MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-11-10 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] COVID-19 Deaths and politics
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Saeb Erekat, Veteran Palestinian Peace Negotiator With Israel, Dies at 65
Saeb Erekat, Veteran Palestinian Peace Negotiator With Israel, Dies at 65
Felicia Schwartz
9-11 minutes
Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian leader and decadeslong peace negotiator with
Israel who fiercely criticized the Trump administration’s efforts to
broker an accord as one-sided, has died, his Fatah party said.
Mr. Erekat was 65 years old and died on Tuesday from Covid-19, according
to a spokesperson at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem where he was being
treated. He contracted the coronavirus in October.
Mr. Erekat received a lung transplant in 2017, which put him at
especially high risk of complications from Covid-19, the disease caused
by the virus. He was transferred last month to Hadassah Hospital, where
he was put on a ventilator, according to a hospital spokesperson.
Mr. Erekat helped lead decades of failed efforts to solve the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He also, along with 84-year-old
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, was part of an aging leadership
that has struggled to build strong independent institutions to support
an independent Palestinian state.
Mr. Abbas on Tuesday declared a three-day period of mourning for Mr.
Erekat and lauded him as a central figure in the Palestinian national
movement.
“Palestine today bids farewell to this patriotic leader and the great
fighter who played a big role in raising the banner of Palestine high
and defending the rights of our people,” Mr. Abbas said.
Former diplomats said Mr. Erekat could be willful and stubborn, but
truly believed that there was a diplomatic path to a durable peace, even
as it appeared to grow more remote. Since the Oslo Accords of the
1990s—in which Israel recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization
as the sole representative of the Palestinian people and the PLO
recognized Israel’s right to exist—the sides have stumbled in
negotiations and clashed over the expansion of Israeli settlements in
territory the Palestinians claim as part of a future state and other
final status issues.
Mr. Erekat, left, attended the 30th Arab Summit in 2019 with Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas in Tunis, Tunisia.
Photo: Fethi Belaid/Press Pool
“He ascribed to a view in fact that there was a logical rational
solution to the conflict that could be achieved through negotiations and
could meet the needs of both sides,” said Aaron David Miller, a former
American peace negotiator who has known Mr. Erekat since the 1980s. “As
the prospect of negotiations worsened and as people have abandoned the
two-state solution, Erekat clung to it.”
Tzipi Livni, a former Israeli foreign minister and negotiator who spent
many years across the table from Mr. Erekat, said he texted her while
sick saying “I’m not finished with what I was born to do.” Ms. Livni
said Mr. Erekat “dedicated his life to his people.”
Mr. Erekat initially held out hope that a newly elected President Trump
would forge the “deal of the century” that he had promised as a
candidate. He said he had met with Trump administration officials 37
times. But at the end of 2017, Mr. Trump dashed those hopes by
recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital and later moving the
American Embassy there despite Palestinian claims of East Jerusalem as
the capital of their future state.
The Trump administration added to what the Palestinians said were
indignities, including slashing aid and closing their office in
Washington. When the U.S. administration’s peace plan was released in
January, Mr. Erekat was one of the most visible officials to reject it,
in particular the extent to which Israel would maintain control over
Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Mr. Erekat described the Trump administration’s approach to peacemaking
as squeezing the Palestinians to advance Israel’s positions. “It’s not a
building in New York,” he said, referring to Mr. Trump’s real-estate
dealings. “This is the lives of Israelis and Palestinians.”
In 2016, Mr. Erekat welcomed then-Vice President Joe Biden in the West
Bank city of Ramallah.
Photo: abbas momani/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
With the Trump administration’s support, Israel continued to take steps
that Mr. Erekat and other Palestinian officials said would make a
two-state solution impossible. Among them, Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu pledged to annex parts of the occupied West Bank with U.S.
support. Israel later suspended the effort—but didn’t cancel it—as part
of peace agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to
recognize Israel sovereignty and establish direct transport and
communication links.
The normalization deals were a further blow to the Palestinians, who had
long counted on Arab states’ resistance to forging relations with Israel
to pressure the Israelis to make concessions.
In a self-indictment of his role as a peace negotiator, Mr. Erekat said
his contacts with the Trump team had failed. “I’m one of the ones who
promised the Palestinians that once we recognize Israel, once we
renounce violence, once we accept the two-state solution, once we
negotiate, we’re going to have our independence,” he said in a May
briefing with reporters. “A person like me would have to be quarantined
in this room forever because I’d be shameless to go and face any
Palestinian outside...I am not shameless.”
Born in Jerusalem, Mr. Erekat grew up in the West Bank city of Jericho
as one of seven children. He followed an older brother to study in San
Francisco, later receiving undergraduate and masters degrees there and
later a doctorate in England in peace-and-conflict studies. He worked as
a professor in the West Bank and then as a journalist and opinion writer
for the West Bank daily Al Quds newspaper.
Mr. Erekat, center, and Yasser Arafat met with President Clinton at the
Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland during a Middle East peace
summit in 2000.
Photo: David Scull/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
He entered politics when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat asked him to
join the Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid conference that set
the scene for later direct contacts with Israel. He was chief
Palestinian negotiator at the Oslo Accords, which called for the
establishment of a Palestinian interim government for a five-year
transitional period, the withdrawal of Israeli troops and negotiations
for a permanent settlement.
Mr. Erekat’s death comes as fewer Palestinian officials believe in the
possibility of a negotiated solution with Israel.
With the incoming Biden administration, Palestinian officials are
looking for ways to restart contacts with Washington.
Instead of negotiations with Israel, Palestinian officials are now more
likely to focus on expanding their presence in international
institutions as well as promoting calls for foreign divestment from
Israel and international academic, cultural and economic boycotts,
according to Diana Buttu, a former Palestinian peace negotiator.
Mr. Erekat spoke at a news conference in Ramallah in 2018 beneath a
banner depicting late leader Yasser Arafat and Mr. Abbas set against a
Palestinian flag.
Photo: abbas momani/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
“Nobody wants to state the obvious any longer, which is that
negotiations aren’t working,” said Ms. Buttu, who worked with Mr. Erekat
in the 2000s. “With his passing, that’s the end of the project.”
—Dov Lieber contributed to this article.
Write to Felicia Schwartz at Felicia.Schwartz-at-wsj.com
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