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Gulf
Times:
Abdel Shafi … critic of Oslo accords
GAZA CITY:
Haidar Abdel Shafi, who led the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid
international peace conference in 1991, died in a Gaza City hospital
early yesterday, officials said. He was 88.
Abdel Shafi died at the Shifa Hospital following a two-year battle with
cancer, medics and his family said.
After the funeral service, which was held in the city’s main Al-Omari
mosque, his coffin was draped in a Palestinian flag and carried through
the streets at the head of thousands of mourners.
In a rare show of unity after months of factional unrest,
representatives of all Palestinian political factions and several
organisations marched through the streets to a burial site east of the
city waving Palestinian flags.
A medical doctor by training, Abdel Shafi was considered one of the
leading secular Palestinian nationalist leaders.
He served as chairman of a first legislative council in Gaza in 1962,
when it was under Egyptian administration, participated in the creation
of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1964 and became a
member of its first executive committee.
Expelled from his native Gaza Strip by Israel several times following
its capture in 1967, he eventually returned to the territory, where in
1972 he founded the Palestinian Red Crescent Society which he headed for
several years.
After publicly opposing the 1978 Camp David peace accords between Egypt
and Israel, he was temporarily prevented from leaving the Gaza Strip by
Israel.
He came into the international spotlight when he headed the Palestinian
delegation to the Madrid peace conference in 1991.
Abdel Shafi eventually left the negotiating team over his opposition to
the Oslo accords, which grew out of secret negotiations between Israel
and the Palestinians, and which he predicted would eventually collapse.
A critic of the concentration of power within the PLO, he led a
Palestinian delegation to Tunis in 1994 to demand that veteran leader
Yasser Arafat share power.
He was elected to the Palestine Legislative Council in 1996 but resigned
a year later, saying that the body lacked power to improve the
Palestinians’ lot.
In the final years of his life, Abdel Shafi was a tireless critic of
Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories and advocated unity
among the many Palestinian warring factions.
Abdel Shafi is survived by his wife, four children and seven
grandchildren. – AFP
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