A pillar of the Total group for thirty years in the Middle East, Hatem Nusseibeh died Thursday in Paris of cancer, at the age of 65. Unknown to the general public, Hatem, as all those who frequented him nicknamed him, was nevertheless a French figure in this Middle East where he was born. "He was the real ambassador of France" in Syria, recalls Michel Duclos, ambassador stationed in Damascus, when Hatem Nusseibeh headed the local branch of Total. "He taught me so much about Syria and the Arab world ," he adds. From Abu Dhabi to Sanaa, via Damascus and Tripoli, his death moved. “The Yemenis really liked it, comments one of them, Bachir al-Moallel;it's rare to find someone so human at a job like his. ” His evenings in Sanaa were followed by the gratitude of Yemeni diplomacy and politics.
A true memory of the region
Hatem Nusseibeh was born in Jerusalem into a large Palestinian family. His brother Sari, a pacifist intellectual who still lives in
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