Eyad Serraj is one of the most respected personalities in Gaza. As a psychiatrist, he helps children traumatised by violence, victims of domestic violence and men driven to insanity by war. He has always defended the rights of the individual, as a consequence of which he had seen the inside of Palestinian Authority prisons.

On March 22, in the aftermath of the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of the Islamist organisation Hamas whom he knew well, he released a message: "He has accepted an end to the conflict by having a Palestinian state alongside that of Israel, abandoning the dream of an Islamic state in all of Palestine. His principal aim is ending the occupation.

"Last summer, he played a central role in signing a unilateral cease fire which lasted two months. The assassination is the last nail in the Palestinian Authority coffin which (Israeli premier Ariel) Sharon has destroyed meticulously ... only the party of death has triumphed." (Proche-Orient, le choix du chaos by Alain Gresh, Le Monde Diplomatique , April 2004).

In just over six months, Palestine has lost two very prominent personalities. They are worlds apart in terms of cultural and educational background, and in the objective and methods of their struggle, but they both fought for the same Palestinian home land, for the dignity and freedom of their people.

Edward Said came from a wealthy West Jerusalem Christian family. He was professor of English and comparative literature, a celebrated cultural critique and a sought after speaker, opera and music reviewer for a New York magazine, an accomplished classical pianist and many things else.

Sheikh Ahmed was everything that a cultured cosmopolitan was not - a refugee from his former village in what is now Israel to live in his modest Gaza dwelling, hardly venturing beyond his mosque, almost blind and paralysed.

Always dressed in traditional Arab garb, his simple messages found resonance in the hearts of his people with whom he shared the misfortune of being driven from their homeland and to live under an oppressive Israeli occupation. Both were charismatic and determined but they each addressed a different audience.