וועידת מדריד – סיכום 30 שנה אחרי לפעילי מטות ערים
(עפ השגריר לשעבר זלמן שובל)
Israel traditionally opposed international conferences, realizing it would always be a minority there.
For instance, in 1977 when the Carter administration planned a joint US-Soviet international conference in Geneva, in a brilliant diplomatic move, foreign minister Moshe Dayan succeeded in replacing it with Israel's autonomy plan.
Israel accepted "242," though Shamir and some members of his staff continued to take a dim view of it.
Shamir, who usually listened attentively without interrupting, at one point stopped Baker in mid-sentence, objecting to the inclusion of settlements in the draft, saying "But this is our land,"
in other words that no one will tell us where to build and where not to build in our own country.
Our American interlocutors agreed to... the US for the first (and last) time explicitly stating that "the US would not support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state."
My request that referring to Resolution 242 would not include a mention of withdrawals was also accepted.
The State Department representatives argued these demands effectively amounted to preconditions, but the document was eventually worded as we requested.
Bush called upon the Arab world to consider Israel's "reasonable" security needs.
On the matter of borders, he ignored the "land for peace" formula, but said the borders would have to reflect both the security elements and political arrangements.
The Palestinians were completely stalling, probably as turned out later, because the talks with PLO representatives had begun in Oslo behind the back of the government. Baker, years later, said to me that Oslo had eliminated any chance of achieving peace according to the Madrid blueprint.
