Palestine's new prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, has an impressive background, and he will need all of his experience to succeed at the very challenging position he was entrusted with March 10 by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

When the Madrid Peace Conference was about to be launched in 1991, the Palestinian leadership looked for a person who could head a high-level team to ensure everything was prepared and there were no political traps being placed for the Palestinian delegation.

After consultations, the local leadership and the PLO decided to send Mohammad Shtayyeh, who was then dean of students at Birzeit University (1991-93), holder of a Ph.D. from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England (1989), and a respected leader of the first intifada, which had begun in 1987.

Shtayyeh’s responsibility in the 1991 Madrid talks was to establish parameters for negotiations with Israeli counterparts. Since then, Shtayyeh has been a member of the Palestinian delegation during the Washington talks, the talks that followed the Madrid Conference on the interim agreements, and all final-status negotiations, including the most recent talks, initiated in 2013 by then-US Secretary of State John Kerry.