JN1's Ron Jacobsohn paints a portrait of Mahmoud Abbas for his 79th Birthday

Ron Jacobsohn, JN1 Correspondent: This week Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is celebrating his seventy-ninth birthday and later in the year it will be his tenth year as the head of the Palestinian Authority. So we went to talk to some people who know him intimately to find what we don't know about him and does he have within him what it takes to be the one leader to make the peace between the Palestinians and the Israeli's. Dr. Ghassan Abdallah, the director of the Center for Applied Research in Education in Ramallah has met Abbas for the first time when both their families fled after the establishment of the state of Israel, at a refugee camp. Dr. Ghassan Abdallah, Director, Center for Applied Research in Education (CARE): "He is a person with whom you feel relaxed with from the first time you meet, because his eyes and his face does say that he is honest. You can see he is an independent person, he is reliable person and he is a person who likes always to be straight forward and without going around here and there. He is ready to reach a peace agreement, a peace compromise and this is not because he is a heroic person its is because he has a clear vision of what he wants for his people." Shai Gal, who is one of the senior correspondents at Channel 2 News in Israel conducted recently in in-depth expose about the leader of the Palestinian Authority. Shai Gal, Correspondent, Channel 2 News: "We as Israeli's do not know enough, you know, about the Palestinian leader, and that's quite surprising because he has been there for 9-years and we really don't know enough about who is Abu Mazen, what does he want? He was never a terrorist, he was never involved in terror himself. Sometimes Israeli's tend to, you know, look at him as, you know, he is not a really charismatic leader but he is controlling the Palestinian Authority for almost 10-years, and that's even longer than Arafat. So maybe he is not the ever mighty leader that we wish he would be but he is definitely a very serious player in the Palestinian side." The former Israeli Minister of Justice, Yossi Beilin, will go down in history as the man behind the famous Oslo Accords, which started the negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis back in 1993, but preceding those talks were the the Beilin-Abu Mazen Papers, which he personally created with Abbas at the time. The two have stayed close over the years. Yossi Beilin, President, Beilink: "Mahmud Abbas is a human being who can also laugh at himself, this is quite a rare characteristic especially for a politician. He has a nice sense of humor. He does not try to portray himself as a charismatic leader, apparently he knows that he is not, and for him the campaign for the presidency was a kind of a shock treatment because he was not ready for that. For Abu Mazen to run this was not obvious, he had a rival, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, who is a very serious person, very appreciated And then he went to the different meetings in the campaign he used to look at himself from the outside and say: "is it me, really talking, really saying these slogans?" and then people would become very enthusiastic about what he said and would like to come to him at the end of the speech." So the challenge that is waiting for him, at the age of 79, is not very simple. I think that Abu Mazen is able to bring his to the moment of signing an agreement with Israel, not necessarily because he is so popular but because the people are ready." Not a whole lot is known about Mahmoud Abbas's personal life. He is seldom seen in public with any of his family members something that is probably very rare in the Facebook-Instagram world. He has been married for over four decades to Amina and they have had three sons. Dr. Ghassan Abdallah, Director, Center for Applied Research in Education (CARE): "He is married and he has a family, and as far as I hear from people, he is very very loyal to his family and his children are independent and they do not interfere in politics, they do not interfere in his work and I understand that he has a lovely grandson that he is thinking care of." And this is what Abbas's former colleague, Nabil Shaath, who served as the Palestinian Prime Minister had to say about Abbas's birthday. Nabil Shaath, fmr. Palestinian Prime Minister: "I really wish very much that Abu Mazen succeeds in making peace to celebrate his birthday." Ron Jacobsohn, JN1 Correspondent: The complexity of making peace with the Jewish State by far exceeds Abbas's personal will to be the one to sign the dotted line at the peace accords, the question now is as he is pushing eighty, will he be able the one who will make that bold move, which will put him down in the history books as a great leader that was bold enough to do the impossible. For JN1 I am Ron Jacobsohn in Jerusalem.