Back Channel Negotiation: Secrecy in the Middle East Peace Process

3. The Madrid Peace Conference and the Washington Track, 1991 to 1993

52 3 The Madrid Peace Conference and the Washington Track, 1991 to 1993 Traditionally, only collaborators or people with questionable national credentials had conducted talks with Israeli officials . . . popular perceptions presented such meetings as “normalization” under occupation or suspicious secret deals/sell-outs. —Hanan Ashrawi, spokeswoman for Palestinian delegation in Washington1 It took nearly forty-three years after the establishment of the state of Israel for Palestinian and Israeli negotiators to openly sit down to peace talks. The world watched as the Madrid Peace Conference was followed by a bilateral track of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations held mostly in Washington, D.C. Paradoxically , their efforts were soon eclipsed by PLO-Israel negotiations being conducted in parallel, but also in complete secrecy. To analyze and understand the secret negotiations, it is necessary to understand the content and conduct of the open negotiations. The Context of the Madrid Peace Conference On October 30, 1991, delegations from Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and a joint Jordanian -Palestinian delegation convened in Madrid, Spain, to inaugurate the open peace process. The United States and Soviet Union were the conveners of the conference, but it was really Secretary of State James Baker who had manipulated the parties into attending. At the insistence of Israel’s government, the Palestinian delegates could neither be members of the Palestine Liberation Organization Madrid Peace Conference and the Washington Track 53 (PLO) nor Arab residents of East Jerusalem. Nor could they attend the conference under their own auspices. Jordan was once again required to provide the fig leaf of diplomatic representation for the Palestinians: Jordan’s diplomatic delegation incorporated notable Palestinians from the West Bank (excluding Jerusalem ) and Gaza. Even though several of the Palestinian delegates were openly affiliated with the PLO, they were not the core, top-level leadership. A separate Palestinian-Israeli bilateral “track” followed up the Madrid conference in Washington , D.C., and met for ten rounds of intense but ultimately fruitless negotiations between 1991 and 1993 (the “Washington track”). With the PLO’s exclusion from the Madrid Peace Conference and the ensuing Washington track and the relative distance of the Israeli negotiators from top Israeli decision makers, the wrong parties again seemed to be trying to negotiate an end to the core issue of Arab-Israeli political hostility. Israeli and Palestinian front channel negotiations demonstrated their limitations , given the difficulty of the issues being negotiated and the political constraints of the negotiators. Proposals advanced by the Israeli side demonstrated a retreat from Israeli commitments under the Camp David Accords (discussed in chapter 2) and were predicated on the concept of personal but not territorial autonomy for Palestinians, under continued Israeli sovereignty. The Palestinian side wanted to negotiate the formation of the “Palestinian Interim Self-Governing Authority” with a view toward independent Palestinian statehood.2 The Madrid Peace Conference seemed to exemplify the classic, large multilateral sessions that had so often proven ineffective in prior Middle East peacemaking . Despite their shortcomings, large conferences were long seen as desirable, essential elements of peacemaking by would-be third-party interveners in Middle East conflicts because they brought all the relevant parties together, permitted the third party great leverage, and conferred legitimacy on the process of negotiation with one’s enemy. In other words, despite their proven track record of ineffectiveness , they provided some protection to each party to the peacemaking process. Under the auspices of the United States and the Soviet Union, Israel and the surrounding Arab states Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan attended as parties. The Jordanian delegation provided diplomatic cover for a delegation of Palestinians who would succeed in attaining direct negotiations with their Israeli counterparts. This marked the first time that Palestinians had official representation at an international peace conference on the conflict that so intimately involves them.3 54 Back Channel Negotiation James Baker III: Resurrecting the Peace Conference Secretary of State James Baker took advantage of the United States’ regional political leverage in the Middle East following the liberation of Kuwait and surrender of Iraq. The postwar military balance and diplomatic conditions were propitious for a U.S. effort to relaunch peace initiatives in the Middle East just as Henry Kissinger had done in an analogous historical moment following the 1973 Middle East war. The futility of Iraqi attempts to militarize the Arab-Israeli conflict, the political weakness of the PLO and Jordan’s King Hussein, as well as Israel’s demonstrated dependence on U.S. military...