Search JTA's historical archive dating back to 1923

News Analysis: PLO Unlikely to Bar Palestinians from Peace Conference, Say Experts

August 8, 1991
See Original Daily Bulletin From This Date
Advertisement

The Palestine Liberation Organization will not block a Palestinian delegation from attending the Middle East peace conference the United States and Soviet Union are trying to arrange, Middle East experts predict.

PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat told. The New York Times in an interview published Wednesday that he wants to be able to pick the delegates to the conference.

Arafat also disavowed a statement made Sunday by one of his top political advisers, Bassam Abu Sharif, that there should be no problem selecting a delegation that would satisfy both the PLO and Israel.

The State Department had no official reaction Wednesday to the Arafat interview.

But Middle East experts say Arafat has little influence at this point over the convening of the conference, since Arab states have already agreed to participate individually, without seeking the Palestinians’ agreement.

Daniel Pipes, director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, said he strongly doubts the PLO will be able to block Palestinian participation in the planned conference.

“I don’t see that that’s in the cards,” he said. “The mechanisms are there for face-saving devices.”

He cited the fact that Syria has said it will go to the conference without giving the Palestinians a veto over Syrian participation. Previously, Syria had linked its participation in to discussion of the Palestinian question.

In that regard, said Pipes, Syrian President Hafez Assad has gone even further than the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who agreed to negotiate with Israel only if the Palestinian issue could be discussed as well.

PARTIES WILL ‘FIND A WAY OUT’

Khalil Jahshan, executive director of the National Association of Arab Americans, predicted there “will be a Palestinian delegation” at the planned peace conference.

“It will be approved by the PLO. It will be acceptable to Israel, and all parties would find a way out to say that this is not a PLO delegation,” he said.

Jahshan, who previously headed the PLO’s Washington office, couched Arafat’s disavowal of Abu Sharif’s statement as an attempt at “jockeying for position.”

“Each party is trying to place its demands on the table for the pre-negotiations that are taking place right now.” The preconditions of Israel and surrounding Arab states have been alleviated, he said. “Now it’s the Palestinians’ turn.”

Experts agree that it should not be difficult to find Palestinian delegates who are acceptable to both Israel and the PLO.

Arafat went on record in the Times interview as supporting the inclusion in the Palestinian delegation of West Bank Professor Hanan Ashrawi and Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij, who are also acceptable to the Israeli government.

But Marvin Feuerwerger, senior strategic fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank, said that if the Palestinian delegates say at the conference that they were selected by the PLO, “this could jeopardize the process” because Israel might object.

The PLO’s objection at this point, said Pipes, is “not so much that they don’t like the people” who would represent the Palestinians but that “they don’t like to be told by the Israelis who it will deal with and who it cannot.”

To the Palestinians, “it appears that the Israelis have basically won with the Americans and the Arab states about what this thing should look like,” said Feuerwerger.

But Feuerwerger expressed concern about the U.S. memorandum of agreement now being negotiated in Jerusalem with Ashrawi and fellow activist Faisal Husseini to clarify the Palestinian role in the conference.

The problem with any U.S. assurances to the Palestinians is that the United States might find them “logical” but Israel might object, thereby jeopardizing Israel’s assent to participate in the conference, he said.

For example, Feuerwerger cited Secretary of State James Baker’s support last year for including in a Palestinian negotiating delegation residents of East Jerusalem and former residents of the West Bank or Gaza Strip who had been deported.

Disagreement between the Likud bloc and the Labor Party on this issue ultimately resulted in the collapse of the Israeli government.

“There seems to be (more) understanding this year” of Israel’s sensitivities, an Israeli Embassy official commented.

Recommended from JTA

Advertisement