Loading ...His Health Crisis Made Public, Palestinian Envoy Pushes On
Saeb Erekat, right, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its chief negotiator, led ambassadors on a tour of Israeli settlements in the West Bank near the Palestinian village of Jalud in March.
By: ISABEL KERSHNER
Source: THE NEW YORK TIMES
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Saeb Erekat, a leading voice of the Palestinian cause for decades, now finds himself battling for his own health along with that of the long-ailing peace process.
Both came into sharp focus this week as headlines in the Israeli news media blared that Mr. Erekat, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its veteran chief negotiator, is suffering from pulmonary fibrosis. He is waiting for a lung transplant, most likely to be carried out in the United States or Israel.
That news coincided with a rather bleak assessment of the peace process by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and special adviser, as revealed in a leaked audio recording. In remarks that were intended to be off the record, Mr. Kushner told congressional interns on Monday that the administration was still “thinking about what the right end state is” and that “there may be no solution” to the conflict.
In an unusual statement on Tuesday, Mr. Erekat criticized the Trump administration for not articulating support for the two-state solution — the internationally accepted principle for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the 1990s — and for failing to compel Israel to cease settlement activity. He described the administration’s silence on these issues as an obstacle to a resumption of negotiations.
In an interview in his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday, Mr. Erekat, 62, a passionate and perennial champion of Palestinian statehood, took the opportunity to address his public and personal struggles.
It is no secret that Mr. Erekat, who is still working and meeting with international diplomats, requires oxygen from a mobile tank. And now, it is out in the open that he is waiting for a lifesaving transplant. But after the news exposure this week, he is urging people to respect his privacy and that of his family.
“Israelis and Palestinians are human after all,” Mr. Erekat said, expressing both gratitude and shock at the mixed Israeli reactions to his health situation, which reflected all the divisiveness and complexity of this long-running and often bloody conflict.
Many Israeli officials, people involved in the various rounds of failed negotiations and private citizens had called to wish him a speedy recovery and inquire if they could do anything to help, he said. But some of the messages aired on Israeli news sites were scathing, wishing Mr. Erekat a speedy death and mockingly decrying the possibility that he might be saved by the health system of the state he has disparaged.
“A transplant? Forget it,” wrote one reader. “But cigarettes are on me.”
The Israeli Health Ministry clarified that its waiting list for transplants prioritized Israeli citizens. David Bitan, the outspoken Israeli coalition whip from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative Likud Party, said in a radio interview on Wednesday: “I am for humanitarian aid, but there is a problem with lung transplants. We can barely manage lung transplants for the citizens of the State of Israel.”
“The citizens of Israel are more important than Erekat, in my opinion,” Mr. Bitan added. “Moreover, I hear that even inside the hospital he speaks against the state of Israel.”
Mr. Erekat said he was not looking for charity.
“I was 12 years old when the Israeli occupation came,” he said, referring to Israel’s capture of the West Bank and other territories in the 1967 Middle East war. “The majority of Palestinians are treated in Israel, that’s normal,” he said, adding, “I’m a private patient who covers his bills, whether in the United States, Germany or Israel.”
The health system in the Palestinian territories does not stretch to transplants, though a Palestinian donor would be a possibility.
Amid the personal drama and grim prospects for peace, Mr. Erekat refuses to give up on the national goals he has avidly pushed for nearly 30 years. He was a central member of the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid peace conference in 1991, and for years has been a senior Palestinian leader and close aide to Mahmoud Abbas, 82, the Palestinian Authority’s aging leader.
“Waiting is the worst option there is,” Mr. Erekat said. “I believe the Americans must not wait any more and must announce the endgame,” he said. He described that end as two states, Israel and Palestine, living in peace and security on the territorial lines as they were before the 1967 war, with minor modifications along the border to be agreed by the two sides.
Mr. Erekat said he had spoken with Mr. Kushner “more than once” and had held at least 19 meetings since February with American officials. Among them was Jason D. Greenblatt, Mr. Trump’s special representative for international negotiations, whom Mr. Erekat described as having good “listening skills.”
Mr. Erekat said he was surprised by Mr. Kushner’s comments expressing doubt about a solution, not least because Mr. Kushner had emphasized how serious Mr. Trump was about seeking one.
Mr. Erekat added that administration officials have said “many times that they are not against two states,” but they have not stated it as their position.
As a next step to rebuild trust, Mr. Erekat said, the Israelis and Palestinians should put their positions on all the issues in writing and then have the Americans merge them according to three categories: agreed areas; areas of disagreement that can be bridged by American proposals; and areas of major disagreement where the sides would have to be brought to the table to make decisions.
The current stalemate comes in a fraught and fragile atmosphere, just days after the de-escalation of the most recent crisis over the delicate arrangements at the Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, a volatile and contested holy site also revered by Jews as the Temple Mount.
An indication of the continuing tensions came on Wednesday when a Palestinian teenager from the West Bank stabbed a supermarket worker in the back in the central Israeli town of Yavne, seriously wounding him, in the kind of attack that has become almost common over the past couple of years.
Israeli officials have accused Mr. Abbas’s Palestinian Authority and the mainstream Fatah Party, among other factions, of helping fan the violence. The Israelis point to inciting messages in the Palestinian news media and on social networks, and also to a lack of clear condemnation of violence from Palestinian leaders.
Israeli leaders have also become reticent about mentioning the two-state solution, and Mr. Netanyahu has spoken of a “Palestinian state-minus.”
David Keyes, a spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu, said: “Israel has consistently offered to sit with our Palestinian neighbors for peace talks anytime, anywhere without preconditions. Unfortunately, President Abbas has rejected these many offers and refused to meet Prime Minister Netanyahu for nearly a decade.”
Mr. Erekat did not respond to a question about conditions for returning to talks. Mr. Keyes had no comment on Mr. Erekat’s health or Mr. Kushner’s remarks.
