Top Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat has died at 65 after COVID-19 battle

Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian official who had led every Mideast peace negotiation since the Oslo Accords in the mid 1990s, died Tuesday after contracting COVID-19, Israels' Haaretz reports. He was 65 years old. Erekat had announced he was suffering from "difficult" COVID-19 symptoms in October, but said things were "under control." He got worse, and Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem said Monday that he was in critical condition and placed on a ventilator.

Erekat was born in East Jerusalem in 1955, and attended San Francisco State University at age 17. After earning bachelor's and master's degrees in political science, then a Ph.D. in peace and conflict studies in England, Erekat returned to the West Bank to teach at the university. He was tapped to be a peace negotiator in 1991. Erekat had conflicts with Israeli negotiators but also with Palestinian leaders Yasser Arafat and then Mahmoud Abbas, both of whom rejected his resignation letters. He is survived by a wife and four children.

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