Appendix B. Expanded Endnotes - Chapter 4 – Madrid

2. Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 415. All of ch.3 ("A Postwar Vision for the Middle East") is devoted to Baker's developing the idea of a multilateral peace conference and trying the persuade the various leaders in the region to agree, in principle, to participate. Cf. Y. Shamir, Summing Up, 229.

6. Caplan, Lausanne Conference, Futile Diplomacy, 2: ch.4 and Futile Diplomacy, 3: chs.4-10; Bannerman, "Arabs and Israelis: Slow Walk toward Peace," 143; Ben-Zvi, Between Lausanne and Geneva, 15-17.

9. Ben-Zvi, Between Lausanne and Geneva. For a comparison of the Geneva and Madrid conferences see Bentsur, Making Peace, 176-77.

10. This "two-tier" approach became part of American proposals in March 1989. See Rubenberg, "Bush Administration and the Palestinians," 199. See also Atherton, "Shifting Sands of Middle East Peace," 124-25.

14. J. Baker (Politics of Diplomacy, 509) observed that "the Soviets were so pleased to be co-sponsors that I essentially had their proxy for any arrangements." The Palestinians initially looked to the Soviets for diplomatic support several times. Ashrawi found them ineffectual while Abu Mazen appreciated their good will. Ashrawi, This Side of Peace, 128-29; Abbas, Through Secret Channels, 86-96.

16. Bush used the phrase for the first time in an address to a joint session of Congress on 11 September 1990. For discussions, see, e.g., Spiegel and Pervin, "Introduction: The Search for Arab-Israeli Peace after the Cold War," 1-4; Gazit, "After the Gulf War," 18-20; Bentsur, Making Peace, 154-57; Quandt, Peace Process, 304-5. Atherton ("Shifting Sands of Middle East Peace," 114-33) puts the conference in a broader historical context going back to 1967.

18. Quandt, Peace Process, 307-10; J. Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 445-46, 491-93, 504, 507; Ashrawi, This Side of Peace, 123-31, 143-44, 158; Nusseibeh, Once Upon a Country, 338-48; Abbas, Through Secret Channels, 87-88; Khatib, Palestinian Politics and the Middle East Peace Process, ch.3; Susser, "Jordan, the PLO and the Palestine Question," 226.

20. R. Khalidi, Brokers of Deceit, 7, 37-39. Khalidi’s selected primary documents of the Palestine Delegation to the Palestinian-Israeli Negotiations [PPD] online at https://digitalprojects.palestine-studies.org/resources/palestinian-delegation (a/24 March 2022).

25. Mansour, "Palestinian-Israeli Peace Negotiations," 5-7. See also ibid., 30-31. Abu-Amr, "Palestinian-Israeli Negotiations," 27. Haydar Abd al-Shafi concurs that the Palestinians "had to go" to Madrid: "It didn't cost us anything to enter the process," and it denied Israel "the chance to make propaganda that we don't want peace." Abd al-Shafi, interviewed by Rashid I. Khalidi, "Looking Back, Looking Forward," 33. He made a similar point in an interview ten years earlier: "Reflections on the Peace Process," 57. Palestinian delegate Sami al-Kilani similarly wrote that "you can refuse only if you are strong enough and you have everything in your hand." Al-Kilani and Hiltermann, "Why We Negotiate," 18.

32. Telhami, "Israeli Foreign Policy after the Gulf War," 51-53, 59-60. Cf. Eisenberg, "Passive Belligerency," 305-06. Some observers wonder why subsequent U.S. administrations did not draw a lesson "from the Bush experience of 1991-1992, when Bush and Baker used precisely the leverage of US aid to exert pressure on an intransigent Likud government and ultimately persuaded the Israeli body politic to vote it out of office." Christison, "Bound by a Frame of Reference," 55, 58, 62; Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 555-57.

33. S. Segev ("Arab-Israeli Conflict under President Bush") emphasizes the personal and political clash between Shamir, on the one hand, and Bush and Baker on the other, in his account of preparations for Madrid. Although Shamir had (correctly) calculated that he could pass on the 1988 Shultz Initiative without damaging U.S.-Israeli relations, he came to a different conclusion regarding Madrid in 1991. Y. Shamir, Summing Up, 175.

36. Maariv, 26 June 1992, quoted in Shlaim, "Prelude to the Accord," 10-11; Clyde Haberman, "Shamir Is Said to Admit Plan to Stall Talks 'for Ten Years’," NYT, 27 June 1992, cited in Quandt, Peace Process, 314; Bannerman, "Arabs and Israelis: Slow Walk toward Peace," 150; Frankel, Beyond the Promised Land, 309.

37. G. Golan, "Arab-Israeli Peace Negotiations," 42-44; Frankel, Beyond the Promised Land, 221; Ben-Ami, Scars of War, 199-200; Ross, Missing Peace, 84-85; Quandt, Peace Process, 313.

38. These restrictions still carried some weight, in spite of the attempts by the Palestine National Council and Arafat to satisfy American criteria for recognition and the start of a fledgling U.S.-PLO dialogue in late 1988. See: Rabie, US-PLO Dialogue; Abbas, Through Secret Channels, 24-35; Tessler, History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 719-27; Khatib, Palestinian Politics, ch.3; Schiff and Ya'ari, Intifada, 300-06.

39. Quandt, Peace Process, 307-10; J. Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 445-46, 491-93, 504, 507; Ashrawi, This Side of Peace, 123-31, 143-44, 158; Nusseibeh, Once Upon a Country, 338-48; Khatib, Palestinian Politics, ch.3; Jonathan Lis, “The 30th Anniversary of the Conference That Could Have Changed the Middle East,” Haaretz, 22 October 2021. Senior PLO leader Abu Mazen later wrote (Abbas, Through Secret Channels, 87-88) that "the PLO was running everything but announcing nothing."

41. Ashrawi, This Side of Peace, 161-62, 171-73; Arens, Broken Covenant, 259-62; Bentsur, Making Peace, 129-45, 175; Abbas, Through Secret Channels, 88. Majali et al. (Peacemaking, ch.2 and p.56) remark upon the decidedly more tense atmosphere between the Israeli and Palestinian teams than that between the Israelis and Jordanians. For some of the memoranda and proposals exchanged during the Washington talks (22 November 1991 - 5 August 1993), see IPS, Palestinian-Israeli Peace Agreement, 35-113.

42. Mansour, "Palestinian-Israeli Peace Negotiations," 18. Chairman Arafat met the entire delegation publicly in Cairo in April, and in Amman in June 1992. Cf. Mansour, 18, 28-29; Abbas, Through Secret Channels, ch.6. James Baker (Politics of Diplomacy, 423) reveals that at his very first meeting with Palestinians in Jerusalem, Faisal Husseini and Hanan Ashrawi presented him with "a letter from Yasir Arafat stating that he had empowered them to represent his interests" and that he "received a similar pro-forma letter at every subsequent meeting." Shamir fought hard to distance the PLO from the conference, although he knew of its behind-the-scenes activity, as did Baker, which Shamir could not prevent and Baker merely required remain unpublicized. Y. Shamir, Summing Up, 227-28; S. Segev, "Arab-Israeli Conflict under President Bush," 129-30; Ashrawi, This Side of Peace, 100, 128, 209-11.

47. Although Baker had vowed early on to avoid any forays into extensive personal shuttle diplomacy, Arab and Israeli leaders would not commit to participating in the conference until he became personally involved, jetting among their capitals, convincing and cajoling them personally. Between March and October 1991, Baker’s Middle East travels totaled 251,134 miles. J. Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, chs.25, 27, and P. Baker and Glasser, Man Who Ran Washington, 450; Bentsur, Making Peace, ch.3; Jarbawi and Heacock, "Winds of War, Winds of Peace," 13-14; Quandt, Peace Process, 303; Ross, Missing Peace, 70-77; Arens, Broken Covenant, ch.8; Ashrawi, This Side of Peace, chs.5-6.

48. Bentsur, Making Peace, 73-74, 97-98; J. Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 423-24, 445, 465-66, 491-93, 496-501. If the shuttling was reminiscent of Henry Kissinger after the 1973 war, Baker's inclusion of regular consultations with Palestinians was a clear divergence from Kissinger's route. Quandt, Peace Process, 303; Ashrawi, This Side of Peace, 127; Wanis-St. John, Back Channel Negotiation, 54; Indyk, Master of the Game, 554-55, 570.

49. Letters of Assurances and official invitation reprinted in JPS 21:2 (Winter, 1992), 118-21. See also: Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 497-501; Ross, Missing Peace, 77-78; Bentsur, Making Peace, 112-15; Majali et al., Peacemaking, 41. Ashrawi (This Side of Peace, 91-92, 100, 129-30, 245) describes the evolution of the Palestinians' letter through almost a dozen drafts, and her disappointment with the final version. Apart from two extracted paragraphs (JPS, 120), the full text of the Letter of Assurances to Lebanon has so far eluded us, including an unanswered FOIA request.

50. Bannerman, "Arabs and Israelis: Slow Walk toward Peace," 145. See also G. Golan, "Arab-Israeli Peace Negotiations," 46.

54. Quandt, Peace Process, 311; Majali et al., Peacemaking, 44. As much as Arab representatives needed the Americans to facilitate issues at times, Majali et al. also comment (85) on cultural differences between themselves and their American hosts with respect to negotiating, and write (54) about the unique opportunity Jordanians and Israelis enjoyed to talk without a third party present, even free of secretaries, stenographers, and tape recorders.

56. Moshe Arens, then Israel's minister of defense, found the Bush-Baker team to be "heavy handed" and resented Bush's "repeated attempts to interfere in Israel's internal politics." Arens, Broken Covenant, 245-51, 301.

57. Eisenberg, "Passive Belligerency," 317; Frankel, Beyond the Promised Land, 307; Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, ch.29; Atherton, "Shifting Sands of Middle East Peace," 133; Bentsur, Making Peace, 49-50, 101; Quandt, Peace Process, 307, 310, 312-13, 318; Y. Shamir, Summing Up, 210-11, 233-35; S. Segev, "Arab-Israeli Conflict under President Bush," 125-28; Ross, Missing Peace, 82-84; Moshe Arens, Broken Covenant, 245-51, 301. Bush released the loan guarantees to Yitzhak Rabin when the latter replaced Shamir as prime minister in 1992 and committed Israel to a more vigorous search for Palestinian-Israeli peace.

60. Wanis-St. John, Back Channel Negotiation, 77. In ch.4 he uses the same framework to compare the Madrid/Washington negotiations with the back-channel negotiations between the PLO and Israel in Oslo, which overlapped for nine months.

61. I. Rabinovich, Lingering Conflict, 34; R. Khalidi, Brokers of Deceit, 45. See also: Quandt, Peace Process, 315-17; Ross, Missing Peace, 85.

64. For a comprehensive selection of Madrid-related letters, speeches, statements, and draft proposals, see IPS, Palestinian-Israeli Peace Agreement, 5-11 and "Madrid Peace Conference: Special Document File," 117-49. See also Bentsur, Making Peace, ch.4 and appendix.

67. Jarbawi and Heacock, "Winds of War, Winds of Peace," 15. Shmuel Segev ("Arab-Israeli Conflict under President Bush," 131) writes that the Palestinian delegation's sentiment after the first day of the conference "was that of ecstasy and triumph." Ashrawi (This Side of Peace, 155) notes that the Palestinians left Madrid "with a combined sense of euphoria and loss," the former for having been heard, and the latter reflecting that the first bilateral meeting had not actually produced any results and that the hardest part was yet to come.

71. Alan Cowell, "Syria Offers Old Photo to Fill an Empty Chair," NYT, 2 November 1991; Fifty Years War, PBS video, 1999; Bentsur, Making Peace, 252-54; Y. Shamir, Summing Up, 242; Shaaban, Damascus Diary, 45-46; Arens, Broken Covenant, 258; Ross, Missing Peace, 80. Shamir had excused himself from the conference immediately following his own remarks, citing a need to return to Israel prior to the Sabbath, but he left his delegation to sit stone-faced during al-Sharaa's performance.

74. Solingen, "Multilateral Arab-Israeli Negotiations"; Peters, Pathways to Peace, chs.2, 9; Bentsur, Making Peace, ch.6; Majali et al., Peacemaking, ch.7.

75. Bannerman, "Arabs and Israelis: Slow Walk toward Peace," 152. Cf. G. Golan, "Arab-Israeli Peace Negotiations," 39-40; Zartman, "Negotiation Process in the Middle East," 69; Saunders, Other Walls, 36-37. Aharon Klieman (Approaching the Finish Line, 26-28) argues, however, that optimism about the gradual, "evolutionary" nature of such agreements is based on the dubious assumptions that time can "stand still," that "it is on the side of peace," and that "regulating it is the prerogative of superpowers."

78. Deshen, "Applied Anthropology in International Conflict Resolution," 180-84. Deshen's analysis of the depth of this rift, read with hindsight after the events surrounding the November 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, is eerily prophetic. See also Kass and O'Neill, Deadly Embrace, 101-06 and 175, where the authors quote Yitzhak Rabin's July 1995 comment on his government's troubles dealing with settler rabbis: "We must realize that we are headed toward a confrontation between two world views."

80. Al-Kilani and Hiltermann, "Why We Negotiate," 17; Jarbawi and Heacock, "Winds of War, Winds of Peace," 13-15. While delighting in the joy with which most Palestinians received the delegation upon its return from Madrid, Abd al-Shafi repeatedly cautioned the crowds that celebration was "premature" and Ashrawi (This Side of Peace, 156-58) tried to "deflate the monster of excessive optimism and unrealistic expectations."

83. R. Khalidi, Brokers of Deceit, 51-53. See also: R. Khalidi, Hundred Years War, 200-201; Anziska, Preventing Palestine, 273-82; Khatib, Palestinian Politics, 68-73.

85. Shilon, Decline of the Left Wing in Israel, 149. Shilon adds: “It is doubtful that the Yiddish jokes Rubinstein [habitually] told during the meetings did much to brighten the mood.” Looking back, Oslo participant Uri Savir suggested that Rabin kept Rubinstein in D.C. to “‘test’ the PLO and see where they would be more flexible” (quoted in Wanis-St. John, Back-Channel Negotiation, 70). See also: Bentsur, Making Peace, 139-40; Abbas, Through Secret Channels, 92; Ashrawi, This Side of Peace, 217; Majali et al., Peacemaking, 163.

86. R. Khalidi, Brokers of Deceit, 21, 23, 51, and Hundred Years War, 198-201; I. Rabinovich, Lingering Conflict, 35. See also Anziska, Preventing Palestine, 279-82.

90. I. Rabinovich, Lingering Conflict, 49. See also: Avidar, The Abyss, 69-71; Dowek, Egyptian-Israeli Relations, 1980-2000, 123; Ben-Ami, Prophets without Honor, 31.