Shafiq al-Hout

Shafiq al-Hout, also spelled Shafik al-Hut, was a Palestinian politician and writer. Born in Jaffa, he and his family fled to Beirut at the onset of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. There, al-Hout became a journalist at Al Hawadeth magazine. Using it as a platform, he founded the Palestine Liberation Front in 1961 and later became a founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. He remained a senior member of the organization, representing it in Lebanon and the United Nations General Assembly. Initially a close aide to Yasser Arafat, al-Hout resigned from his position on the PLO Executive Committee, in protest of Arafat's signing of the Oslo Accords.