Haidar Abdel-Shafi

Haidar Abdel-Shafi (1919-2007)

Haidar Abdel-Shafi (June 10 1919 – September 25 2007) was a Palestinian community leader who was the head of the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Conference of 1991.

Background

Born in Gaza, One of six children of Sheikh Muheiddin Abdul Shafi, head of the Higher Islamic Council Waqf and custodian of the holy places in Gaza and Hebron (from 1925-27). Attended primary school in Gaza; secondary education as a boarder at the Arab College in Jerusalem, graduated 1936. Abdel-Shafi graduated in 1943 from the American University of Beirut College of Medicine in Beirut. At the university he joined the Arab Nationalist Movement dedicated to Arab nationalism and the founding of a Palestinian state.

He worked at the British mandate government's Municipal Hospital in Jaffa. in 1944-1945 joined the Desert Army of the British Jordanian Army, then part of a new British Ninth Army intended to open a second front - which never materialized - in the Balkans. Spent the war instead in various locations in Palestine: Al-Azraq, Ashona, Jericho, Gaza. Resigned his commission at war's end; returned to Gaza and entered private practice. Co-founded a branch of the Palestine Medical Society (1945), and participated in the first Palestine Medical Congress in 1946.

In 1947 and during the Arab Israeli clashes following thw UN partition plan, he provided medical support for the Palestinian fighters. During the 1948 Arab Israeli war, he han a clinic in Gaza to serve the refugees who flodded Gaza in large numbers. During this period he worked closely with the Quakers, who provided humanitarian relief for the refugees until UNRWA was established in 1951.

in 1953, he studies surgery at the Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, Ohio. He then returned to Gaza which by then was under Egyptian rule in 1954. He worked as a surgeon at the Tal Zahur Hospital.

In 1956, as the Gaza strip came under the control of Israel, a municipal council with Abdel Shafi as one of its 10 members was installed.

In 1957 Dr Abdel Shafi married Hoda Khalidi, her family were from the prominant Jerysalamite family who became refugees in Alexandria since the 1948 war. Dr. Abdel Shafi was Appointed head of medical services in the Gaza Strip, 1957-60; during this period, he became a strong admirer and personal friend of Gamal Abdel Nasser. in 1960 he returned to private practice.

Two years later, he held a two-year term as chairman of the first Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza beginning in 1962. He was also a delegate to the first all-Palestinian conference (Palestinian National Council) which convened in Jerusalem in 1964 and helped establish the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). He served as a member of the first PLO-Executive Committee (1964-1965). By 1966 he was a leading PLO figure in the Gaza Strip.

In June 1967 Israel controlled Gaza after the six days war. During and shortly after the war, Dr Abdel Shafi volunteered at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza. He was later temporarily detained by Israel, suspected of support for the military activities of George Habash's PFLP, an offshoot of the Arab Nationalist Movement. Abdel Shafi denies membership, but expresses sympathy for its goals. Upon release, he refused all co-operation with Israel's plans to tie Gaza to Israel through the development of a common infrastructure, as punishment Moshe Dayan expelled him for three months to the isolated Sinai village of Nahal in 1969. Deported again on 12 Sept 1970, this time to Lebanon for two months, along with 5 other prominent members of the Gazan leadership, in retaliation for a PFLP hijacking.

He was the founder and director of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in the Gaza Strip in 1972, which provides free medical care to local people and a serves as a forum for cultural activities.

During the first intifada, in May 1988, he was one of three Palestinians (the others were Saeb Erekat and Hanan Ashrawi) to participate in ABC Nightline's Town Hall meeting from Jerusalem. It was the first time that Palestinians and high ranking PLO members had directly addressed an Israeli and Western audience.

In 1991 he led the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference and subsequently led the Palestinian negotiation team for 22 months in the Washington talks (1992-93). He broke with the Palestinian negotiating team over the Oslo peace agreement. He reportedly predicted that the Oslo process would collapse because it failed to tackle the issue of settlements.

In 1996 he was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) with the highest number of votes as member for Gaza. He took up leadership of the PLC's political committee. Two years later he initiated unity talks for all factions in Gaza. Following the outbreak of the second Intifada, he urged the Palestinian Authority (PA) to organise the Intifada rather than distance itself from it ^{[citation needed]}, and to widen its democratic base by forming a government of national unity.

He co-founded the Palestinian National Initiative in 2002 along with Edward Said, Mustafa Barghouti and Ibrahim Dakkak as a national platform. He resigned as a deputy in the PLC in 2005 to protest what he described at the time as the failure to deal with corruption in the Palestinian Authority.

On April 8 2007 he was presented with the Palestinian Star of Honour by President Mahmoud Abbas largely for his role as founding member and President of the Palestinian National Initiative.

He died in Gaza on 24 September 2007, aged 88, and was survived by his wife, four children and seven grandchildren.

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