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Saeb Erakat (Sa’ib Muhammad Salih ‘Urayqat; born 1955) was the chief of the PLO Steering and Monitoring Committee, from which he negotiated with Israel regarding the Oslo Accords from 1995 until his resignation in protest from the Palestinian government, in May 2003. He quickly reconciled with his party, and was reappointed to the post in September 2003.
Erekat has participated in numerous peace negotiations with Israel, including Camp David meetings in 2000, and negotiations at Taba in 2001. When Mahmoud Abbas was nominated to serve as Prime Minister of the Palestinian Legislative Council in early 2003, Erekat was slated to be part of the new cabinet and was assigned as the Minister of Negotiations, but he soon resigned after he was not included in a delegation to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Saeb Erekat was born on April 28, 1955 in Jerusalem. He is married with twin daughters and two sons. Erekat received a BA and MA in International Relations at San Francisco State University, and he received a doctorate in Peace Studies at the University of Bradford in England. He returned to lecture in Political Science at the An-Najah National University in the West Bank town of Nablus, and also served for 12 years on the editorial board of Palestinian newspaper al-Quds. Erekat is the author of eight books and numerous research papers on foreign policy, oil and conflict resolution. He also served as secretary general of the Arab Studies Society.
Controversy over the Jenin Raid
also known as Jenin massacre or Battle of Jenin
During April 2002 Palestinian representatives and their supporters, Saeb Erekat being the most prominent and outspoken, claimed that the Israeli army had indiscriminately massacred at least 500 Palestinian civilians in the refugee camp of Jenin. As the dust settled it became clear that no such massacre had happened.
Example Saeb Erekat Statements about the fighting
In the April 10, 2002 interview with CNN's Bill Hemmer, Erekat said: "I'm afraid to say that the number of Palestinian dead in the Israeli attacks have reached more than 500 now. And I think the number may increase once we discover the extent of the damage and the massacres committed in -- particularly in the Jenin refugee camp and in the whole city of Nablus."
On April 12, he repeated the charge on CNN:
"a real massacre was committed in the Jenin refugee camp." He added that 300 Palestinians were being buried in mass graves."
On April 17 Erekat stated on CNN that 500 Palestinians had been killed in Jenin. He suggested to Wolf Blitzer:
"How about if we form an international commission of inquiry, let them go to Jenin with the equipment needed ... to get the results and to decide how many people were massacred. And we say the number will not be less than 500."
On April 15, Erakat continued his charges:
"And I stand by the term 'massacres' were committed in the refugee camps." He also began to refer to Israeli actions as "war crimes."
BBC and international media buying into the Propoganda
On April 18 2002, the BBC released an article titled "Jenin 'massacre evidence growing'" stating that an Amnesty International team granted access to Jenin, said to have witnessed bodies lying in the streets and received eyewitness accounts of civilian deaths.
On May 3 2002, the BBC released an article titled "'No Jenin massacre' says rights group" stating that no massacre has occured, but accusing the Israeli army of committing war crimes based on Palestinian testimonials.
Sever Plocker, an Israeli opinion writer, released an article titled "Jenin massacre syndrome" pertaining that the international press prefers hype to facts, noting that many of the worlds leading journalists described the fighting in Jenin during the spring of 2002 as a cold-blooded massacre of thousands of Palestinians by the brutal IDF, basing many of their statements on Palestinian "eyewitneses".
Statements by Amnesty, HRW and the UN
Statements by Amnesty and Human Rights Watch say there was no evidence of a massacre, and Palestinian Fatah investigators claimed the death toll is 56, announced by Kadoura Moussa, the Fatah director for the Northern West Bank.
The UN put the final death toll at 52 Palestinians, more than half of them armed fighters, and it concluded that no civilians were killed deliberately. Israel lost 23 men.
External links
- Official biography
- San Francisco State University magazine interview with Saeb Erekat
- Biography
- Jenin Massacre Report and links
- UN jenin reports
- AIJAC collection of articles
- JCPA Issue Brief
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