Ramallah, West Bank: As the sun began to set over his home city of Jericho, veteran Palestinian peacemaker Saeb Erekat was laid to rest after a memorial ceremony and funeral attended by hundreds.
Erekat, 65, died on Tuesday in Jerusalem – the city whose eastern half he had claimed throughout a lifelong struggle for a negotiated Palestinian state that he never lived to see.
“To all the Palestinian people, my father is also your father and the father of the Palestinian cause,” his daughter, Dr Salam Erekat — her first name means ‘peace’ in Arabic — said by his graveside in the Jordan Valley, her voice breaking.
A long-serving member of the nationalist party Fatah, Erekat was secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and a confidant and adviser to its former leader Yasser Arafat and his successor, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
He announced a month ago he had contracted the coronavirus, and died on Tuesday after three weeks in a coma in an Israeli hospital in Jerusalem.
Doctors said that treating him was a “huge challenge” because he had undergone a lung transplant three years ago and had a “weakened immune system and bacterial infection, in addition to coronavirus”, the BBC reported.
Erekat led the Palestinians in peace talks with Israel for many years until negotiations collapsed in 2014. In the final year of his life he was the main public face of Palestinian opposition to US President Donald Trump’s blueprint for the Middle East, which would leave Israel in control of large parts of the occupied West Bank where Palestinians want a state.
Read the article by Ali Sawafta, Rami Ayyub and Zainah El-Haroun in The Sydney Morning Herald (Reuters; The Telegraph, London).
[Editor: Of course they wouldn’t dare mention Erekat’s support for terrorism. Refer Erekat Claims Supporting Terrorist Entities Critical to Palestinian Daily Life]