And the Palestinian leader and physician Haidar Abdel-Shafi has died at the age of 88. Shafi led several Palestinian delegations to peace talks, including the 1991 Madrid Conference and subsequent sessions in Washington. He left the negotiation process in protest of the Israeli government’s refusal to halt settlement construction in the Occupied Territories. Shafi was also a founder of the Palestine Red Crescent Society in Gaza. Democracy Now! spoke to him in the midst of an Israeli attack on Gaza in May of 2004.

Dr. Haidar Abdel-Shafi: “Our declared position that we accepted a state and the borders in 1967, it is, I think — it proves that we are conciliatory. We want peace. We don’t want this confrontation that entails suffering on both sides. I think our position is very realistic. And I don’t see why Israel comes up and makes — I know that, I mean, Israel is acting on the basis of the inition and Zionist claims that were voiced in the first Zionist conference. But it is time to realize that what was said in the first Zionist congress is not workable. It entails the sacrifice of a whole population, Palestinians. And it’s time that everybody sobers up and sees the end of this, a terrible conflict that’s going on.”