Middle East: Finally Face to Face

Outside the conference hall there were a few grudging handshakes among advisers, but also shouted epithets like "terrorist!" and "murderer!" In formal sessions Arab, Palestinian and Israeli delegates would rarely even look one another in the eye as they denounced each other and laid their cases before the world, but nobody walked out. At the end of three days it was uncertain, in the most literal sense, where the talks were going: the delegates concluded the opening phase by quarreling bitterly about whether they should continue meeting in Madrid or move to some different venue.

This is a peace conference?

Absolutely, and already one for the history books. No amount of confrontational rhetoric could obscure the simple fact that Israelis, Palestinians and other Arabs, sworn blood enemies for more than four decades, were sitting around a table, talking. The speechmaking in the tapestry-hung Hall of Columns of the Royal Palace in Madrid that opened the Middle East peace conference was, like a wedding or a baptism, a solemn rite symbolizing a new beginning. Come what may, the Mideast crisis, perhaps the longest-running and most envenomed in the world, had passed the point where the antagonists would not even talk.

Which is not to say that negotiations will succeed. The participants were talking to the U.S., the world, their own constituents, far more than to each other. If the conference started out about as well as could be expected, that is in part because everyone involved has learned to expect little. President Bush warned that no agreement could be foreseen in "a day or a week or a month or even a year." Meanwhile there would be snags, deadlocks, perhaps even temporary breakdowns.

So it was not surprising that both the Israelis and their adversaries began with statements that largely restated old grudges. Substantive discussions will come later -- maybe; the opening was devoted to public relations posturing and symbolism. The Arabs and Israelis were there only because Bush and U.S. Secretary of State James Baker had seen to it that they could not afford to be absent. Boycotting the talks would have given the boycotters a black eye in world opinion. Attending allowed them to play to the biggest audience ever.

Rival spin doctors advised more than 5,000 journalists how every word and gesture ought to be interpreted. Every part of the arrangements was calculated to make, or avoid, some symbolic point: no flags were allowed at the negotiating table, because the Israelis would not sit in the same room with a Palestine Liberation Organization banner.

On the outside chance the peace talks do break up, it will probably be over a symbolic point. Last week's opening was supposed to be followed on Sunday by bilateral negotiations in Madrid between Israel and each of three enemies: Syria, a Palestinian-Jordanian delegation and Lebanon. But the Israelis demanded that the talks be moved to the Middle East. By bringing Arab negotiators to Jerusalem, and then sending its own diplomats to Arab capitals, Israel hopes to achieve undeniable acknowledgment that its neighbors recognize it in fact, if not officially, as a genuine nation. For exactly that reason, the Arabs are resisting. A possible compromise discussed at week's end was to move the talks to another European city, Cairo or Washington.

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