Palestinians burial Saeb Erekat's body in Jericho

The body of the Secretary of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Saeb Erekat, 65, was buried today, Wednesday, in the city of Jericho, after his death as a result of complications from his infection with the new Corona virus, at a time when the election of Democrat Joe Biden as President of the United States revives cautious hopes to revive the peace process with Israel that was great Erekat Its Palestinian negotiators.

Erekat died Tuesday in the Israeli Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, and then was transferred to a Palestinian hospital near Ramallah.

The burial ceremony began after the noon prayer.

Tayseer Khaled, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said while standing next to Erekat's tomb, which was surrounded by trees, that the Palestinian people "have lost a great patriotic figure."

Previously, the military received the body at the entrance to the city of Jericho, and women and men gathered, and they put sanitary masks in the yard of his home to bid him farewell.

While children were seen carrying Palestinian flags on their bicycles.

A military funeral for him took place at 11:00 local time at the Palestinian Presidency in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, and the Presidential Guard played the Palestinian national anthem.

His body, which was wrapped in the Palestinian flag, was shrouded in a wooden coffin, and President Mahmoud Abbas gave him a farewell look and laid a wreath.

Then the coffin was brought out on the shoulders of a number of Presidential Guard members who walked it to the main square in the headquarters, where dozens of leaders and personalities, including Arab members of the Israeli Knesset, were led by the head of the Joint List, Ayman Odeh.

And raised in the square a large picture of Erekat.

Erekat’s funeral ceremony coincided with the commemoration of the sixteenth anniversary of the death of the historic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Dozens of people were visiting the mausoleum of Arafat at the site, and greeted Erekat when the body passed by.

Cautious optimism with Biden winning

In recent years, Erekat has criticized US President Donald Trump's policy and peace plan in the Middle East that is "biased towards Israel."

He had worked in the past with successive US administrations since the era of President George Bush the elder during various stages of US-sponsored peace negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel, until US-Palestinian relations reached a rupture during the Trump era.

"Hope for a negotiated end to the conflict has become more remote under the presidency of Donald Trump," Palestinian political analyst Nur Odeh says.

She added that Erekat "is like all Palestinians. He would have rejoiced at Trump's exit from the White House."

She believes that "Joe Biden is not Donald Trump. So we expect rationality in the White House, civility and more balance," saying that "there is cautious optimism that the Biden administration is the administration that the Palestinians can deal with."

Neither Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor Israeli President Reuven Rivlin offered condolences on the death of Erekat, referring to the tense relations between the two sides.

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