The gain in Spain is mainly to the Palestinians

BY GARY LAKES

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Transcribed from the clipping

NICOSIA — Members of the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid peace conference returned to the Israeli-occupied West Bank to a tumultuous welcome. Thousands of Palestinians gathered near the town of Jericho to greet the delegates as they made their way from the Allenby bridge to Jerusalem.

It is said of the Palestinians that they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. But all that changed in Madrid. The Palestinian moderates comprising the delegation abandoned the traditional maxmalist demand for an independent Palestinian state in favor of a gradualist approach. In so doing they clearly came out ahead.

For the first time in their history — and to the chagrin of the Israelis — the Palestinians were portrayed as an independent people with legitimate claims, not terrorists but equal partners in a long-overdue process designed to produce a peaceful settlement to a 42-year-old conflict.

For the Palestinians, the Madrid conference was a success because they decided to get on and stay on the bus that Secretary of State James Baker had warned was coming around for the last time. By the end of the three-day conference and the first bilateral meeting with an Israeli delegation, the Palestinians had succinctly put forward their argument for a national homeland.

THE RESULT of the Madrid conference gave rise to a new sense of euphoria and optimism among residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip who have taken to holding peace marches during which they offer olive branches and flowers to occupying Israeli soldiers, rather than pelting them with rocks and firebombs.

There has even been talk among Palestinians of stopping the intifada — the uprising that began in December, 1987 — if Israel agrees to ease its repressive measures in the occupied territories.

The meeting in Madrid has also brought more political cohesion to the Palestinians in the occupied territories where opinion was beginning to splinter following the Palestine Liberation Organization’s mistaken support for Saddam Hussein during the Gulf war and ugly incidents born of the intifada, which was degenerating into Palestinian gangs murdering Palestinians accused of being Israeli informers.

Support for the talks and the PLO was vividly displayed in the outcome of a Chamber of Commerce election in Gaza Nov. 4. Supporters of Yasser Arafat, PLO chairman, won a surprise victory over the radical Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas, which was thought to have a strong following in the Gaza Strip. Hamas won only three seats in the chamber, while supporters of Mr.

Arafat’s Fatah group won 13. DURING A recent press conference in Jerusalem, Faisal al-Husseini and Hanan Ashrawi, the main architects of the Palestinian position in Madrid, said that Palestinian teams from inside the occupied territories and the diaspora were drawing up plans for the transfer of authority from the Israeli authorities. This is somewhat premature.

The Government of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has tried to squelch the new buoyance among the Palestinians. The United States and Soviet Union, co-sponsors of the conference, awarded the Palestinians diplomatic protection, a move that displeases the Israeli Government. YOSSI AHNIMEIR, a spokesman for Mr.

Shamir, said of the Palestinian delegation’s joyous return that they have “apparently returned with exaggerated self-confidence and think they are permitted to do anything and act like the leaders of an independent state. They should get back down to earth and take a more realistic view of things.”

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person. The clipping carries no masthead and no dated folio line, so the date recorded here could not be checked against anything printed on the page. Nothing on the page contradicts it.

Context added by this archive

In the same month of 1991 two American papers printed the same sentence about Palestinians. The Blade (CP-1991-044) set it with no source, in its own voice: “It is said of the Palestinians that they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

The New York Times (CP-1991-045) set it with one: “Israelis like to recall Abba Eban’s tart remark about the Palestinians: They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Neither clipping carries a masthead or a dated folio, so which came first is not established and neither date is confirmed from the page.

Both papers raise the sentence in order to put it down: The Blade goes on to say “But all that changed in Madrid,” and the Times goes on to say it is Israel that risks falling into the opportunity gap.

These are the only two instances in this archive, and a search of the other records found the phrase nowhere else — a search of transcribed excerpts, which are a portion of each clipping and not the whole of it.

Cite this clipping

"The gain in Spain is mainly to the Palestinians," The Blade, 17 November 1991, p. SECTION F., PAGE 3. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1991-044. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1991-044