A veteran negotiator and Palestinian architect of the Oslo peace accords, Saeb Erekat died in an Israeli hospital on Tuesday after developing Covid-19.
The 65-year-old secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation died three weeks after being transferred to Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital, where he was immediately put on a ventilator.
"Unfortunately, his condition did not improve and remained critical, and he passed away following multi-organ failure," hospital spokeswoman Hadar Elboim told The National.
“The Hadassah team extends its condolences to his family, admirers, friends and the Palestinian people,” she said. Treating Erekat was particularly challenging as he had a lung transplant in 2017, doctors said.
Erekat, who was central to peace talks over the past three decades, was described as a “great fighter” by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
"Our people will remember the deceased, Dr Saeb Erekat, the son of Palestine, who stood at the forefront defending the causes of his homeland and his people in the fields of the national struggle and in the international arena," Mr Abbas said.
Three days of mourning were declared by the Palestinian government, with flags to be flown at half staff.
Erekat participated in key peace negotiations with Israel, including the 1991 Madrid conference, the Oslo talks of the 1990s, and the Camp David summit in 2000 hosted by then US president Bill Clinton.
He was a vocal critic of Israeli settlement building on occupied land and pushed for a two-state solution with a viable independent Palestinian state.
Such aspirations seemed increasingly out of reach towards the end of Erekat’s life, with Israeli-Palestinian talks stalled and US government policy under President Donald Trump perceived as biased towards Israel.
"Our right to self-determination has been systematically denied by Israel, now with the support of the US," Erekat told The National this year.
The Trump administration has taken a series of controversial steps which broke with decades of international consensus, including recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the US embassy to the city.
“It's our inalienable, sacred, long overdue and internationally recognised right to be free,” said Erekat, who was born in Jerusalem and before he was taken to hospital lived in the West Bank city of Jericho.
He came across as affable and self-deprecating in the Palestine Papers, leaked documents mainly from his own office that chronicled the workings of the negotiations from the 1990s until 2010.
But he was also a central figure in the ageing leadership, which many Palestinians accused of nepotism and failure to see their aspirations realised.
Erekat was nonetheless admired by many at home and abroad. Former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni was among the hundreds who paid tributes.
“Saeb dedicated his life to his people,” she wrote on Twitter. “Being sick, he texted me: ‘I’m not finished with what I was born to do’.”
Ayman Odeh, head of the Arab-led Joint List in Israeli parliament, said Erekat “will not live to see his people freed from the chains of the occupation”.
“But generations of Palestinians will remember him as one of the giants who dedicated his life for their independence.”
There have been more than 70,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the Palestinian Territories and 521 deaths.
Nepotism is the name of the game
Salman Khan’s father, Salim Khan, is one of Bollywood’s most legendary screenwriters. Through his partnership with co-writer Javed Akhtar, Salim is credited with having paved the path for the Indian film industry’s blockbuster format in the 1970s. Something his son now rules the roost of. More importantly, the Salim-Javed duo also created the persona of the “angry young man” for Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s, reflecting the angst of the average Indian. In choosing to be the ordinary man’s “hero” as opposed to a thespian in new Bollywood, Salman Khan remains tightly linked to his father’s oeuvre. Thanks dad.
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Results
Ashraf Ghani 50.64 per cent
Abdullah Abdullah 39.52 per cent
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar 3.85 per cent
Rahmatullah Nabil 1.8 per cent
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
