Suha Arafat was born on 17 July 1963, in the West Bank in
1963 into an affluent Christian family who lived in Nablus
and then Ramallah (both cities under Jordanian authority at
the time). Suha's father Daoud Tawil, an Oxford-educated
banker, was born in Jaffa (now part of Tel-Aviv). Suha's
mother, Raymonda Hawa Tawil, born in Acre, was a
politically-active Palestinian militant, poet and writer.
Suha attended a convent school, Rosary Sisters' School, in
Beit Hanina, Jerusalem and the Sorbonne in Paris. As a
student, Suha was a leader in the General Union of Palestine
Students in France, where she organized demonstrations for
the Palestinian cause.
Suha, her mother, and her sisters met Arafat for the first
time in 1985. When he visited France in 1989, she acted as
an interpreter at the meetings with visitors and French
government officials. Soon after his departure from Paris,
Arafat asked Suha to come and work with him in Tunisia
(where the Palestinian Liberation Organization had set up a
haven).
Suha married Arafat on July 17, 1990, when she was aged 27
and he was 61. At the time of their marriage, she was a
Greek Orthodox Christian. Their only child, daughter Zahwa,
was born on July 24, 1995 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. As
Arafat was dying in Paris in 2004, she accompanied him in
his hospital room and was instructed to talk to him in an
attempt to bring him out of his coma. He died November 11,
2004.
