Leila Shahid

Biography

Leila Shahid (born in Beirut in 1949) is a Palestinian diplomat. She was the first woman ambassador of Palestine, serving the PLO in Ireland in 1989, in The Netherlands in 1990, then serving the PA in France where she had taken office in Paris in 1993. From 2006 to 2014, she was the General Delegate of Palestine to the EU, Belgium and Luxembourg.

She is the daughter of Munib Shahid and Serene Husseini Shahid and thus related to the Al-Husayni clan. Shahid's parents were from Acre and Jerusalem, but she grew up with her two sisters in exile in Lebanon. After studying anthropology and psychology at the American University of Beirut, Leila worked in the Palestinian refugee camps until 1974 whe...