To signal our disapproval of Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, we shelved a pending agreement that we were working on (a so-called memorandum of understanding) meant to spell out details of a strengthened military partnership between our countries. Begin responded with an angry letter to me arguing that the United States, after Vietnam, had no business telling Israel what was right or wrong. “The people of Israel lived without the memorandum of understanding for 3,700 years, and will continue to live without it for another 3,700 years,” he said, refusing to give up the Golan Heights.
As these events were unfolding, we continued to receive what appeared to be credible reports from Israel that Begin, who believed in the biblical maxim of “an eye for an eye,” and his defense minister, Ariel Sharon, a bellicose man who seemed to be chomping at the bit to start a war, were preparing for a full-scale invasion of Lebanon against the PLO, waiting only for the slightest provocation to launch it. While I urged Begin to exercise restraint, Habib continued trying to work out the framework for a settlement. We told Israeli leaders we believed they had lost considerable support in the non-Arab world during the previous year because of the attack on the Iraqi nuclear plant, air strikes in Lebanon that had killed noncombatant Palestinians, the annexation of the Golan Heights, and other actions directed against the Arabs. Each time I communicated with them, however, I emphasized my personal commitment and that of the United States to the support of Israel. I supported its right to defend itself against attack, but appealed for Israel not to go on the offensive unless it was the victim of a provocation of such magnitude that the world would easily understand its right to retaliate.
Israel’s response was, in effect: Mind your own business. It is up to Israel alone to decide what it must do to ensure its survival.
While the situation regarding Lebanon was growing more tense, we tried to establish a solid relationship with the new leadership in Cairo. We sent messages to Mubarak declaring our desire to continue the ties our countries had developed under Sadat, as well as our commitment to continuing the process begun at Camp David. Early in the new year, Mubarak may have decided he wanted to send us a message when he accepted an offer from Moscow to assign a team of Russian technical advisors to Cairo to help Egypt’s industrial development. It made us wonder if he was planning to revert to a Nasser-style relationship with Moscow. Just as it could be said that some Israeli leaders wanted to exploit the tensions between the United States and the USSR to strengthen our commitment to Israel, I think Mubarak was trying to send a signal that we shouldn’t take Egypt for granted, either.
When he arrived in Washington for a get-acquainted state visit in early February 1982, I brought up the new Soviet advisors and he emphasized that Egypt was a staunch American friend and had no intentions of lining up with the Soviets. But it was plain that Egypt, already a big beneficiary of American aid, wanted something more from the United States for this friendship. We had previously negotiated a $1.3 billion arms-sale agreement that was to include a $200 million outright grant; to give Mubarak something to take home as a symbol of his trip’s success and evidence of our friendship, we increased the grant to $400 million.
As the time approached for Israel to return the Sinai to Egypt, hostilities between Israel and PLO and Syrian units in Lebanon were heating up, and I continued to wonder if Begin would live up to the Camp David agreements. By then, it was apparent that too little preparation had been done to achieve the goal of granting autonomy to the Palestinians living in the occupied territories as called for under the accords; this part of the agreement would not be completed. But the deadline was approaching for Israel to give up the Sinai, and I expected it to be emotionally traumatic for Begin.
These were occupied territories taken from other countries, yes; but Israel had won the Sinai during a war started by the other countries. In giving it up, Israel would surrender a strategically important buffer between itself and enemies sworn to destroy it; and, it would be giving up territory where Israeli settlers since 1967 had built homes, cultivated farms, built schools, raised families.
Despite political pressure within Israel to abandon the agreement, Begin proved to be a man of his word, and the transfer of the Sinai to Egypt was completed on schedule on April 25, 1982. That morning, I telephoned Mubarak and Begin to congratulate them on this milestone in history and to wish them well in continuing on the road to peace.
My heart went out especially to Begin. I had many difficulties with him while I was president, but he was an Israeli patriot devoted, above all, to the survival of his country. He passionately believed that the ancient lands of the Israelites rightfully belonged to modern Israel. A survivor and near victim of the Holocaust, he knew from personal experience the depth of the hatred and vicious-ness that can be directed at Jews simply because they are Jews, and he had sworn, he once told me, to assure that no Jew’s blood was ever spilled again with impunity.
I could tell from a sadness in his voice that it had been a difficult day for him. I pledged to Begin and to Mubarak that America would continue to do all it could to further the peace process. After my calls, I felt optimistic that we were on our way.
Unfortunately, as soon as the Sinai was returned to Egypt and we began working on settling differences between Israel and Egypt over the question of Palestinian autonomy in the occupied territories, things started unraveling very quickly in Lebanon. The autonomy talks were put on hold and the peace process came to a halt. According to Phil Habib, who had been working night and day to keep the shaky cease-fire alive, radical elements of the PLO opposed to its leader, Yasir Arafat, were trying to destroy the Camp David accords and provoke Israel into attacking Palestinians in Lebanon with terrorist attacks on Israel. This, the radicals believed, would lead to war, rally Arab and Soviet support behind their cause, reduce the influence in the PLO of the more moderate Arafat, and upset whatever prospects remained for continuing the Camp David process.
We tried very hard to persuade Begin and Sharon that these radical Palestinian elements were trying to goad, manipulate, and provoke them into war. They listened, but they did not hear: As far as they were concerned, any act of terrorism by any Palestinian anywhere in the world was a violation of the cease-fire in Lebanon, and they claimed the right to take whatever steps they thought necessary to defend the people of Israel. By early June, when I was getting ready to leave for the Versailles economic summit, it was apparent that Israel had already made the decision to attack in Lebanon and was waiting only for an excuse to deliver the blow.
The invasion began June 5, after Israel responded to the killing of an Israeli diplomat in London with bombing runs on PLO targets in Lebanon; Arafat replied with renewed shelling of Israel. After this prelude, Israel launched a well-organized full-scale invasion of Lebanon, informing us that its only goal was to drive PLO forces twenty-five miles away from Israel’s border with Lebanon, to create a buffer that would end the PLO artillery’s ability to lob shells at will on Israelis living in Galilee, in northern Israel.
The Israeli invasion provoked an angry reaction from Leonid Brezhnev. In the first in a series of exchanges between us via the Washington-Moscow cable “hot line,” Brezhnev accused the United States of, at worst, complicity in the attack and, at least, advance knowledge of it. “The facts indicate,” he said, “that the Israeli invasion is a previously planned operation, whose preparations the U.S. must have known about.” I responded that while we believed Israel had the right to defend its northern borders, we did not support the invasion of Lebanon. I called his claim of prior knowledge of the invasion “totally without foundation.”
“At the same time,” I said, “I am compelled to point out that your government bears no little responsibility for the current crisis in the Middle East by its failure to support the Camp David accords and to use your influence on Syria and PLO” to stabilize the situation in Lebanon.
In Paris, I dictated a message to Begin appealing to him to withdraw his forces from Lebanon
, and we joined in voting for a UN resolution calling for Israel’s withdrawal and a cease-fire. After encountering little resistance north of the border, however, Ariel Sharon’s tanks and troops continued their advance, and he apparently decided that Israel now had a historic opportunity to drive the PLO completely from Lebanon. The Israeli Defense Forces moved on Beirut, then expanded the war dramatically—and engaged a new enemy—with attacks on Syrian missile sites in the Bekaa Valley.
What had started (according to Begin and Sharon) as a limited operation designed only to enhance the security of the Israelis who lived near their country’s northern border had suddenly been transformed into a campaign to wipe out the PLO and an all-out war between Israel and its archenemy, Syria.
Within just a few days, the advancing Israeli forces had driven thousands of PLO members into civilian neighborhoods in West Beirut, the Muslim section of the city. Meanwhile, superior Israeli pilots had dealt a stunning defeat to the Syrian air force (who were flying Soviet-built MIGs) and had knocked out dozens of Syrian missile sites.
The Israelis were winning the war, but plunging, probably unknowingly, into a quagmire. After forcing the PLO forces to dig in among the civilian population of Beirut, Sharon and Begin would respond with a policy that would stun the senses of many people in the world and bring even greater international condemnation of Israel.
At this point in mid-June, we decided that the best option for ending the bloody conflict was to persuade rival Christian and Muslim factions in Lebanon to get together (something we knew wouldn’t be easy, considering their long history of disputes) and jointly disarm the PLO in their country, then order the PLO, Israel, and Syria off their territory, with the international community serving some role in helping to keep the agreement in place.
We decided on this strategy knowing clearly that it wasn’t going to be easy to implement. On June 16, I wrote in my diary:
We’re walking a tight rope. Some 6000 armed P.L.O. are holed up in Beirut. Pres. [Elias] Sarkis of Lebanon, can’t say openly, but he apparently wants Israel to stay near until the P.L.O. can be disarmed, then he wants to restore the Central government of Lebanon, allow Palestinians to become citizens and get all foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon. The world is waiting for us to use our muscle and order Israel out. We can’t do this if we want to help Sarkis, but we can’t explain the situation either. Some days are worse than others.
Five days later, Menachem Begin arrived in Washington at a time when Israeli planes, gunboats, and artillery units had begun attacking the fringes of West Beirut in what appeared to be relentless and indiscriminate bombardment of neighborhoods filled with Lebanese civilians who had absolutely no role in the Israeli—PLO dispute. Israel then cut off water and electricity to these neighborhoods in West Beirut, causing the civilians more hardship.
When we shook hands, it was still “Menachem” and “Ron,” but our meeting had none of the glow of our previous meeting. With only our ambassadors present, Begin and I spent almost an hour going head to head: I told him that, no matter how villainous the attack on Israel’s diplomat in London had been, it had not given Israel cause to unleash its brutal attack on Beirut. Begin wouldn’t give an inch. He claimed that the invasion was justified by the PLO’s shelling of Israeli villages from Lebanon, then he went on the counterattack, protesting a pending U.S. sale of fighter planes to Jordan. When I said I wanted to create “more Egypts”—Arab countries willing to make peace with Israel—he angrily said that was impossible, no other Arab state would do what Egypt had done and recognize Israel.
Underneath his uncompromising and combative mood, however, I suspected Begin wanted to end the fighting. Although Israeli military might was having a crushing effect on its enemies, the Syrians and Palestinians, Israel was paying a high price for this success. The invasion was taking a rising toll of Israeli lives, and I suspected Begin now believed that the pugnacious Sharon had extended his reach too far. He had driven the PLO forces into Beirut, but had failed to anticipate what would happen after he had accomplished that.
After returning to Israel, Begin endorsed the plan we had proposed calling for the elimination of the PLO and all foreign armies from Lebanon, and the Israeli cabinet subsequently surprised me with a suggestion that the United States take the lead in negotiating a pullout by the PLO. Until then, at Israel’s urging, we had refused to do any business with the PLO until and unless they agreed to recognize Israel’s right to exist, which they had never done.
During the next few weeks, there were off-and-on cease-fires in Lebanon as Habib pushed forward with his negotiations. He encountered new hurdles, however, including PLO demands that some of its members be allowed to remain in Lebanon, and strong resistance from most Arab nations to accepting into their own countries the PLO members who would be evacuated from Lebanon under the plan. Meanwhile, the killing in Beirut continued.
In late June, Brezhnev sent a message complaining that innocent civilians were dying under Israeli bombardment and said our support of Israel was jeopardizing efforts at improving U.S.—Soviet relations. I replied that we were trying to persuade Israel to withdraw and urged him to use Soviet influence to persuade Syria to do the same thing. “I must also point out,” I said, “that your expression of concern for the suffering of the people in Lebanon cannot but appear ironic in view of the fact that the Soviet Union has provided immense quantities of weapons to elements which have actually worked to undermine the political stability of Lebanon and provoked Israeli retaliation by attacking Israel’s northern territories.”
As the Israeli offensive continued, Brezhnev continued blaming us. In mid-July, after one message, I again rejected this claim and informed him that the United States and other Western nations had been requested by Lebanese authorities to create a multinational force to keep the peace in Lebanon. I told him we were considering doing so, but that if we did, it would be as a temporary step and it should not be viewed as a U.S. effort to offset the prevailing East-West balance in the Middle East.
At the end of July, Habib cabled me a hopeful report that he was making progress and was optimistic that an agreement could be reached. Then, however, things started to deteriorate. Although the cease-fire remained technically in place, it was broken regularly by both sides and the situation became very volatile.
By early August, Sharon’s forces had virtually encircled Beirut and were unleashing withering attacks on the fringes of West Beirut. After a new complaint from Brezhnev on August 2, I replied: “I hope that the Soviet Union will do nothing to make a resolution of this tragedy more difficult. I may add that although the U.S. government and Israel maintain close and friendly relations, we are not responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, a sovereign state. If the Soviet government has representations to make in this regard, it should communicate with Israeli authorities.”
Then, on August 4, two days after I’d met with Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir in the Oval Office and appealed to him in the strongest words I could think of for Israel to use restraint, I was awakened at 6:30 A.M. by my national security advisor. He said that the Israelis had just moved into new positions within West Beirut and were shelling the city with a savage ferocity that was killing more and more civilians. Outraged, Phil Habib telephoned me from Beirut and said that the shelling was so intense and so unrelenting that he was unable to get to meetings he had scheduled to negotiate a settlement of the dispute.
I decided to appeal personally to Begin to stop the fighting and abide by the cease-fire so that Habib could complete his work. I suggested to Begin that if he didn’t, he could expect a drastic change in Israel’s relationship with the United States. “This disproportionate bombing of West Beirut,” my message stated, was exacting “unacceptable human costs and making negotiations impossible.” If it continued, I said, it would be impossible for me to defend the proposition that Israel used American-made arms for defensive purposes only. “We must come to the diplomatic table for a solution an
d not through use of military means,” I said. I reminded Begin that only two days earlier George Shultz and I had told Shamir that Habib ‘s negotiations aimed at removing the PLO from Beirut were making progress and were at a critical stage and further attacks could destroy whatever chances of success they had. “Israel’s movement of heavy artillery into West Beirut demonstrated that our message to the Foreign Minister fell on deaf ears. There has to be an end to unnecessary bloodshed, particularly among innocent civilians. I insist that a cease fire be reestablished and maintained until the PLO has left Beirut.”
Begin’s reply the next day stated that Israel’s policy in Lebanon was based on two principles: The first was adherence to the agreed-upon cease-fire provided “it is absolute and mutual, neither of which have been respected by the terrorists in and around Beirut; [we] have already counted at least ten cease-fires and all of them broken by the terrorists, while Israel adhered to the rules.” Begin said that under no circumstances could he “ask members of the Israeli defense forces, if fired upon, to refrain from defending themselves.”
The second principle, Begin said, was achieving a political solution that provided for expulsion of the PLO from Lebanon. He said, however, that Israel had to preserve the choice of a military option because without one it would have no leverage to seek a political solution. The UN resolution calling for its withdrawal and U.S. officials’ statements calling on Israel to leave were encouraging the PLO to procrastinate and refuse to leave. As a result, Israel had to keep up military pressure on the PLO. Begin indicated that he had just received a letter from Philip Habib who had told him there was “increasing evidence” the PLO was prepared to negotiate a withdrawal from Beirut, but then muted this expression of confidence by noting that this issue would remain uncertain for twenty-four to forty-eight hours, while PLO leaders reviewed his latest proposal and efforts were made to locate Arab countries willing to accept the PLO leaders and combatants. “Ambassador Habib, with all his energy and good will, did not know whether the P.L.O. is truly serious or not and indicated that he had not yet established satisfactory destinations” for the Palestinian leaders, Begin wrote. “This is the real situation today on Aug. 5 at the time of my writing to you at the end of a 45 day period which were at the disposal of Ambassador Habib to conclude the negotiations aimed at evacuating the terrorist organizations from Beirut and Lebanon which, Mr. President, is your resolve. The security of Israel and the lives of its citizens are at stake.”
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