Top Palestinian peace negotiator had COVID
JERUSALEM — Long after peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel broke down, Saeb Erekat continued to be referred to as the Palestinians’ chief negotiator. His title was testament both to a certain unassailable status he held in the history of his people — and the stasis of the cause.
Arguably the most internationally recognized Palestinian figure for decades, after Yasser Arafat, Erekat helped craft the landmark Oslo peace accords in 1993 that opened the path to normal relations — since collapsed — and that won Israeli and Palestinian leaders a Nobel Prize.
Charismatic and articulate, he defended the Palestinian plea for land, recognition and statehood from the halls of the United Nations to the studios of the U. S. cable TV shows.
Erekat died Tuesday at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital, where he was under care after contracting COVID19. He was already in poor health, having undergone a lung transplant in the U. S. in 2017. He was 65. Erekat’s smooth, slightly lilting English and round bespectacled face made him an appealing figure to many audiences. He was instrumental in ushering the reputation of the Palestine Liberation Organization from that of a terrorist group of airplane hijackers in the 1970s to a legitimate governing body ready and willing to build a nation.
Erekat’s critics among rightwing Israelis believed he whitewashed the Palestinian struggle for freedom, which often included terrible violence. Critics within his own Palestinian world often attacked him for not going far enough in pressing for concessions from Israel or the international community.
For many Palestinians, he lacked the street credentials that those who were active in the armed struggle possessed. That hurt him with much of the rank and file.
Aaron David Miller, one of the United States’ most experienced negotiators in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, said Erekat possessed a talent of communication and attention to detail that Arafat could not find in his other lieutenants.