The death of the Palestinian statesman Faisal Husseini on May 31st aged 60, is another hammer blow to hopes for peace and progress in the region. He died while visiting Kuwait, as minister in charge of Jerusalem affairs for the Palestine Authority.
Faisal Husseini played a pivotal role in pursuing accommodation with Israel, while championing the centrality of Jerusalem in the Arab psyche. Arguably, without him, there would have been no United States-Palestine Liberation Organisation rapprochement, nor the 1991 Madrid peace initiative.
His keen intellect, noble bearing and integrity, combined with the occasional naughty smile, set him apart. Some observers thought he might succeed Yasser Arafat. Their relationship oscillated between comradeship and rivalry. The return to Palestinian soil in 1994 of Tunis-based PLO officials initially displaced indigenous "intifada generation" leaders, such as Faisal Husseini. But he died when he was enjoying renewed vigour, as spokesman for the Al Aqsa Intifada.
Faisal Husseini was born in Baghdad, the son of a military hero, Abdel Khader Husseini. He was also the great-nephew of the Grand Mufti, and head of the Supreme Muslim Council, Hajj Amin Husseini. Abdel Khader had fled to the Iraqi capital in 1939, after British Mandate authorities crushed the Arab revolt against their rule.
He was just eight and living in Cairo, when his father was killed in battle while fighting Zionist Haganah forces. In time, Faisal Husseini became the scion of the most venerated clan in Palestinian society.
He was immersed in politics from his earliest days and graduated from school in Egypt in 1958. The following year he helped establish the General Union of Palestinian Students in Cairo.
He studied science at Cairo University and in Baghdad, but most of his time was devoted to political campaigning, particularly with George Habash's Arab Nationalist Movement.
Faisal Husseini returned to the Jordanian-ruled East Jerusalem in 1964, and at 24 became a manager for the newly-created PLO. By this stage the Palestinian identity that he had subsumed under the mantle of pan-Arabism came to the fore. He joined the Palestine Liberation Army following military training in Aleppo, northern Syria.
He returned to a now Israeli-occupied West Bank after the Six-Day War, and in October 1967 was imprisoned for a year for arms possession.
From 1969 to 1977 he worked as an X-ray technician in Jerusalem, and then studied history at the University of Beirut.
The events of 1967 marked a double reawakening for the young revolutionary. He gained first-hand knowledge of how Palestinian "insiders" lived. At the same time, he began to meet Israelis "and see them as people for the first time, instead of soldiers who took our land and occupied our homes". In 1979, he returned to Jerusalem, where he founded the Arab Studies Society. He joined the Higher Islamic Council in 1982, fulfilling a family tradition of religious service that dates back centuries.
That same year, he later reported, represented a moment of epiphany for Palestinians - "the pride of being able to challenge the Israeli army in Lebanon; this made it easier for us to negotiate directly with Israelis later".
His initial contacts with Israeli peace campaigners were not easy. He learned Hebrew to communicate better with Israelis; but talking to PLO activists was deemed a criminal offence by the Knesset. One surprising alliance was with a renegade Likud politician, Moshe Amirav. Less-enlightened Palestinians accused Faisal Husseini of treachery, as the PLO was still officially committed to armed conflict. The Israeli authorities placed him under house arrest during 1982-87, and imprisoned him between April 1987 and January 1989 - effectively removing him from day-to-day leadership of the intifada, which had broken out in December 1987. On his release he became a voice for the uprising, together with like-minded intellectuals Hanan Ashrawi, Sari Nusseibeh and the veteran Haidar Abdel Shafi. He also helped create political committees to focus Palestinian opinion.
After the 1991 Gulf war and the shaming of Arafat - who had backed Saddam Hussein - Faisal Husseini was increasingly sought after as an interlocutor between US and Israeli politicians, including Shimon Peres. His intensive negotiations with US Secretary of State, James Baker, led to the Madrid conference in October 1991, which facilitated the first open negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.
However, his connections with the PLO and Jerusalem residence counted against him in Israeli eyes. Only in 1993 did he move from head of a nebulous PLO-backed "steering committee" to centre stage.
He had the ear of Arafat - and, judging by the daily deluge of faxes from Tunis, his mouth, too. In effect he became the transmission mechanism whereby Arafat determined the stance of the Palestinian delegation.
Faisal Husseini was somewhat sidelined by the dramatic announcement of the secret Oslo peace accords in August 1993. None the less, unlike other "insiders", he accepted a portfolio on the new Palestine National Authority's Jerusalem National Council, and the PLO's Higher Committee for the peace talks.
Ever wary of appearing out of step with Palestinian solidarity, however, he began to criticise abuses by Palestinian authorities. Together with Hanan Ashrawi, he set up the Palestine Human Rights Information Centre.
Meanwhile, he acted as the PNA's unofficial "foreign minister" to visiting politicians. Repeatedly, especially during the Netanyahu government, Israel tried to shut down his operation, seen as a challenge to its authority in a "united Jerusalem". Faisal Husseini continued to promote his ideas: a strict constitution to safeguard nascent democracy; a free-market Palestinian economy, but one which can only fully integrate into the regional economy after it has established its own infrastructure. He mused about shared Israeli-Palestinian authority over Jerusalem.
Controversially (within Palestinian circles), he appeared to accept Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem as de facto realities, not "settlements" to be dismantled. Faisal Husseini argued for a Palestinian "right to return". Recognition of such a right by Israel was to him a sine qua non for lasting peace. But he was prepared to negotiate about the possibility of compensation as an alternative, even if that fell short of a "just peace based on absolute justice".
In June 1995, he went on a hunger strike in sympathy with Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. After the signing of Oslo Two, he ensured that East Jerusalem was included as an electoral district in the Palestine Council elections of January 1996.
He began to debate Jerusalem's future status through his Jerusalem National Council-Palestine, set up in 1993. The outbreak of the Al Aqsa saw Faisal Husseini harden his positions and lash out at settlement building.
Faisal ibn Abdel Khader Husseini:orn 1940; died, May 2001