Saeb Erekat

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Saeb Muhammad Salih Erekat (also: 'Sa'ib', 'Erakat', 'Urayqat', Arabic: صائب عريقات‎, born April 28 1955)[1][2] is the Palestinian chief of the PLO Steering and Monitoring Committee. He negotiated the Oslo Accords with Israel and remained chief negotiator from 1995 until May 2003, when he resigned in protest from the Palestinian government. He later reconciled with the party and was re-appointed to the post in September 2003. He is currently part of the Israel-Fatah negotiations team working to establish a Palestinian state.

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[edit] Personal life and education

Saeb Erekat was born on April 28, 1955 in Abu-Dis East Jerusalem,[3][4] into a famous Muslim family, then under Jordanian rule. He has six siblings.[5] Erekat received a BA and MA in Political Science at San Francisco State University in the United States and completed his Ph.D. in Peace and conflict studies at Bradford University, England.[1] He is married with twin daughters and two sons.

[edit] Career

[edit] Educator

He returned to the West Bank town of Nablus to lecture in Political Science at An-Najah National University and also served for 12 years on the editorial board of the widely-circulated Palestinian newspaper, Al-Quds.[1][6]

He also served as secretary general of the Arab Studies Society.[citation needed]

[edit] Politics

Erekat has been at the center of negotiations with Israel for over a decade[6] and has participated in numerous peace conferences.

In 1991, Erekat was deputy head of the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Conference and the subsequent follow-up talks in Washington between 1992 and 1993. Later, in 1994, he was appointed the Minister for Local Government for the Palestinian Authority and also the Chairman of the Palestinian negotiation delegation[1]. In 1995, Erekat served as Chief Negotiator for the Palestinians during the Oslo period. He was then elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council in 1996, representing Jericho.[1] As a politician, Erekat was considered to be a Yasser Arafat loyalist. including the Camp David meetings in 2000 and the negotiations at Taba in 2001. Erekat was also, along with Arafat and Faisal Husseini, one of the three high-ranking Palestinians who asked Ariel Sharon not to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque in September 2000[7], an event which sparked off the Second Intifada.He also acted as Yasser Arafat's English interpreter. When Mahmoud Abbas was nominated to serve as Prime Minister of the Palestinian Legislative Council in early 2003, Erekat was slated to be Minister of Negotiations in the new cabinet, but he soon resigned after he was excluded from a delegation to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. This was interpreted as part of an internal Palestinian power struggle between Abbas and Arafat.[6][8] Erekat was later reappointed to his post and participated in the 2007 Annapolis Conference, where he took over from Ahmed Qureia during an impasse and helped hammer out a joint declaration.[9]

Erekat is one of the more prominent Palestinian spokespeople in the Western media. [10] He was criticised by some pro-Israeli commentators who alleged that he inflated Palestinian casualty figures during the IDF's 2002 assault in the Palestinian town of Jenin, and that he characterized the operation as a massacre. [11] In an interview with Israeli Army Radio ahead of the Annapolis summit in 2007, he rejected demands that Palestinians should recognise Israel's status as a Jewish state. [12]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e 'Politics in Palestine', Palestinian National Authority: The PA Ministerial Cabinet List, Emergency Cabinet, October 2003 - November 2003, Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre.
  2. ^ 'Saeb Erekat', GlobalSecurity.org
  3. ^ http://www.nad-plo.org/main.php?view=nav_about-us2
  4. ^ http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/palestine/saeb_erekat.htm
  5. ^ http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/2074.htm
  6. ^ a b c 'Profile: Saeb Erakat', BBC News, September 4, 2003.
  7. ^ Menachem Klein, The Jerusalem Problem: The Struggle for Permanent Status, University Press of Florida, 2003 p.98
  8. ^ 'Q & A with Saeb Erekat', The Jerusalem Post, February 1, 2005.
  9. ^ 'Annapolis joint statement was completed with just minutes to spare' by Avi Issacharoff and Barak Ravid, Haaretz, November 28, 2007.
  10. ^ Top Palestinian Negotiator Offers to Quit on Eve of Talks - New York Times
  11. ^ Army denies frenzy of destruction in Jenin | World news | The Guardian
  12. ^ Erekat: Palestinians will not accept Israel as 'Jewish state' - Haaretz - Israel News

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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