It was one of the first weeks of the Second Intifada. We met at the District Coordination and Liasion office at the entrance to Jericho. The late chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat was in a bad mood. He was finding it difficult to accept the fact that instead of trying to put out the fire, the Palestinian leadership was fanning the flames.
He informed me he would not be sending his son to school.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
"Why?" I asked. He replied, "If he goes to school, and after school the kids go throw rocks at your soldiers, and he doesn't join them, they'll call him a collaborator – they'll say he's either the son of Erakat or a coward. If he joins them, he could, god forbid, come back from school in a coffin. So it's best he stays home."
For me, these remarks are an expression of the difficult feelings that accompanied Erakat all these years, and that made him a symbol of patriotic Palestinians who believe that peace and coordination with Israel are an important part of the realization of their national interest in their self-determination and well-being.
Erakat was a walking archive of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. He was wont to speak of every single clause, regardless of whether it had or hadn't been agreed upon in the end. He was the right-hand man of both Palestinian Presidents Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, two leaders whose stark differences will one day come to light.
Arafat had a habit of telling his interlocutors from around the world about his various meetings, and then turning to Erakat and asking him rhetorically, "You remember, Saeb?" There was not much more for Erakat to do other than to confirm the remarks by his superior.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
In one such conversation, with the foreign minister of an important country, instead of nodding in agreement, Erakat said, "No, Abu Ammar [Arafat], I do not remember those remarks." While Arafat couldn't believe his ears, for Saeb, this was a modest declaration of independence that he would told me about very soon after, as well as the severe rebuke he received from the PLO leader later on.
He had very clear principles, and he adhered to the idea of a Palestinian state, but he always knew to leave room for a diplomatic compromise. So, for example, he would say that what mattered to him was that the territory of the state would be 6,200 sq.km., meaning the territory from the east of the Green Line to the Jordan River, but that we would decide on the border together. We will agree to the annexation of your defined territory, in return for the exchange of territories, and we will come to an agreement on the demarcation of the border, that was what he believed.
In Jericho, where Erakat lived for almost all of his life, there was quite a bit of flooding in the winter, and in one such instance, just a few years back, things were particularly bad. When I called him to ask how his home was holding up, he told me that his two daughters, who had spent that summer with Israeli youths at a camp run by the peacebuilding and leadership development organization Seeds of Peace, had received 23 emails from Israelis asking how they were. He was noticeably emotional, and although l could not see him, I knew there were tears in his eyes.
