SAEB EREKAT, LONGTIME PALESTINIAN SPOKESMAN, DIES OF COVID AT 65

Saeb Erekat, a veteran peace negotiator and prominent international spokesman for the Palestinians for more than three decades, died on November 10, 2020, weeks after being infected by the coronavirus. He was 65. 

The American-educated Erekat was involved in nearly every round of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians going back to the landmark Madrid conference in 1991. Over the years, he was a constant media presence. He tirelessly argued for a negotiated two-state solution to the decades-old conflict, defended the Palestinian leadership and blamed Israel — particularly hardline leader Benjamin Netanyahu — for the failure to reach an agreement, Joseph Krauss reported for the Associated Press (AP). 

As a loyal aide to Palestinian leaders — first Yasser Arafat and then Mahmoud Abbas — Erekat clung to this strategy until his death, even as hopes for Palestinian statehood sank to new lows. Erekat earned a BA and MA in international relations from San Francisco State University and later completed a doctorate at the University of Bradford in the UK, where he focused on conflict resolution. Erekat also held US citizenship. 

In the weeks leading up to his death in an Israeli hospital, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain had normalized ties with Israel, breaking with the long-held Arab position that a deal on Palestinian statehood must precede normalization. Abbas and members of his inner circle, including Erekat, found themselves internationally sidelined and deeply unpopular among Palestinians. And decades of unfettered Israeli settlement expansion had made a statehood deal based on the partition of territory increasingly unlikely. Erekat died at the Hadassah Medical Center, the Israeli hospital where he was brought in critical condition last month. He had received a lung transplant in the US in 2017 and was at especially high risk from the virus.