He will not have had time to savor the victory of Joe Biden and the return to power of the Democrats he knew well and treated as friends. At 65, Saeb Erakat was far from being the oldest Palestinian leader, but his lungs were sick; the Covid-19 took him away on Tuesday, November 10, at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, where he had been treated since mid-October. The Palestinian chief negotiator disappears just as the sky seemed to want to clear: After his dreams were meticulously butchered by the Trump administration, the White House was preparing to welcome a new tenant, ready to resuscitate, even artificially, the peace process he cherished so much.
Despite the tributes, three days of national mourning and the words of President Mahmoud Abbas who “Cry” the “Departure of a brother and a friend”, nothing removes the unpleasant feeling of failure that leaves “Doctor Saëb”, as his advisers nicknamed him. After more than twenty-seven years walking the corridors of hotels and chanceries, the diplomat died without an independent Palestinian state emerging alongside Israel.
Lately, he himself noted with bitterness the extent of the sacrifices made in vain. “Today, members of my own family refuse to shake my hand. Among the population, there are also some who refuse to greet me because I recognized the State of Israel ”, he confessed in June in an interview with the magazine Point, as the Jewish state threatened to annex part of the occupied West Bank, with Washington’s blessing. With Tzipi Livni, his Israeli negotiating partner, he even has a pithy formula when he knows he is sick: “I haven’t finished this for what I was born ”.
Faithful among the faithful
More than any other, the number two of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) embodies the peace process among his people, with all that he brings with it hopes and failures. Appreciated by Western diplomats for his flexibility, scorned by his compatriots for his compromises, Mr. Erakat was the memory of the negotiations since Madrid, in 1991. The Washington process (1992-1993), the so-called Oslo I (1994) and II agreements (1995), the Sharm El-Sheikh summit (1999), the Camp David (2000) and Taba (2001) negotiations, the negotiations on the roadmap with the Quartet (2002-2003) or the secretary of American State John Kerry (2013)…
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