Saeb Erekat, who served as one of the PLO’s leading negotiators from the 1991 Madrid peace conference through the talks between Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert in 2007-8, and remained one of the group’s most prominent spokesmen, died last week of complications related to COVID-19. In an article for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, seven American former foreign-policy poohbahs—including the would-be peacemaker Dennis Ross and the Obama-administration Middle East adviser Robert Malley—joined together to eulogize Erekat, writing that he “deeply believed in dialogue and reconciliation with Israelis, eschewed violence, and lived his life accordingly.”
Sarah N. Stern offers a contrary perspective:
In 2008, Erekat was again [the] lead negotiator for Abbas when the negotiations fell through with Olmert, who made the Palestinians an offer that included unprecedented concessions, including in the West Bank and in eastern Jerusalem, where Olmert proposed placing some of the most sensitive holy sites under international control. He described the offer to give up Israeli control of the Old City as “the hardest day of his life.” All of those exceedingly generous offers were turned down.
When it came to the Trump administration’s “Peace to Prosperity Plan,” which set up a specific map delineating the borders of a two-state solution, Abbas was counseled by Erekat not even to meet with the U.S. representatives Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt, or David Friedman to discuss it, despite the fact that the [plan] called for an independent Palestinian state, and would have pumped $50 billion into the Palestinian economy.
After the plan’s introduction in January, there was an uptick in violence. Erekat linked the violence directly to Trump’s plan, saying, “Those who introduce plans for annexation and apartheid and the legalization of occupation and settlements are the ones who bear full responsibility for deepening the cycle of violence and extremism.”
And there you have it: a “man of peace” and skilled negotiator who considered a generous proposal a justification for murderous terrorism.
Read more on Israel Hayom: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/time-to-turn-over-a-new-leaf/