NOVANEWS
Lead Palestinian negotiator in 2008 had close relationship with Yasser Arafat and was known for tolerance and charm
Lead Palestinian negotiator in 2008, Ahmed Qureia often relieved the tensions in talks with light-hearted banter. Photograph: Atef Safadi/EPA
Ahmed Qureia, better known as Abu Ala, was born in Abu Dis, near Jerusalem, in 1937. He joined Yasser Arafat’s Fatah group in 1968 and followed him from Beirut and Damascus to exile in Tunis in 1984, where he headed the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s economic department.
Arafat sent the trained banker to Washington to serve on the steering committee that advised the official Palestinian negotiators in the 1992 talks. Qu reia also served as chief negotiator for the secret Oslo talks, which led to mutual agreement between Israel and the PLO the following year.
Back in the West Bank he became the Palestinian Authority’s minister of economy, trade and industry, negotiated further agreements with the Israelis, and was eventually elected as speaker of the Palestinian parliament in Ramallah. He remained chief negotiator in the talks at Camp David and served as prime minister until after the January 2006 elections.
Qureia was the subject of controversy when it was reported that cement shipped from Egypt by his family’s company was used for building Israel’s West Bank barrier. But Fatah last year dismissed as “fabricated and groundless” an Israeli TV report that he was suspected of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars of PA funds.
Qureia dedicated a 2008 memoir of his involvement in negotiations to “my late brother” Arafat, remembering his “wisdom and determination in times of calamity” and paying tribute to his “gift for choosing the right path”.
Acquaintances describe Qureia as tolerant and good-humoured, and the Palestine papers often reveal him relieving the tension of negotiating sessions with light-hearted banter, though a joke that Palestinians should kidnap an Israeli soldier as a bargaining chip in the negotiations was met with stony silence.
He exhibits great personal charm, and at one point told his Israeli counterpart, the foreign minister Tzipi Livni, that he would vote for her. He also greeted the then US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, with the words: “You bring life to the region when you come.”
