Haidar Abdel Shafi

Haidar Abdel Shafi was born in Gaza in 1919 and studied medicine at the American University of Beirut, graduating in 1943. After working in Jaffa and further surgical training in the United States, he returned to Gaza, where he headed the health department in the late 1950s and presided over the Gaza legislative council in the early 1960s. He took part in the 1964 Jerusalem conference that founded the PLO, becoming a founding member of the Palestine National Council and a member of the first PLO Executive Committee. In 1972 he founded the Red Crescent Society for the Gaza Strip and served as its first director, building it into a source of free medical care and a centre of national and cultural life.

With the PLO formally excluded from the peace process, Abdel Shafi headed the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Conference in October 1991 — chosen in part for his stature as an independent, unifying figure — and led the Palestinian negotiating team through the twenty-two months of Washington talks that followed. His opening address at Madrid, launching “this quest for peace” while insisting on Palestinian rights, remains one of the best-known Palestinian speeches of the era. Elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council in 1996, he resigned in 1997 to protest its marginalization. He died in Gaza in September 2007, mourned across the political spectrum.

Selected contributions

• Head of the Palestinian delegation, Madrid Conference (1991), and of the negotiating team in Washington (1991–1993)
• Founder and first director of the Red Crescent Society for the Gaza Strip (1972)
• Founding member of the Palestine National Council and member of the first PLO Executive Committee (1964)
• Member of the Palestinian Legislative Council (1996–1997)

Sources

• Haydar Abd al-Shafi — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question
• Speech of Haydar Abd al-Shafi at the Madrid Conference, 31 October 1991 — PalQuest