JERUSALEM — Ahmed Qurei, a former Palestinian prime minister and negotiator who helped conceive and nurture the Oslo Accords, the interim peace agreements reached between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel in the 1990s, died on Wednesday in Ramallah, in the West Bank. He was 86.
His death was confirmed by the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, a longtime comrade — and sometimes rival — who eulogized Mr. Qurei as a “solid fighter” who devoted his life to defending the Palestinian people and cause. Mr. Qurei’s longtime chief of staff, Salah Elayan, said that he died of an infection at a hospital and that he had suffered from heart problems.
Mr. Qurei (pronounced kuh-RAY) was a member of the dwindling Palestinian old guard — activists who joined Yasir Arafat and his secular Fatah movement, founded in exile in 1959, and who strived to put the Palestinian cause on the world agenda, whether through diplomacy or armed struggle.
In late 1992, while on a working visit to London, Mr. Qurei met with an Israeli academic, Yair Hirschfeld, who had asked to see him. At the time it was technically illegal for Israelis to meet with P.L.O. officials, but the meeting led to secret talks in Norway sanctioned by Israeli officials, with Mr. Qurei acting as the lead negotiator for the Palestinian side.
Those negotiations resulted in the Oslo Accords, the landmark agreements that included mutual recognition between the government of Israel, then led by Yitzhak Rabin, and the P.L.O., led by Mr. Arafat.
The accords also established the Palestinian Authority, an interim body formed to exercise limited Palestinian self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and paved the way for the Palestinian leadership to return to the occupied territories from exile.
The interim agreements were supposed to lead to a comprehensive, permanent deal by 1999. Although the Oslo Accords did not spell out that deal, the Palestinians envisioned an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with its capital in East Jerusalem.
Mr. Qurei moved back to Abu Dis, the village on the eastern edge of Jerusalem where he was born, and set about helping to build the institutions of putative statehood.
But the post-Oslo optimism quickly dissipated, and the establishment of a Palestinian state now seems as far away as ever. The Palestinians have had no formal peace negotiations with Israel since 2014, and the Palestinian polity is divided between the Palestinian Authority, which nominally administers parts of the West Bank, and Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza. Support for the Palestinian Authority has eroded, with many Palestinians accusing it of corruption and of serving only Israel’s interests, and Israel now has a right-wing government that is not inclined to negotiate.
Mr. Qurei’s Israeli and American interlocutors remembered him as a trustworthy, creative, shrewd and often humorous negotiator.
“Together we’ve tried to bring peace to our peoples in an understanding that it’s our responsibility to make a better future to our children,” Tzipi Livni, a former Israeli minister and peace negotiator, wrote on Twitter after Mr. Qurei’s death.
Mr. Elayan, Mr. Qurei’s former chief of staff, said the Israelis “knew he was tough but liked him because you could reach an agreement with him,” adding that Mr. Qurei was able to persuade Mr. Arafat to see things his way.
Dennis Ross, a Middle East envoy and the chief peace negotiator in the administrations of presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, recalled Mr. Qurei as “someone who was engaging and often brilliant as a negotiator.”
“He knew how to acknowledge Israeli concerns about security to gain acceptance of Palestinian needs,” Mr. Ross wrote in an email.
But at one critical juncture in the peace process, Mr. Qurei withdrew. In the summer of 2000, President Clinton hosted Mr. Arafat, Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel and their negotiating teams at Camp David in an ambitious attempt to reach a final agreement.
Mr. Clinton grew irate when Mr. Qurei, then the chief Palestinian negotiator, refused to produce a map showing what territorial compromise the Palestinians could accept. Mr. Clinton shouted at him, witnesses said, accusing him of negotiating in bad faith.
The president’s outburst left Mr. Qurei “dazed,” Martin Indyk, then the U.S. ambassador to Israel and a key member of the American team, recalled in his memoir, “Innocent Abroad” (2009).
“He was humiliated and deeply offended,” Mr. Indyk wrote, adding, “He withdrew from the negotiations and repaired to his bedroom, where he stayed in his pajamas for most of the rest of the summit.”
The talks failed; a few weeks later, a Palestinian uprising began.
Ahmed Qurei was born in Abu Dis on Oct. 12, 1936, to Ali and Dawoudeyah Qurei. His father was a sheep farmer. Ahmed used to walk from his village to school in downtown East Jerusalem. He moved to Saudi Arabia in his 20s to work for the Arab Bank and stayed for several years.
He married Heyam Samman in 1961. She survives him, as do their five children — Ala, Amer, Manal, Esam and Mona — and 17 grandchildren.
In 1968, Mr. Qurei joined Fatah and moved to Beirut, Lebanon, where he established Samed, the economic arm of the P.L.O., the umbrella group for a disparate array of Palestinian political and militant factions. In Lebanon, Samed distributed cash to the families of Palestinians killed in attacks on Israel and set up manufacturing workshops to employ Palestinian refugees.
After Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Mr. Qurei and the rest of the P.L.O. leadership decamped to Tunis. There Mr. Qurei served as the director general of the P.L.O.’s Department of Economic Affairs and Planning.
After his return to Abu Dis in the West Bank just beyond Jerusalem’s city limits, he was appointed minister of economy, trade and industry in the first Palestinian government. He became a lawmaker in the Palestinian Legislative Council after parliamentary elections in 1996 and served as its speaker until 2003, when he became prime minister, replacing Mr. Abbas, who had resigned over differences with Mr. Arafat.
Mr. Qurei, popularly known by his nickname, Abu Ala, also had his quarrels with Mr. Arafat and threatened to resign at least twice.
He finally did quit, along with his government, in 2006, shortly before Hamas beat Fatah in a landslide election, upending decades of Fatah domination of Palestinian politics. By then, Mr. Arafat was dead and Mr. Abbas had succeeded him as president of the Palestinian Authority.
Mr. Qurei had warned Mr. Abbas against holding the election, apparently fearful of a loss to Hamas. A year later, Hamas seized full control of Gaza. The Palestinians have not held parliamentary elections since.
In his later years, Mr. Qurei was surrounded by signs of dashed dreams and Palestinian disappointment.
An unfinished Palestinian Parliament building in Abu Dis, on which construction was started in the 1990s, stands derelict. Abu Dis is now separated from Jerusalem by a high concrete wall, part of the security barrier that Israel erected in the early 2000s to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching Israeli cities, now a gray testament to failure.
Mr. Ross recalled telling Mr. Qurei in 2000 that the parameters outlined by Mr. Clinton for a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal would not be pursued by the incoming Bush administration, and that the Palestinians would pay a more long-term price if Mr. Arafat rejected them.
Mr. Qurei shook his head sadly, Mr. Ross recounted, and said, “Then I’m afraid it could take another 50 years.”