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6 _________________ The Madrid Peace Process and the Challenge of the Inside No other event since 1967 potentially threatened the historic relationship between inside and outside like the 1991 Madrid and Washington peace talks, which convened partly on terms dictated by Israel. For the first time, the PLO was forced to give its assent to a situation in which territorial Palestinians, albeit within a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, became negotiating partners with Israel in an international forum, from which the PLO itself was formally excluded.I Even more noteworthy, the terms of the peace process spoke of a mandatory interim stage of three to five years of self-government (depending on the length of negotiations over final settlement beginning in the third year), in which territorial Palestinians would govern themselves, again to the exclusion of the PLO. It seemed, then, that the twenty-five-yearold dream of the advocates of the Palestinian entity was finally to bear fruit in a state-building process that conformed to the Zionist pattern before Israeli independence. Did the territorial Palestinians take advantage of this opportunity, or did they prove once again that they were politicians in search of leadership, as Sahliyeh claimed, rather than assuming leadership themselves? This chapter assesses the impact of the Madrid and Washington peace talks on the quality of state making and links the weakness of state formation with the inability of the territorialists to transform the diaspora-center-territorial-periphery framework into a territorially centered national movement. THE PLO AND THE PALESTINIAN DELEGATION If Israel's intent was either to divide Palestinians or to place the territorialists in a favored position compared to the PLO, the Palestinian delegation and the PLO responded in assuring each other of the bonds of hierarchical unity that traditionally held them together. The outside expressed these sentiments in the political statement that concluded the PNC meeting a month before the Madrid peace talks: 'The upcoming stage, with all its obstacles, requires that all the institutions and personalities inside and outside the homeland coordinate with the political leadership of the PLO."2 Haydar 'Abd al-Shafi, the head \09 110 COUNTDOWN TO STATEHOOD of the fourteen-strong Palestinian delegation, duly acknowledged his delegation's obeisance to the PLO in his opening address to the conference: "We have been denied the right to publicly acknowledge our loyalty to our leadership and system of government. ... Our acknowledged leadership is more than a justly and democratically chosen leadership of all the Palestinian people."l In his closing remarks, he even invoked the leader of the PLO himself: "In the words of Chairman Arafat in 1974 before the United Nations General Assembly, "Let not the olive branch fall from our hands. Let not the olive branch fall from the hands of the Palestinian people'." Nabil Sha(th, Arafat's close advisor and confidant, was equally insistent on championing the prerogatives of the outside: "There was one Palestinian delegation, representing one single Palestinian people in all places, whether under occupation or in exile."" Naturally, the PLO sought ways to ensure that the delegation would not act independently of its leadership. The nomination of seventy-two-year-old Haydar 'Abd al-Shafi to head the delegation rather than a younger politician such as Faysal Husayni served this purpose well. Though 'Abd al-Shafi was former president of the Palestinian legislative council formed under Egyptian rule, a founding member of the PLO and its first Executive Committee, and a publically acknowledged symbol of selfless long-term dedication to both the Palestinian cause and society, he also had some liabilities: he was a man of the left, of advanced age, whose relations with the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza had been tempestuous in the past. A weak figurehead, politically unaffiliated, he made an ideal choice from the perspective of the diaspora. To offset the collective leadership potential of the group and to advise the negotiating team, the PLO divided the inside by setting up a seven-strong advisory committee headed by al-Husayni, two other territorial Palestinians, Zahira Kamal and Hanan 'Ashrawi (who doubled as spokeswoman for both the delegation and the advisory committee in which she was member), and three particularly gifted members from the diaspora, Kamil Mansur, a jurist and publicist residing in France, Anis al-Qasim, an attorney residing in Great Britain, and Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian American academic.' This was shortly replaced effectively by a larger and misnamed leadership committee, headed by Nabil Sha(th and deputized by his "foil...

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