Madrid Conference of 1991
The Madrid Peace Conference was an attempt by the international community to bring about a peace process for the Middle East conflict in motion by Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians were brought to the negotiating table. It was held by the Government of Spain in cooperation with the United States and the Soviet Union. The conference began on 30 October 1991 and lasted for three days.
In the immediate aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, President George HW Bush and his Secretary of State James Baker had the conditions formulated and jointly with the Soviet Union formulated a letter of invitation, and communicate to Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians on 30 October 1991.
The Delegation of the Palestinians was due to objections of Israel initially a part of the joint Palestinian - Jordanian delegation and consisted of Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, without an open connection to the PLO. Saeb Erekat, Faisal Husseini, Hanan Ashrawi and Haidar Abdel Shafi, however, were constantly in touch with the PLO leadership in Tunis.
The purpose of the conference was the one issuing the forum for the participants and the conference had no skills for any decision or refusal agreements. She stood at the beginning of bilateral as well as multilateral talks, which included also the international community. The negotiators of Syria and Lebanon agreed on a common strategy.
The first official bilateral talks between Israel and its neighbors (except Egypt) aimed at peace treaties between the three Arab states and Israel, during the talks with the Palestinians based on a two-phase negotiation form: first, the negotiation of interim self-government arrangements, which then negotiations should follow the permanent status. ( The formula was in fact primarily during the subsequent Oslo Accords. ) These negotiations were started immediately after the conference on November 3, 1991 in Madrid and over a dozen rounds of talks in Washington, DC between 9 December 1991 and the January 24 1994 continued.
The multilateral negotiations began on 28 January 1992 in Moscow and were divided into five forums, each focused on a key issue - water, environment, arms control, refugees and economic development - and found up to November 1993 in various cities in the Middle East and Europe instead. First, Israel refused to attend the talks on refugees and economic developments, as Palestinian representatives from outside the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were present. Syria and Lebanon refused to participate in the multilateral talks, as long as no discernible progress on the bilateral level was apparent.
The formal multilateral talks, which had been frozen for several years, were resumed on 31 January 2000 by a meeting of the Steering Committee, the Working Group meetings followed.
The Israeli- Jordanian negotiations eventually led to the Israeli- Jordanian peace treaty was signed in 1994, while the Israeli-Syrian talks led only to a series of negotiations that reportedly were quite promising, however, not led to a peace treaty.
The bilateral talks between Israel and the Palestinians were eventually replaced by the initially secret negotiations that led to the exchange of letters of 9 and 10 September in 1993 at the end ( see also existence of Israel ) and the signing of the Oslo Accords on 13 September the lawn of the White House led.
Israel cites the great success of the conference and the peace process, that the number of states that have recognized Israel and also maintain a certain level of diplomatic relations, has increased significantly, including the major powers of China and India, but also in the Arab world, Oman, Qatar, Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania, as well as a fading of the Arab boycott and a structure of economic relations with some of the Arab states.
Arab- Israeli diplomacy and peace treaties
- Paris Peace Conference (1919)
- Faisal - Weizmann Agreement (1919)
- Ceasefire Agreement ( 1949)
- Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty (1979 )
- Madrid Conference of 1991
- Oslo Agreement (1993 )
- Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty (1994 )
- Camp David II (2000 )