Bryan Times · Bryan, OH · 29 June 1998
CP-1998-031
Palestinians, Israel head to showdown over state
By NICOLAS B. TATRO, Associated Press Writer
Transcribed from the clipping
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Over the past four years, Palestinians have slowly built up a political entity that looks very much like a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. There is a 30,000-member police force, a quarrelsome legislature, myriad government offices and a sparkling new international airport with everything but airplanes.
The success of self-rule can be seen in the little things, too: glassed-in bus stops in Ramallah, white-and-black street signs in Arabic and English, metal trash containers and, in some towns, telephone booths. Yasser Arafat, who has the title of president of the Palestinian Authority, is promising to make it official at midnight on May 4, 1999.
That’s when the Oslo accords negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians expire, at least according to Palestinian interpretation. “We are already a state in terms of the land, the people, an elected government and recognition.
What is left is to exercise sovereignty over the territory by that date,” said Mahdi Abdel Hadi, head of the independent Passia think tank in Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted that if the Palestinians declare statehood on their own, he might annex large tracts in the West Bank, where the Palestinians govern only 27 percent of the land.
How this transcription was made
Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping.
Context added by this archive
Wire copy. The vocabulary here is uniformly “Palestinians” and the subject is the West Bank and Gaza, not Israel’s own Arab citizens; a negative case for Maria’s cluster.
Cite this clipping
"Palestinians, Israel head to showdown over state," Bryan Times, 29 June 1998, p. 9 (not legible on the scan; see flags). Covering Palestine archive, CP-1998-031. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1998-031
More from Bryan Times
- 12 Palestinians killed in bombingBryan Times · 12 November 1977
More from the 1990s
- Israeli Arabs Living Inside a Jewish Neighborhood Know FearLos Angeles Times · 5 February 1998
- Arab citizens of Israel despair they’ll never be acceptedThe St. Augustine Record · 6 February 1998
- Palestinian protesters voice support for IraqisChicago Tribune · 10 February 1998
- Netanyahu Snubs BritishTulsa World · 18 March 1998
- Israeli Arabs March Home, To a Place They Can’t Live InThe New York Times · 29 March 1998
- Palestinians confront past, betrayals on path to statehoodKalamazoo Gazette · 5 April 1998
- All 374 clippings from the 1990s →
Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1998-031.
Everything printed in 1998 · Printed on this day · See it in the archive reel · Full text of every clipping · Dataset