Palestinian politician (1923-1999)
Samiha al-Qubaj Salameh Khalil (Arabic: سميحة خليل; born 1923 in Anabta, Mandatory Palestine – died 26 February 1999 in Ramallah, Palestine), also known as Umm Khalil, was a Palestinian charity worker as well as a prominent figure in Palestinian politics.
Khalil's father was the mayor of Anabta, where she was born.[1] She dropped out of high school at the age of seventeen to marry Salameh Khalil. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the couple fled to Gaza where they raised a family of five children, and in 1964 Samiha finally returned to school and graduated.
In 1965, Khalil came to the public eye when she founded the In'aash al-Usra society in her garage - it would grow to become the largest and most effective Palestinian welfare organization.[2] In 1973 she became the first and only female member of the National Front Committee as well as the National Guidance Committee, to which she was elected in 1979.[3]
During the 1980s, Khalil was tied to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and detained six times by the IDF; she saw two of her children deported from Israel and the other three (who had been out of the country at the time) forbidden from re-entering. She was eventually placed under town-arrest in al-Bireh.
In 1996 she ran for president of the Palestinian Authority, losing to Yasser Arafat, while garnering 11.5% of the vote.[4]
A grandmother of 13, Khalil remained an active member in the political scene, serving on the Palestinian National Council up until her death in 1999.
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