PLO's Saeb Erekat Laid to Rest after Military Honors

A military memorial ceremony for veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat is held at the presidential compound in Ramallah ahead of his burial in his home city of Jericho. (AFP)
A military memorial ceremony for veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat is held at the presidential compound in Ramallah ahead of his burial in his home city of Jericho. (AFP)
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PLO's Saeb Erekat Laid to Rest after Military Honors

A military memorial ceremony for veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat is held at the presidential compound in Ramallah ahead of his burial in his home city of Jericho. (AFP)
A military memorial ceremony for veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat is held at the presidential compound in Ramallah ahead of his burial in his home city of Jericho. (AFP)

As the sun began to set over his home city of Jericho, veteran Palestinian peacemaker Saeb Erekat was laid to rest on Wednesday after a memorial ceremony and funeral attended by hundreds.

Erekat, 65, died on Tuesday in Jerusalem - the city whose eastern half he had claimed throughout a lifelong struggle for a negotiated Palestinian state that he never lived to see.

“To all the Palestinian people, my father is also your father and the father of the Palestinian cause,” his daughter, Dr. Salam Erekat - her first name means “Peace” in Arabic - said by his graveside in the Jordan Valley, her voice breaking into tears.

A long-serving member of the nationalist party Fatah, Erekat was secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization and a confidant and adviser to its former leader Yasser Arafat and his successor, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas.

He announced a month ago he had contracted the coronavirus, and died on Tuesday after three weeks in a coma in an Israeli hospital in Jerusalem.

Erekat led the Palestinians in peace talks with Israel for many years until negotiations collapsed in 2014. In the final year of his life he was the main public face of Palestinian opposition to US President Donald Trump’s blueprint for the Middle East, which would leave Israel in control of large parts of the occupied West Bank where Palestinians want a state.

Presidential ceremony
Erekat’s memorial took place on the anniversary of Arafat’s death in 2004, marked in a separate ceremony earlier in the day.

In Ramallah, a procession of Palestinian soldiers carried Erekat’s coffin through an outdoor plaza in Abbas’s presidential compound. A military honor guard laid a wreath over his coffin. Abbas and other senior officials waved goodbye as the body was driven to Jericho for burial.

A large crowd gathered outside Erekat’s Jericho home as his coffin was carried inside and his family privately bade him farewell.

Hundreds of mourners waving Palestinian flags and chanting “God is greatest” later joined in the funeral as he was buried in a palm tree-lined cemetery. Soldiers fired a rifle salute as a prayer was recited over the grave.



One in 10 Children Screened in UNRWA Clinics are Malnourished

Palestinians wait to receive food from a charity kitchen, amid a hunger crisis, in Gaza City, July 14, 2025. REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Palestinians wait to receive food from a charity kitchen, amid a hunger crisis, in Gaza City, July 14, 2025. REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
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One in 10 Children Screened in UNRWA Clinics are Malnourished

Palestinians wait to receive food from a charity kitchen, amid a hunger crisis, in Gaza City, July 14, 2025. REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Palestinians wait to receive food from a charity kitchen, amid a hunger crisis, in Gaza City, July 14, 2025. REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

One in 10 children screened in clinics run by the United Nations refugee agency in Gaza since 2024 has been malnourished, the agency said on Tuesday.

"Our health teams are confirming that malnutrition rates are increasing in Gaza, especially since the siege was tightened more than four months ago on the second of March," UNRWA's Director of Communications, Juliette Touma, told reporters in Geneva via a video link from Amman, Jordan.

Since January 2024, UNRWA said it had screened more than 240,000 boys and girls under the age of five in its clinics, adding that before the war, acute malnutrition was rarely seen in the Gaza Strip.

"One nurse that we spoke to told us that in the past, he only saw these cases of malnutrition in textbooks and documentaries," Reuters quoted Touma as saying.

"Medicine, nutrition supplies, hygiene material, fuel are all rapidly running out," Touma said.

On May 19, Israel lifted an 11-week aid blockade on Gaza, allowing limited UN deliveries to resume. However, UNRWA continues to be banned from bringing aid into the enclave.

Israel and the United States have accused Palestinian militant group Hamas of stealing from UN-led aid operations - which Hamas denies. They have instead set up the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, using private US security and logistics firms to transport aid to distribution hubs, which the UN has refused to work with.

On Monday, UNICEF said that last month more than 5,800 children were diagnosed with malnutrition in Gaza, including more than 1,000 children with severe, acute malnutrition. It said it was an increase for the fourth month in a row.