Al-Quds al-Arabi was founded in April 1989 as the international edition of the Palestinian daily
al-Quds and is based in the
Hammersmith district of
London. While the initial funding was reportedly provided by the
Palestine Liberation Organization, the paper then received support from a variety of political circles in the Arab world, including
Iraq and
Sudan, before the Qatari government began to subsidise it, possibly as early as 1998. The
fatāwā of Osama bin Laden in 1996 were first published by the paper. On the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Atwan wrote: "The events of 11 September will be remembered as the end of the
US empire. This is because all empires collapse when they pursue the arrogance of power." However, Atwan explicitly condemned terrorist attacks on innocent Western civilians, as he wrote in one of his two books, ''The Secret History of al Qa'ida'': "I do not endorse or in any way support al-Qaeda's agenda" and "I utterly condemn the attacks on innocent citizens in the West". The paper later published and vouched for the credibility of letters from the alleged successor group to al-Qaeda, the
Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, active until 2005. Atwan unexpectedly left the paper as its chairman and editor-in-chief on 10 July 2013 and Sana Aloul became the editor-in-chief. The exact reason for Atwan's sudden departure isn't publicly known, but he stated: "We had on-going and never-ending financial problems whose resolution, ultimately, required political compromises that I was not able to make. Sacrificing professional integrity, our independent editorial line and the space we allowed for free comment were red lines I could not cross." ==Organization==