Faisal Husseini (1940-2001)

By Donald Neff

Faisal Abdel Qader al-Husseini came from a distinguished line of Palestinian Muslim leaders. His uncle, Haj Amin Husseini, was the Grand Mufti (senior Muslim cleric) of Jerusalem and a fierce fighter against British occupiers between the world wars as well as a determined foe of Zionist settlers. His father, Abdel Qader Husseini, was a heroic fighter against Zionism and died young in a battle opposing Israel’s establishment in 1948.

Faisal Husseini himself was a moderate scion of these celebrated warriors who in his own shrewd, subtle and peaceful way devoted his life to the Palestinian cause. At his death on May 31 at age 60 he was the supreme Palestinian leader in Jerusalem and an icon for the peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A Palestinian Authority statement called Husseini a martyr, promising him “and all the other Palestinian martyrs to continue their path until we regain our right to a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.”

Husseini died of a heart attack while on a visit to Kuwait. His funeral the next day brought tens of thousands of Palestinian mourners to the streets of East Jerusalem in the most open display of Palestinian nationalism since Israel’s occupation in 1967. Despite the objections of Israeli hard-liners, Husseini was buried on the sacred Haram al-Sharif, the Jews’ Temple Mount, in al-Aqsa mosque. His coffin was draped in the Palestinian flag and covered with flowers when it was laid next to his father and grandfather. He is survived by his wife, Najat Husseini, a son, Abdul Qader, 27, and a daughter, Fadwa, 25, both of whom are graduates of Birzeit University in Ramallah.

Husseini was a soft-spoken and gentle man whose dream was to see Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestinian state. He wrote in an article for the Los Angeles Times last year: “Neither I nor others want to see Jerusalem as a divided city. The real question is whether a unified Jerusalem will be under the exclusive control of Israel or under shared control.”

In 1998, on the 50th anniversary of his father's death and the 50th anniversary of Israel’s establishment, Husseini visited the battle site where his father was killed. The village of Kastel lay in ruins, its old trenches overgrown with bushes. As Husseini followed his father’s footsteps, touching the walls of a tunnel where the old guerilla fighter may have touched, he said: “Either we can fight each other until the end of the world, or we can try and find a way to live on this land and share it in equal terms, to have two states.”

Husseini was the de facto Palestinian mayor of East Jerusalem and the PLO Executive Committee’s member in charge of Jerusalem affairs. The international community considered him the legitimate spokesman for the Palestinians in Jerusalem and met with him frequently. Despite Israeli opposition, he entertained foreign diplomats at his East Jerusalem headquarters in Orient House, which became a symbol of Palestinian nationalism. He was also head of the Palestinian Team to the Multilateral Peace Talks and a member of the Palestinian Committee for Final Status Negotiations.

The Israelis repeatedly harassed and jailed him but never dampened his spirit. His arrests were so frequent that Husseini kept a small suitcase packed with prison essentials: pajamas, underwear, slippers, shaving kit and a small inhaler for his asthma. Husseini spent much of the 1980s in an Israeli prison, where he used the time to add fluent Hebrew to his mastery of English.

While many Israeli hard-liners reviled Husseini as a “bone in their throats,” Israeli moderates considered him a pragmatic and reasonable adversary. Meron Benvenisti, a historian and former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, told Israel radio: “If there was a man that you could find a shared language with, it was Faisal Husseini. The language of peace suffered a terrible blow today.” Yossi Beilin, Israeli diplomat and peace advocate, called Husseini “a voice of sanity.”

Husseini was born in exile in Baghdad on July 17, 1940, where his father had been banished by the British. He was educated in Cairo and received a B.A. in military science from the Military College of Syria. In 1957, he joined the Arab Nationalist Movement, a precursor of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and later became active in Fatah, the largest PLO faction after 1967. In 1979, he founded the Arab Studies Society, a research and data collecting center in East Jerusalem. The center was closed down by Israel from 1987 to 1991, when it finally was allowed to reopen following international pressure on Tel Aviv.

Husseini was instrumental in launching the Madrid peace process in 1991. He was head of the Palestinian team to the Middle East Peace Conference in Madrid and, despite Israeli objections, he became the central figure in the peace talks that eventually led to a direct dialogue between the PLO and Israel.

At a time when the Palestinians remain weak and firmly under Israeli military occupation, there is no obvious successor toFaisal Abdel Qader al-Husseini.

Donald Neff is the author of the Warriors trilogy and 50 Years of Israel, available from the AET Book Club, and of Fallen Pillars: U.S. Policy Towards Palestine and Israel since 1945.