Israelis, Palestinians applaud peace talks

By Ruth Sinai

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Transcribed from the clipping

MADRID, Spain — They have met before, Israelis and Palestinians. But often there was a rifle, a roadblock or a detention order between them. In Spain, they met as equals. And the result was surprising. They told jokes. They talked about their families. They drank coffee and ate cake during a break.

Both invoked God’s will: the Arabs said “Inshallah,” the Israelis “Im Yirtzeh Hashem.” It wasn’t all sweetness and light. The Palestinians demanded that Israel stop building settlements in the occupied West Bank. The Israelis demanded that the Palestinians cease their violent four-year-old uprising. They couldn’t agree on a site for future talks.

But they did agree to talk again — soon. “It’s gotten off to a better start than I would have expected,” said Secretary of State James A. Baker III, the architect of the talks. The goal is to allow the 1.7 million Palestinians under Israeli rule to run their own lives — to elect leaders with genuine powers, freely administer their city halls — for an interim period.

During the third year of that period, talks would begin to negotiate the permanent fate of the territory. The arrangement, while not ideal, suits both sides for the time being.

It reflects the broad changes in the regional balance of power: the decline of the Soviet Union, which was the Arabs’ main backer, the resulting growth in U.S. influence and American willingness to twist the arm of its closest ally in the region — Israel.

Although the self-rule proposal doesn’t promise Palestinians the independent land they want, it does envisage an end the interference of the Israeli military in their daily lives and holds out the hope of a permanent solution to their 43-year problem.

Israel hopes that agreement with the Palestinians will snuff out the intefadeh, or uprising, which has been tying up large numbers of security forces and distracting resources from the country’s top priority — the absorption of hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews.

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Cite this clipping

"Israelis, Palestinians applaud peace talks," Stamford Advocate, 5 November 1991. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1991-040. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1991-040