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Saeb Erekat (2018): Close confidante of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
Photo: Mohamad Torokman / REUTERS
The Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat died as a result of his corona infection.
This was announced by the Palestinian Presidential Office of the AFP news agency.
The Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) died at the age of 65 in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.
According to the information, Erekat was admitted there on October 18 because of severe breathing problems after a corona illness.
After his condition worsened, he was placed under general anesthesia and artificially ventilated.
According to the doctors, the politician's treatment was particularly difficult because Erekat's immune system was suppressed after a lung transplant three years ago.
In addition, the corona disease and a bacterial infection had come.
Erekat was considered a close confidante of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Erekat was already involved in negotiating the Oslo peace treaty between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the 1990s (read a SPIEGEL interview on the Middle East conflict from last July here).
The talks have been idle since 2014.
Erekat had advocated a two-state solution and always sharply criticized the Israeli settlement development as an obstacle to peace.
He had also strongly criticized the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and two Gulf states because the agreements had been reached without a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The fact that Israeli doctors recently fought for his life triggered a lot of malicious comments on social media.
Erekat, who studied international relations and political science in the USA and obtained a doctorate in conflict and peace studies in England, leaves behind a wife and four children.
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as / AFP / dpa