The passing of senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat on Tuesday comes at a critical time, with the expected renewal of Palestinian-US talks that have been halted since December 2017 when US President Donald Trump decided to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

While Erekat held two important positions, the biggest loss for Palestinians will be the institutional memory that he had as the longtime chief negotiator. To his credit, he established the Negotiations Affairs Department, which could help fill the gap and update whoever replaces him.

Erekat was born in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis in 1956 and is a graduate of San Francisco State University. He had become a feature in all external Palestinian relations as the chief negotiator as well as the secretary of the PLO’s Executive Committee.

Erekat, who had undergone a lung transplant in the US state of Virginia in October 2017, contracted the coronavirus in late October and, after a few days at his Jericho home, was taken by ambulance to Israel's Hadassah Medical Center on orders of his American doctors.