Palestine Liberation Organization secretary general and chief negotiator Saeb Erekat died Tuesday of coronavirus complications at the age of 65, the Palestinian president’s office said.

A lung transplant recipient who suffered from pulmonary fibrosis, “Saeb Erekat died at Hadassah Hospital” in Al-Quds (Jerusalem), where he had been admitted on October 18, president Mahmud Abbas’s office said.

Hadassah hospital said Erekat “passed away in the intensive care unit,” where he had been in critical condition for several weeks.

Born in Al-Quds in 1955, Erekat lived in the biblical town of Jericho in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

An academic and author, Erekat was part of every team to negotiate with the Zionist entity since 1991, with the notable exception of the delegation that secretly hammered out the Oslo accords of 1993.

Source: AFP