Abd Al-Shafi, Haydar (1919–)

views updated

ABD AL-SHAFI, HAYDAR (1919–)

Palestinian political figure. Born in 1919 in Gaza, Palestine, Haydar Abd al-Shafi received a degree in surgery from the American University of Beirut. He became a doctor of medicine in 1945, after a number of stays in the United States. Close to the Communist Party, he was, in 1945, one of the rare Arabs who supported Resolution 181 of the United Nations on the partition of Palestine. Between 1952 and 1956 he headed the Palestinian Parliament of Gaza, then under Egyptian administration. In 1964, as a member of the Palestine National Council (PNC), he was elected to the First Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Four years later he attempted, in vain, to restart the activity of the Gaza Parliament. Accused of anti-Israeli activities in 1970, he was expelled by Israeli authorities to Lebanon for a few months.

From 1972 on, favorable to Resolution 242, he became one of the leaders of the nationalist Palestinians in the West Bank. In October of that year he participated in setting up, in the Gaza Strip, the Palestine Red Crescent Society, of which he assumed presidency in 1979. He was an opponent of the Camp David Accords and subsequent peace treaty. Beginning in July 1980 the Israeli authorities barred him, for a period of four years, from leaving Gaza City to go abroad. In 1983 he was elected to the Administrative Council of Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. The Israeli police interrogated him a number of times between 1988 and 1990; he was accused of being one of the leaders of the Intifada. During the Gulf War he opposed the PLO's support for Iraq. In October 1991 he presided over the Palestinian delegation at the Mideast Peace Conference held in Madrid, where he was assisted by Faysal al-Husayni, whose views on the Palestinian question he did not share. He resigned from the delegation in April 1993 but was persuaded to stay. In July 1993, he argued with Yasir Arafat over the concessions Arafat had made in the Oslo Accords concerning Israeli settlements. He was upset as well over Arafat's having conducted the negotiations in secret. Critical of Arafat's autocratic rule of the PLO, Abd al-Shafi demanded, in vain, the creation of a plural leadership. He resigned from the delegation after the Accords were made public.

In May 1994 Abd al-Shafi refused to be part of the Palestinian Authority. In February 1996 he was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council with the largest vote of any candidate. He resigned his seat in March 1998 (having announced his decision the previous October)—despite the attempts of many deputies to change his mind—declaring that he could not support Arafat's authoritarianism, which he believed was sabotaging the Council. In July 2002 Abd al-Shafi was one of the principal promoters, with Mustafa Barghuthi and Ibrahim Dakkak, of the Palestinian National Initiative, al-Mubadara, which calls for the formation of a "national emergency leadership," democratic elections at all levels, and institutional reform to achieve Palestinian national rights and a "durable, just peace." Considered a voice of public conscience by some, Haydar Abd al-Shafi is a "Palestinian from within" who enjoys the respect of the entire Palestinian population as well as the political class.