Ahmed Qurei

Qurei was born in Abu Dis (near Jerusalem), Mandatory Palestine, in 1937.[4] He joined the Fatah faction, the largest of the political and military organisations making up the Palestine Liberation Organization, in 1968.[4] As a banker, he used his expertise during the 1970s as the director of the PLO's foreign investment branch and director-general of the PLO's economic branch, helping to make the organisation one of the largest employers in Lebanon.[2] He followed Yasser Arafat to Tunis after the PLO was forced to leave Lebanon.[2] As more senior leaders died, Qurei rose to prominence and was elected to the Central Committee of Fatah in August 1989.[2]

As a member of the Central Committee, Qurei was instrumental in negotiating the Oslo Accords (1993).[2] He also founded and became director of the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction (PECDAR) in 1993[2] to help garner money from international donors. He held various posts in the first Palestinian Authority cabinets including Minister of Economy & Trade and Minister of Industry.[5] He was also responsible for a development plan for the Palestinian territories submitted to the World Bank in 1993.[2]

Qurei was elected as the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council on 7 March 1996 in Gaza.[6][7]

Later, he took part in the 2000 Camp David Summit with Ehud Barak.[8] Soon after, he was reelected to the PLC as a speaker in March 2001.[4]

After the resignation of Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas on 6 September 2003, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat nominated Qurei for the post of prime minister.[4][9] Qurei accepted the nomination for the post in an "emergency government" on 10 September.[10][11] The next day, the Israeli government, apparently in response to bombings two days earlier, released a statement, announcing the decision that President Arafat would be "removed."[12] Qurei decided upon that to form a full government rather than a trimmed one.[13]

On 5 October 2003, Qurei was appointed prime minister by presidential decree,[14][15] and an eight-member emergency government was sworn in on 7 October.[16] However, Qurei could not form a new cabinet because of a dispute with Arafat which lasted for 10 weeks over the choice of an interior minister and control of the Palestinian Security Services, and he threatened to resign.[17] While the Fatah Central Committee had agreed to the emergency cabinet with Qurei as caretaker prime minister, the Fatah-dominated PLC refused to hold a vote of confidence.[18] The emergency cabinet's term expired on 4 November but Arafat asked Qurei to remain in office despite their dispute,[19] and the PLC approved a new 24-member government on 12 November.[17][20] Among Qurei's top priorities was negotiating and meeting the Road map for Peace plan with Israel.[17] Israel's non-compliance and the United States not having done enough to enforce Israeli compliance with the peace plan, along with a lack of internal support, had been reasons for Abbas' earlier resignation.[21][20]

On 17 July 2004, he submitted his resignation amid growing chaos in the Gaza Strip.[22] Offices of the Palestinian authority in Gaza were burned down, and gunmen briefly abducted 4 French aid workers, the police chief and another official, demanding reforms.[23] Arafat refused to accept Qurei's resignation.[24] Arafat and Qurei disputed on Qurei's demand for more authority to restructure the security forces to reduce the growing turmoil.[25] President Arafat decreed a State of Emergency in Gaza.[23] On 27 July Arafat and Qurei held a press conference after reaching a settlement in a cabinet meeting. Qurei had retracted his resignation.[26]

After Arafat's death in November 2004 and Mahmoud Abbas' subsequent victory in the Palestinian presidential election of 2005, Qurei was asked to continue in his post and form a new cabinet.[27] Due to repeated demands by the Fatah officials and PLC members to make the new cabinet more reform-minded, the vote of confidence was repeatedly delayed.[28] It was finally passed on 24 February 2005 after Qurei had revised the list of ministers to accommodate these demands.[29]

On 15 December 2005 Qurei briefly resigned his prime ministership post to run for a seat in the Palestinian Parliament, but returned to office nine days later after deciding not to run.[8] On 26 January 2006 Qurei announced his intention to resign following the Fatah party's defeat by Hamas in the parliamentary elections.[30][31] At the request of PNA President, Mahmoud Abbas, Qurei remained in office in a caretaker capacity until being replaced by Ismail Haniyeh.[32]

In 2004 Qurei said that if Israel failed to conclude an agreement with the Palestinians, that the Palestinians would pursue a single, bi-national state.[33] During the 6th Fatah conference in August 2009, he failed to get reelected to the Fatah Central Committee.[4] In 2012, in an article in Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, Ahmed Qurei called for Palestinians to reconsider a one-state instead of a two-state solution.[34] He blamed Israel for "burying" or "decapitating" the two-state solution through the building of settlements.[34]

Qurei died on 22 February 2023, at age 85.[35]

• 2001: Post-Oslo: Impasse and Options (OCLC 499875376)
• 2006: al-Dīmuqrāṭiyah wa-al-tajrubah al-barlamāniya al-Filasṭīniyah: tajribatī fī riʼāsat awwal majlis tashrīʻī Filasṭīnī (ISBN 9789953368887)
• 2006: From Oslo to Jerusalem: The Palestinian Story of the Secret Negotiations (ISBN 9781429454056)
• 2008: Beyond Oslo, The Struggle for Palestine: Inside the Middle East Peace Process from Rabin's Death to Camp David (ISBN 9781441605801)
• 2013: Negotiating Palestine: From the Second Intifada to Hamas' Electoral Victory (ISBN 9781780760933)
• 2015: Peace Negotiations in Palestine: From the Second Intifada to the Roadmap (ISBN 9781780760933)

• First Qurei Government
• Second Qurei Government
• Third Qurei Government

• Profile: Ahmed Qurei, BBC News (8 September 2003)
• Biographies of Palestinian Political Leaders
• London Free Press: Arafat Faces Leadership Crisis
• Qurei denies helping build wall