Familiar faces on the Palestinian negotiating team

Most of the officials who are participating in the US-sponsored direct talks have been negotiating with Israel since the Oslo Accords.

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Most of the Palestinian officials who are participating in the US-sponsored direct talks have been negotiating with Israel since the signing of the Oslo Accords.
Some of them were with former Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat when he rejected then-prime minister Ehud Barak’s offer to end the conflict at the botched Camp David summit in 2000.
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For now, the new-old team consists of:
• Saeb Erekat, head of the Steering and Monitoring Committee. He negotiated the Oslo Accords with Israel and has served as chief negotiator since 1995. In 1991, Erekat was deputy head of the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Conference and the subsequent follow-up talks in Washington.
• Nabil Sha’ath, who served as the first foreign minister of the PA. He also served as the Palestinians’ chief negotiator, minister for international co-operation, planning minister and acting prime minister. He, too, was part of the delegation to the 1991 Middle East Peace Conference in Madrid.
• Yasser Abed Rabbo, a former member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine who broke away from the Syrian-based group and moved close to then PLO leader Yasser Arafat. His support for the two-state solution saw him establish a new party called FIDA, the Palestine Democratic Union. Abed Rabbo is a senior member of the PLO and is closely associated with the 2003 Geneva Initiative. He was also involved in the Madrid peace parley.
• Mohammed Shtayyeh, a former managing director of PECDAR, the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction that was established by the PLO after the signing of the Oslo Accords. He was closely associated with Arafat and serves as member of the Fatah Central Council. Until recently, he also served as PA minister for public works and housing.