On Feb. 22, Ahmed Qurei, popularly known by his nom de guerre, Abu Ala, passed at the age of 85 in the West Bank, closing a very important chapter in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In 1993, Abu Ala led a small team from the Palestine Liberation Organization that conducted secret discussions in Norway with a small Israeli team (of which I was a member), led by Uri Savir, the director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. The resultant groundbreaking Oslo Accords included Israel-PLO mutual recognition and a blueprint for peace, starting with Palestinian autonomy and ultimately aiming at a two-state solution. Savir died last May.

I believe that, if Abu Ala had not led the PLO team, the Oslo Agreement would never have come about. Short, balding, and smiley, he wasn’t the natural fit to lead the negotiations regarding the future of Palestine. Abu Ala was not associated with the official negotiations that went on at the time in Washington between an Israeli delegation and a Palestinian team unaffiliated with the PLO due to an earlier Israeli refusal to talk with the group (which Israel considered a terrorist organization). Nor was he familiar with the details of the Palestinian positions in the official Washington talks (which were extreme and uncompromising).