Leila Shahid, first female Palestinian ambassador, dies in France at 76

Benoit Aubenas, left, the father of French journalist Florence Aubenas, who has been missing in Iraq since Jan. 5, 2005, is comforted by Palestinian envoy to France Leila Shahid during a gathering ceremony as part the Eid Al Adha at the Paris Mosque on Jan. 20. (AP Photo/Francois Mori, File)

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Leila Shahid, the first female Palestinian diplomat, who held prominent posts in Europe during some of the most tumultuous years of the Mideast conflict, has died in France at the age of 76.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas praised her as a “model of diplomacy committed to the values of freedom, justice and peace,” saying ”she remained faithful to her people’s message until her final days,” according to the official WAFA news agency.

Shahid was born in Beirut in 1949, a year after the war surrounding Israel’s establishment, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes. Her parents were from Jerusalem and what is now northern Israel.

After working in Palestinian refugee camps, she travelled to Paris in the 1970s to pursue a Ph.D. in anthropology. In 1976, she was elected head of the Palestinian student union in France.

She returned to Beirut at the time of the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982, when Israeli-backed Lebanese Christian militiamen killed hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children in two refugee camps.

The Palestine Liberation Organization posted her to Ireland in 1989, making her the first female Palestinian ambassador. She was posted to the Netherlands the following year.

From 1993 until 2005, she served as the Palestinian envoy to France.

Her tenure coincided with the height of the peace process and the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada, in 2000. She was with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in his final days before he died in a French military hospital in 2004.

From 2006 to 2014 she served as Palestinian envoy to the European Union, Belgium and Luxembourg.

She was also the longtime director of “The Review of Palestinian Studies,” a French language periodical on the history of the conflict.

The Associated Press