Issam Sartawi

Dr Issam Sartawi (1935–1983) was a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization(PLO). On April 10, 1983 he was shot and killed in the lobby of the Montechoro Hotel in Albufeira, Portugal.

Medical background

Issam Sartawi attended university in Baghdad, graduating in medicine, before specializing in cardiology and getting his MD in the United States.

Politics

Sartawi returned to Palestine in 1967, joined the Fatah movement and helped establish the Palestine Red Crescent Society. He quickly rose to become Yasser Arafat's adviser on Europe and North America. In the mid-1970s he participated with other moderate PLO members at meetings of the Israel-Palestine Peace Council. Sartawi and the senior Israeli negotiator, Aryeh "Lova" Eliav, jointly received the Austrian Kreisky prize in 1979 for seeking an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and for securing the recognition of the state of Israel by the PLO. The meetings between the PLO and the Israel-Palestine Peace Council were detailed in the book ' [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Uri_Avnery My Friend, the Enemy] ' by the Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery who was one of the negotiators. Palestinian hard-liners were unhappy with Sartawi's peace efforts and induced him to resign from the Palestine National Council. However, Arafat would not accept Sartawi's resignation.Fact|date=October 2008

Assassination

In February 1983, Portuguese socialist leader Mario Soares formally invited the PLO to send an observer to the April 1983 congress of the Socialist International in Sydney, Australia. The newly-elected Australian Labour prime minister, Robert Hawke strongly objected to the PLO's invitation, and the SI congress was hurriedly relocated to Albufeira, Portugal. The PLO selected Issam Sartawi as its representative at this meeting in Portugal of the Socialist International which, because it counted both the Israeli Labour party and the PLO as members, was hoped to promote the "Building of Peace Process". On Sunday 10 April 1983, Sartawi was shot and killed in the lobby of the Hotel Montechoro. The gunman escaped. Sartawi's assassination (later claimed by the Abu Nidal Organization) was witnessed by SI secretary-general, Bernt Carlsson, and was assumed to have been carried out so as to frustrate Carlsson's peace efforts. [ [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953794-1,00.html "Never at a Loss for Words", TIME, 1983-04-18] ] Sartawi's funeral took place in Amman and was attended by all factions of the PLO – even including Abu Nidal Organization members (according to Maxim Ghilan, founder of the International Jewish Peace Union).

Memorial

In 1998, the Issam Sartawi Center for the Advancement of Peace and Democracy (ISCAPD) was established at the Al-Quds University (the Arab University in Jerusalem) in memory of Sartawi. [ [http://www.alquds.edu/centers_institutes/iscps/ Issam Sartawi Center for the Advancement of Peace and Democracy] ]

References