Some Israelis and Palestinians cannot wait for U.S. Secretary of State James Baker to find the right formula to bring the two parties together.
A large delegation from the Israeli peace camp will meet later this week in Spain with a similar-size delegation of Palestinian activists.
The three-day conference, a far cry from either an international or regional conference, will begin Wednesday in the southern Spanish city of Granada, under the auspices of the Spanish peace movement, which is associated with Spain’s governing Socialist Party.
The Israelis and Palestinians who will meet seem to share impatience, if not disdain, for the formalistic “shuttle diplomacy” which Baker is currently conducting on his third visit to Israel and Arab capitals since mid-March.
At the Granada gathering, the Palestinians will be represented by the Palestine Liberation Organization and its supporters from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
They include East Jerusalem activist Faisal Husseini, with whom Baker has already met three times; Hanna Siniora, editor of the influential Arabic daily Al-Fajr; and Radwan Abu-Ayyash, chairman of the Palestinian Journalists Association, whom the Israelis released only last week from five months’ administrative detention.
The PLO delegation will be headed by Dr. Nabil Sha’ath.
The Israeli delegation includes Arieh (Lova) Eliav and Yossi Beilin, Labor Party Knesset members; Dr. Ephraim Sneh, former head of the civil administration in the West Bank; author Yael Dayan, daughter of the late Moshe Dayan, who as foreign minister of Israel helped negotiate the 1978 Camp David accords; and Mapam activist Latif Dori.
Because Israeli law forbids its citizens from meeting with the PLO, the conference has been billed “A Dialogue Between Residents of the Middle East.”
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