The New York Times · New York, New York · 1 November 1991

CP-1991-037

For Palestinians, a Seat At the Table Is a Victory

By Youssef M. Ibrahim

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Transcribed from the clipping

NADRID, Oct. 31 — Just before the international peace conference on the Middle East began here on Wednesday, Sameh Kanaan, a member of the Palestinian delegation who spent more than 10 years in Israeli jails, asked a friend to take his picture in the conference hall from an angle that shows him in the same frame with the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir.

“He told me, ‘Please record that I have sat face to face with him around that table as a free man, because the only time I have been with Israelis is when they were my jailers or came to arrest me,’” said the friend, Daoud Kutab, a Palestinian who came to observe what he and most Palestinians here unreservedly describe as a historic event.

Palestinians have spoken of this conference as a crowning event at the end of years of struggle to be recognized as a people.

‘The Foundation Stone’ When a phalanx of Spanish Army troops escorts their representatives out of the Victoria Hotel or into the Hall of Columns of Madrid’s Royal Palace, when Western reporters and television crews flock to record their words, and when they are photographed with Secretary of State James A.

Baker 3d, many Palestinians here agree they almost have to pinch themselves to remember where they came from. “We have come a long way from the days when Golda Meir used to say, ‘Who are the Palestinians?’” said Sami Kilani, a member of the Palestinian negotiating team, in a reference to the late Israeli Prime Minister.

“Today I feel that by being here, in Madrid, we have placed the foundation stone for the Palestinian state.” Never mind that many of the participants here do not expect anything that resembles a Palestinian state for years to come. The sentiment here is of ecstasy and triumph.

The conference, many say, is a bigger-than-life experience that has already changed them and changed the way the world looks at them. An Irrevocable Change “When I packed my luggage to come here, I knew that no matter what happens here I will not be the same man again.

None of us will,” said Saeb Erakat, a professor at Bir Zeit University in the Israeli-occupied West Bank who is a member of the Palestinian team attending the talks.

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