Geneva Conference (1973)

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The Geneva Conference of 1973 was an attempt to negotiate a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict as called for in UN Security Council Resolution 338 which was passed after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. It opened on 21 December 1973. The United States and the USSR were the primary non-Middle Eastern countries involved at the conference. No comprehensive agreement was reached, and attempts in later years to revive the Conference failed.

1 Egypt's goals
2 Palestinian representation issue
3 See also
4 References

[edit] Egypt's goals

By Sadat's time, the Egyptians were disassociating themselves from Arab nationalism and from radical regimes in the region. Egypt discouraged the participation of those nations in the Geneva Conference. The Egyptians' primary goal was to win back the territory they lost in 1967 to Israel in the Six-Day War under president Gamal Abdel Nasser. This was their goal during the Yom Kippur War just prior to the conference and the goal during the Camp David Accords in 1978.

[edit] Palestinian representation issue

The Egyptians, Americans, Jordanians, and the Soviets hoped that through the conference, some sort of international agreement on the Palestinian problem and on which specific persons would be their representative in international affairs would be developed. Egypt was in favor of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to represent the Palestinians and to join Egypt, Israel, the United States, and other established nations in the Geneva Conference. Syrian officials went one step further and insisted that if the PLO was not present at the Geneva Conference, Syria would not be present either (Eran, 129). Israel and the United States opposed formal recognition of the PLO at the Geneva Conference due to the fact that at the time, the PLO did not recognize Israel's right to exist (Meital, 145-146). Thus, no representatives from Syrian were present at the conference either (Eran, 129).

[edit] See also

[edit] References

Eran, Oded. "Arab-Israel Peacemaking." The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East. Ed. Avraham Sela. New York: Continuum, 2002.
Meital, Yoram. Egypt’s Struggle for Peace: Continuity and Change, 1967-1977.