COVID-19

Top Palestinian official Erekat dies of COVID-19

Agence France-Presse

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Top Palestinian official Erekat dies of COVID-19

CHIEF NEGOTIATOR. Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization and chief Palestinian negotiator, speaks during a press conference in the Palestinian West Bank city of Ramallah on November 19, 2019.

File photo by Abbas Momani/AFP

An academic and author whose perfect command of English was often spiced with humor, Saeb Erekat was part of every team to negotiate with Israel since 1991

Palestine Liberation Organization secretary general and chief negotiator Saeb Erekat died Tuesday, November 10, of coronavirus complications at the age of 65, the Palestinian president’s office said.

A lung transplant recipient who suffered from pulmonary fibrosis, “Saeb Erekat died at Hadassah Hospital” in Jerusalem, where he had been admitted on October 18, president Mahmud Abbas’s office said.

Hadassah hospital said Erekat “passed away in the intensive care unit,” where he had been in critical condition for several weeks.

Born in Jerusalem in 1955, Erekat lived in the biblical town of Jericho in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

An academic and author whose perfect command of English was often spiced with humor, Erekat was part of every team to negotiate with Israel since 1991, with the notable exception of the delegation that secretly hammered out the Oslo accords of 1993.

Growing up in the shadow of Israel’s crushing victory over its Arab neighbors in the Six-Day War of 1967, he dedicated much of his life to seeking a resolution to the conflict.

But he watched despairingly as the two-state solution that he long worked for was increasingly undermined by Israeli settlement expansion, sporadic violence, stalled peace efforts and Palestinian divisions. – Rappler.com

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