The man who will head the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid peace conference next week is confident that the United States will force concessions from Israel.
“With the end of the Cold War, many things have change. We are no longer with the Russians, and the Americans seem more receptive to Arab positions,” Dr. Haider Abdel-Shafi said in an interview published Wednesday in the Milan daily Corriere della Sera.
“I seem to have noted a new willingness in (U.S. Secretary of State James) Baker to put pressure on Israel,” he said.
Shafi, a 72-year-old physician from the Gaza Strip, has been designated chairman of the 14-member Palestinian negotiating team that will confront the Israelis under the umbrella of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation.
“I know we Palestinians yielded on all the conditions imposed by the Israelis” for convening the conference, Shafi said. “But I think it was right to participate in the conference, if for no other reason than to show that it is not we who oppose peace.”
Israel insisted it would not negotiate with members of the Palestine Liberation Organization, residents of East Jerusalem or Palestinians living abroad.
Shafi offered an advance scenario. He said the Palestinians would urge a ban on settlements in the Israeli-administered territories.
“The Israelis will oppose this. Then it will be up to the Americans and to the international community to push for at least a temporary freeze, such as happened during the Camp David negotiations,” he said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
