The New York Times · New York, New York · 24 November 1993

CP-1993-037

Israeli Arabs Say P.L.O. Pact Is a Path to First-Class Status

By Clyde Haberman

Scan 820 × 1132 pixels

Transcribed from the clipping

NAZARETH, Israel — Diab Mahroum, a pastry maker in this ancient city, could see for himself how much the world had suddenly changed when he put his baklava on display at a food fair in October in Cologne, Germany. For the first time, he said, business executives from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait felt confident enough to visit the Israel booth.

Before you could say pistachio, they had placed orders for 8,000 pounds of sweets from the factory here founded by his father, Foad. Not that everything has changed in the Middle East, where an official Arab boycott of Israel remains in effect.

The boxes of baklava, which will be shipped to the Persian Gulf by way of Cyprus, say simply in English, “Mahroum Sweets Ltd., Nazareth.” No mention of Israel. Still, says Mr. Mahroum, an Israeli Arab, even this small step would have been improbable before Sept.

13, when Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed their agreement on self-rule for roughly 1.8 million Palestinian Arabs in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. “The psychological border was opened,” he said. “The Arab countries were very afraid before. This was the first exposition where we could feel them showing interest.”

Like Mr. Mahroum, many of the 800,000 Arab citizens of Israel see the agreement as a force for potentially sweeping improvements in their lives — in business, politics, Government services and cultural endeavors.

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 or date line, so its date and newspaper rest on the record it arrived with, not on anything visible in the scan.

Context added by this archive

Date check: No masthead or page date line is visible; the scan shows the top of a front page without the nameplate. The “INSIDE” box refers to “Part 2 of Tony Kushner’s ‘Angels in America’ opened on Broadway” and to pages A2–D17, consistent with a New York Times of late November 1993, but the printed date could not be read.

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