Iran Press/ Middle East: Erekat, a veteran peace negotiator and prominent international spokesman for the Palestinians for more than 30 years, died weeks after testing positive for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
In a statement, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said: “The departure of a brother and a friend, the great fighter, Saeb Erekat, is a great loss for Palestine and our people, and we are deeply saddened.”
The senior Palestinian official’s infection was complicated by a history of health issues. He underwent a lung transplant in 2017 and suffered from a weak immune system and a bacterial infection in addition to COVID-19.
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Saeb Erekat passed away
Erekat witnessed tumultuous events from an early age. He was 12 years old when Israeli tanks rolled into his hometown of Jericho.
In 1967, he witnessed a war that would last just six days, but which shaped the entire Middle East in the decades since. For Erekat, it would inform the decisions he made for the rest of his life.
Erekat said he had to grow up quickly under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. His first arrest at the age of 13 was not his last.
He attended university in the United States and moved to England to complete a PhD in conflict resolution. It was the beginning of his fight for Palestinian statehood through negotiation – advocating a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.
It was a compromise and a major concession. But throughout his life, Israelis would accuse him of being an “extremist” and sowing division, while Palestinians would call him a traitor to the Palestinian cause, giving away too much.
Erekat was one of the Palestinians’ most recognizable faces over the decades, serving as a senior negotiator in talks with Israel and making frequent media appearances. He was also a senior adviser to Arafat and current President Mahmoud Abbas.
But Erekat would rise to become the chief Palestinian negotiator in 1995. Over the years, he resigned from the post several times before eventually being reinstated.
But as Israel imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip the following year, and waged three offensives on the coastal enclave, the chances for an agreement waned.
Erekat described it as the “new dark age” saying leaving the Middle East’s most emotive conflict unresolved was simply fueling a regional descent into chaos and violence.
He turned his attention to the United Nations and was instrumental in the successful campaign to gain observer status for the State of Palestine within the UN. It was part of a strategy to force Israel to face trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) as an occupying force.
In August, Erekat was among the most critical voices of the US-sponsored “normalization deals”, which saw the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain establish full ties with Israel. He described the deal as “the birth of Arab Zionism”, accused the US, the UAE and Israeli leaders of “killing the two-state solution” and called the agreement “a poisoned dagger stabbed into the Palestinians’ back”.
Erekat fought for a deal between Israelis and Palestinians for decades, but in his last few years was fighting his own battle – lung disease kept at bay by an experimental drug. Eventually, he would need a transplant of both lungs, a dangerous condition for patients with coronavirus, to which he eventually succumbed.
In 2007 he said he would hate to be a grandfather living under Israeli occupation. He was not able to change that.
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