GAZA (PIC)– Dr. Haidar Abdel Shafi a prominent Palestinian nationalist leader and cofounder of the PLO in 1964 died of cancer before dawn on Tuesday in one of Gaza City’s hospitals at the age of 88.
Born in Gaza in 1919 he graduated at the Arab College in Jerusalem in 1936 and studied medicine at the Arab University of Beirut graduating 1943. In Beirut he joined the Arab Nationalist Movement.
He was chosen as the speaker of the first ever Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) that was founded in Gaza in 1964 when the Gaza Strip was under the Egyptian rule. He was also a founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
He was detained by Israel in 1967 and in 1969 expelled for three months to Nahal Sinai and in September 1970 deported for two months to Lebanon all for support of PLO activities.
Abdel Shafi led the first Palestinian negotiation team which participated in Madrid Peace Conference held in 1993. Israel considered him a political hardliner as he had participated in 9 rounds of talks and refused to compromise.
After he came back from Madrid in 1993 he told a rally of thousands of Palestinian people that “The road before us is still too long. You have to be patient and be united.”
While Abdel Shafi was chief of a negotiation team in the peace talks with Israel another team headed by current Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was secretly negotiating with Israel in Oslo the Norwegian capital prompting Abdel Shafi to resign.
After the Oslo agreement was reached and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was formed Abdel Shafi was elected as member of the PLC but he resigned after two years in protest that there was no democracy in the Palestinian parliament.
Hamas mourned Abdel Shafi in a statement issued by the movement’s information office describing him as “a man who spent the whole of his life in the service of the Palestinian cause” adding that he was a patriotic person who commanded the respect of all the Palestinian people.
