The former representative of Palestine in France and at the European Union (EU), Leila Shahid, died this Wednesday, February 18, at the age of 76, her sister told AFP.
His body was found in the village of La Lèque, where he lived, in the commune of Lussan, in the south of the country.
An investigation was opened to “ascertain the causes of death”, a source told AFP, adding that the first elements pointed to suicide.
According to Le Monde, Leila Shahid had been seriously ill for a few years.
Involved in politics since she was 18, this close friend of Yasser Arafat was the first woman to represent the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) abroad, from 1989 in Ireland, then in the Netherlands and Denmark.
She was then general delegate of the Palestinian Authority in France, between 1994 and 2005, before occupying the same functions in Brussels, with the EU, in the following decade.
“She is Palestine incarnate in the French-speaking world”, summarized Palestine’s deputy representative to the United Nations, Majed Bamya, evoking a personality “so universal and so Palestinian”.
And he added: “His voice was confused with that of his people. A voice for justice, for freedom, for peace. He remained militant as a diplomat, without ever renouncing or denying anything that was true.”
Several left-wing French political figures saluted her memory, such as Martine Aubry, former socialist minister, who evoked a “tireless activist for the recognition of a Palestinian state and peace with Israel”.
For the Arab World Institute (IMA), “Leila Shahid was one of those exemplary diplomats who mark a generation: an indefatigable fighter, a heroine of modern times, she carried Palestine with strength and dignity.”
The IMA, in the statement it issued, added that “the disaster of the sufferings of the Palestinian people in Gaza troubled it until its tragic end.”
Faced with the carnage in the Gaza Strip, Leila Shahid continued to call for action from the international community, with a view to establishing a ceasefire.
Karim Amellal, former interministerial delegate for the Mediterranean (2020-2025), paid tribute to her on social media: “She allowed me to meet with Yasser and open the doors to a time of hope, that of the Oslo Accords. An era that has unfortunately already passed.”
Leila Shahid was born in 1949, in Beirut, into a family of notables from Jerusalem, a few months after the ‘Nakba’ (Catastrophe, in Arabic), during which 760,000 Palestinians were expelled during the creation of the State of Israel.
Married to the Moroccan writer Mohamed Berrada, without children, she completed secondary studies in Lebanon and then a degree in Anthropology at the American University in the Lebanese capital.
In France, he collaborated with exiled Palestinian intellectuals, in the Journal of Palestinian Studies, and maintained links with Israeli pacifists.
During an interview with AFP in 1993, he said he lived “a permanent division between belonging to his people, the need to fight for them (…) and the desire for a normal and serene life”.
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