Leila Shahid, prominent figure of Palestinian diplomacy in Europe, dead at 76

BEIRUT — Former Palestinian diplomat Leila Shahid died on Wednesday at the age of 76, her family told L'Orient-Le Jour. She was the face of the Palestinian cause in Europe.After having served in Ireland, the Netherlands and Denmark, Shahid served as her country's representative in France from 1993 to 2006, before being appointed as general delegate of Palestine to the European Union in Brussels from 2006 to 2015."The recognition of the Palestinian state is the condition for future peace, not a threat to that peace," she wrote in an op-ed for L'Orient-Le Jour in 2011.Coming from two of the most influential families in Jerusalem, she was born in 1949 in Beirut. She studied anthropology and sociology at the American University of Beirut. Read also Why Israel's new resolution for the West Bank amounts to land...