In the short run, I must acknowledge, the loss of Erekat feels like the flickering
out of one of the last rays of hope that illuminated the long ago 1990's when
in the wake of the Oslo Accords, Israeli-Palestinian peace seemed imminent. I
remember on a visit to Jerusalem in the summer of 1999. calling Erekat to see
if I could set up an interview with him for an American Jewish newspaper and
receiving a gracious invitation from him to come that very day to interview him
in his lovely house in in his hometown of Jericho. The interview was upbeat and
optimistic--Labor's Ehud Barak had just defeated Netanyahu and hope was again
in the air after a three year stretch of Likud rule. Erekat was urbane,
charming and totally won me over on a personal level.
Erekat discussed the political scene on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides in an
incisive and, I thought, surprisingly manner, but he told me that he was even
more excited about the growth in people-to-people ties between everyday
Israelis and Palestinians, introducing me to his then-teenage daughter Dalal,
who had taken part in the Seeds of Peace camp in Maine a few years before that
and formed close friendships with Israeli teens, which they had maintained
after returning to Israel and Palestine. Dalal, who was then about 18 and, if I
recall correctly, a university student, invited me to join her and other
Palestinian and Israeli Seeds of Peace alums at a meetup the following day at a
mall in Mevasseret Tziyon, west of Jerusalem. That proved to be a memorable and
inspiring encounter---to see the warm friendship between the young people and
to feel that the sense of hope, possibility and warm humanity they evinced was
the wave of the future.
Unfortunately, it was not. The peace process crashed and burned just over a year later after
the failure of the Camp David Clinton-Arafat-Barak Summit, Arik Sharon's
inflammatory walkabout on the Temple Mount and beginning of the Second
Intifada. I won't go into that sad history now, only to mourn the lost
opportunity of the late 1990's and to wonder why too few people on both side
were ultimately able to live up to the humanism, decency and passionate desire
for an end to the conflict evinced that day by Saeb Erekat, Dalal Erekat and
her Israelis and Palestinian friends. They had come to know the other side
deeply and could not longer hate. They had understood in their bones that the
only solution that would work was one that accorded justice, security and peace
to both sides.
I saw Erekat for the last time a year ago at the annual J Street conference in
Washington, where he gave a passionate speech denouncing the Trump-Kushner
Middle East peace plan (the so-called 'Deal of the Century') as an insult to
the Palestinians and utterly unacceptable and still holding out hope that a
fair two-state solution could somehow be revived. I'm not sure if he really
believed that was possible anymore given the huge number of Israeli settlements
that had sliced and diced the West Bank to the point where a contiguous
Palestinian state seemed impossible--but he was clear that a one-state solution
in the present dynamic was a recipe for apartheid, oppression and escalating
violence. I was impressed not only by how affectionately he was received by the
J Street crowd, but that he could still come to Jewish audiences in a warm and
open-hearted way, even after all of the crushing disappointments he had
endured.
What can I say--it totally sucks the way things have turned out in Israel-
Palestine, It’s been a personal tragedy for me--I can only imagine what it felt
like to Saeb Erekat. I hope he took consolation in his last months of life that
he gave his all to the vision of a Palestinian state at peace with Israel, and
helped lay the groundwork for a day when Israelis and Palestinians live side by
side in peace, equality and mutual affection--whether in one state or two. We owe
it to his memory to keep working to finally bring Erekat’s vision to fruition.
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