tOOns MaG

Khalil Abu Arafeh is a political cartoonist at the leading Palestinian newspaper al-Quds. A father of four, Abu Arafeh was born in Jerusalem’s Old City,
the son of an upholsterer who belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood. In the 1980s, the group’s leaders in Gaza founded the Islamic Resistance Movement better known as Hamas, which is now, as the governing party, his primary target as a political cartoonist.

While an architecture student in Kiev, Ukraine, in the early 1980s, Abu Arafeh began sending samples of his cartoons to newspaper editors in the Palestinian territories.

Later he returned home and began working as a cartoonist, first at the now-defunct al-Fajr newspaper, while also practicing architecture. He served 14 months in an Israeli jail for belonging to the outlawed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

After years of focusing on Israel and the occupation, Abu Arafeh has in the last decade taken on the Palestinian leadership.

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