Maen Rashid Areikat (also spelled as Erikat or Erekat; born October 12, 1960) is a Palestinian diplomat and present chief of the PLO Delegation in Washington DC. He was born in Jericho, Palestine and obtained a B.Sc. in finance from Arizona State University in 1983 and MBA from Western International University in 1987.

 

In 1993-1998 he worked as spokesman of the Orient House, then unofficial PLO headquarters in East Jerusalem. He started working for the Palestinian National Authority in 1998, first at the Negotiations Affairs Department (NAD) while serving as its Director-General until March 2008. In 2008-2009 he served as Coordinator-General of NAD. In 2009 he was appointed chief of the PLO Delegation to the United States.

 

In 2011, USA Today published remarks by Areikat made during a meeting with reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, in which he stated that "After the experience of the last 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated," a statement which was taken by Elliot Abrams to mean the removal of Jews from an independent State of Palestine The comment was roundly criticized by pro-Israel outlets, and the pro-Palestine blog Electronic Intifada's Ali Abunimah also criticized it as "offer[ing] tacit support for Israeli ethnic cleansing"; the Center for American Progress also found Areikat's previous comments to Tablet Magazine also endorsing population transfer to be "troubling" and similar to the views of then-Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman. Areikat subsequently clarified his remarks in a commentary to The Huffington Post, maintaining his support for a secular government but rejecting "persons who are amid an occupation, who are in my land illegally".