. . . Unbeknownst to me, you walked in at that moment and obviously heard what I was saying (I still haven’t figured out how). There was a bellow along the lines of: “What, the cables aren’t out yet!?!” I looked up, to find you standing in the middle of the room with smoke issuing from nose, eyes, and ears, and no one else (with an exception I’ll mention in a minute) in sight. All twenty or thirty people — no doubt led by Sisco — had exited with a speed and facility that would have put Houdini to shame. The single exception was Winston Lord, who was sort of huddled in a corner, but — God bless him — prepared to hang around for the pyrotechnics and to clean up the blood (mine) when it was all over. Winston, ever since, has had a special place in my heart, as well as my great respect for his outstanding courage.
The situation was far from funny. Altogether, at least four hours were lost and much Israeli confidence in us. At first I thought it was an inexplicable technical malfunction; I was told that electrical storms in the atmosphere were disrupting all radio communications. The next day it struck me as weird that all transmission channels should break down simultaneously on a Presidential plane that was outfitted for instant communications and that over five years of diplomatic missions had never failed. Then I recalled the delays and garbling I had experienced when cabling Nixon from the parked aircraft during my secret visit in April before the 1972 Moscow summit.2 If the interference was indeed deliberate (which I cannot prove),II it served Soviet purposes only marginally; but this of itself does not exclude the possibility. What is so maddening about much of Soviet maneuvering is the loss of confidence that Soviet bureaucrats seem willing to accept for relatively slight benefits.
There is no doubt that the interference reduced the time Israel had available for gearing its last-minute military operations to the imminent cease-fire. This should not have mattered. Israel knew that I was in Moscow to negotiate a cease-fire; it had always been told that it would have only a limited time to complete its operations after negotiations began; we had by now already nearly doubled the forty-eight hours that I had told Dinitz for a week would be available; and it was probable that Israel was moving at full speed anyway. Moreover, I got one of the “lost” hours back by cabling John Scali in New York that we did not have the same interest the Soviets had in adopting the cease-fire by midnight as we had implied to Brezhnev. (It finally passed at 12:50 A.M. New York time.)III
The main impact of the Soviet maneuver, if it was such, was on US–Israeli relations. The hours we lost to communications problems gave Israel only about eight hours to deliberate rather than the twelve on which we had counted. It therefore appeared in Jerusalem as an ultimatum, which we had never intended. It also delayed our informing the rest of our government, Congressional leaders, and other countries, especially the People’s Republic of China. Scowcroft attended to these duties with his customary efficiency. Huang Zhen, chief of the Chinese Liaison Office, was, as is the habit of Chinese diplomats when uninstructed, affable but impenetrable. He surely did not like the implication of condominium in a joint US–Soviet proposal to the Security Council. But we had kept the Chinese meticulously informed of our strategy. (China finally did not participate in the Security Council vote — the mildest form of dissociation available.)
I believed then and I still believe that we achieved the maximum attainable. Any effort to squeeze out more would have involved risks of major crises for inconsequential gains that might well have jeopardized the peace process we were determined to start — and to dominate. We had made clear that Soviet weapons gave the Arabs no realistic military option. But to benefit from this demonstration, we had also to show that moderation had its rewards; we had no interest in driving our potential Arab partners in a peace process into radical or Soviet arms. With respect to the Soviets, we would be courting a confrontation to no purpose. As we were to show later that week, we did not flinch from confrontation when vital interests were challenged. But we did not think that turning an Arab setback into a debacle represented a vital interest.
Shortly after, Scali reported that the Security Council passed the joint US–Soviet cease-fire proposal, Resolution 338. At 12:50 A.M. in New York in the early morning of October 22, it was already 7:50 A.M. Moscow time. I breakfasted with Gromyko at the state guest house, which made me technically the host. There was the exuberance that accompanies the end of any negotiation involving great exertions and commensurate risks. The major purpose was to review the meaning of “appropriate auspices.” The Soviets were obviously eager to show their Arab clients that they had maneuvered us into a guarantee of achieving their program; our purpose equally plainly was the opposite. We initialed a document that defined “auspices” as follows:
[T]he negotiations between the parties concerned will take place with the active participation of the United States and the Soviet Union at the beginning and thereafter in the course of negotiations when key issues of a settlement are dealt with.
There was much maudlin talk about the importance of close US–Soviet relations and some heavy joshing, reflecting the relief that the need for irrevocable decisions seemed to have passed. Gromyko’s contribution consisted of calling his ally, Sadat, a “paper camel.” Despite the early hour, everyone drank toasts of brandy, though we all knew that at best we had shifted our rivalry to the diplomatic plane. The passions of the Middle East combatants, the difficulty of implementation, and the inherent competitiveness of the American and Soviet interests would dominate our relations soon enough again.
A Tense Visit to Israel
DURING the hectic evening of exchanges between Washington and Jerusalem over the proposed resolution, Prime Minister Golda Meir had come up with the idea that I should visit Israel on the way back from Moscow. That was a nice way of putting it; Tel Aviv is hardly on the direct route from Moscow to Washington. Delicately, Golda had not made Israeli acceptance of Security Council Resolution 338 dependent on my agreeing to the visit. But though she did not say so, it was clear that she needed reassurance for the postwar phase and for handling her cabinet.
When I agreed to go, I immediately notified Sadat, Hussein, the Soviets, and the NATO ambassadors. I also created an entirely new set of problems. I made the decision at about 6:00 A.M. on October 22; I would depart four hours later. This required obtaining new flight clearances for our change in plans. It is not the easiest thing to find a responsible Soviet official awake at that hour, much less to get him to approve immediately a flight plan that would take us over much of the Soviet Union not usually open to foreigners — particularly when they had expected us to go due west rather than south. Our chargé d’affaires in Moscow, Adolph (Spike) Dubs (a distinguished diplomat who was murdered in 1979 while serving as our Ambassador in Afghanistan), took care of this problem by means that Foreign Service Officers jealously guard to maintain their indispensability; he had all arrangements completed in record time.
Around 10:00 A.M. Moscow time, we were airborne. About halfway to Tel Aviv, it dawned on me that we were heading into a war zone. The cease-fire, after all, was not scheduled to go into effect until several hours later. I realized, without excessive immodesty, that it might be a good idea to arrange some protection by aircraft from the US Sixth Fleet. Larry Eagleburger contacted the Pentagon from our aircraft, and the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center (NMCC) promised that everything would be arranged immediately. And it was. In an outstanding demonstration of American military efficiency, we were met over Cyprus by a large number of US Navy aircraft that stayed with us until we landed at Tel Aviv’s Lod Airport.
There was more to the story than I knew at the time. The Commander of the Sixth Fleet then was Vice Admiral Daniel Murphy, a former aide to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and later chief of staff to Vice President George Bush. Months afterward, Eagleburger ran into Murphy at a Washington party and congratulated him on his superb performance in October 1973. Murphy described to Larry what had really happened.
The fleet was conducting aircraft-laun
ching exercises when the request for air cover for the Secretary of State came from the Pentagon. Admiral Murphy reasonably inquired into our location. The NMCC helpfully told him we were somewhere between Moscow and Tel Aviv. (Perhaps our pilot was reluctant to give too exact a fix for fear it would help other, less friendly aircraft also to locate us.) Murphy immediately launched the rest of his aircraft on a sweep of the eastern Mediterranean and ordered those already airborne to search for us as well, so long as their fuel (already substantially depleted) permitted. Murphy spent anxious moments frantically asking his pilots if they had found us yet, getting negative replies, all the while answering Pentagon queries with a nonchalant “we haven’t found him yet, but soon will.” Which they did, much to the Admiral’s relief. But the planes were low on fuel and barely made it back to their carrier. Murphy told Eagleburger it was one of the more hair-raising experiences of his Sixth Fleet tenure.
I have often been asked to describe the most moving moment of my government service. It is difficult to compare memorable events in such a variety of cultural and political settings. Yet surely my arrival in Israel on Monday, October 22, 1973, ranks high on the list.
We reached Lod (now Ben-Gurion) Airport in Tel Aviv at 1:00 P.M. local time. Much was written afterward about how eager Israel was to continue the war and how painful it found the cease-fire. No one would have guessed that from our reception. Soldiers and civilians greeted the approaching peace as the highest blessing. Israel was heroic but its endurance was reaching the breaking point. Those who had come to welcome us seemed to feel viscerally how close to the abyss they had come and how two weeks of war had drained them. Small groups of servicemen and civilians were applauding with tears in their eyes. Their expression showed a weariness that almost tangibly conveyed the limits of human endurance. Israel was exhausted no matter what the military maps showed. Its people were yearning for peace as can only those who have never known it.
The same attitude prevailed in Herzliyya, near Tel Aviv, in the mysterious modernistic building called the Guest House, on the top of a hill, where Golda and her cabinet received me. It was surrounded by barbed wire; security was tight. The rooms were furnished in a contemporary style not quite rising to the level of elegance. I had several other occasions to visit it; the one purpose it clearly was never used for was to house “guests.” It was a safe house for secret meetings with foreign visitors.
We were greeted by Golda; Dayan; David Elazar, the Chief of Staff; and other officers and ministers, including former Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin, who, without an official position at the time, sat in on the conversations saying nothing and looking enigmatic. Weariness, physical and moral, was stamped on each face. The characteristic Israeli show of bravado was not absent, but it required so much effort that it seemed to exhaust the participants rather than armor them. They spoke of imminent victories but without conviction, more as if to prop up the image of invulnerability. There were grumbles about how Egypt’s Third Army might have been fully encircled and destroyed in another three days of fighting. But these were the same leaders whose repeated predictions — “we need three more days” — had consistently been proved overop-timistic. Besides, there was no scenario by which Israel could have been given three more days without risking a superpower crisis and destroying the American position in the Arab world. And Israel’s leaders knew this. Their tone was wistful, rather than recriminatory; more a nostalgia for the glories of 1967 than a reflection of the reality of the hour.
The Third Army, in any event, did not loom large in the discussions at the Guest House. When I asked Golda what Israel’s next objective would have been had the cease-fire not intervened, she mentioned Port Fuad — at the far northern end of the Canal, in the area of the Second Army, as far away from the Third Army as it was possible to be. And if there was one thing clear in Israel on the announced day of the ceasefire, it was that she had had enough casualties — its 2,000 killed being the equivalent of 200,000 Americans.
Deep down, the Israelis knew that while they had won the last battle, they had lost the aura of invincibility. The Arab armies were not destroyed. The Arab nations had not won but no longer need they quail before Israeli might. Israel, after barely escaping disaster, had prevailed militarily; it ended up with more Arab territory captured than lost. But it was entering an uncertain and lonely future, dependent on a shrinking circle of friends. What made the prospect more tormenting was the consciousness that complacency had contributed to that outcome.
Each of the Israeli leaders we met handled the trauma differently according to the stage of his or her career. They vaguely realized that the war had blighted their personal futures; indeed, within the year they were all out of power. For Golda, who had already held every office worth having, this was close to a welcome relief. She was anguished not about her political future but the casualties that she believed foresight might have averted. She had sacrificed her private life by adopting all of Israel as her family. Every Israeli casualty was a personal loss to her. And she was heartbroken not simply by the suffering but by her vision of what was ahead, which she understood better than her associates.
Golda had no difficulty assuming responsibility for the intelligence failures prior to the war; she made no excuses and offered no explanations. Freed of political ambitions, she prepared herself for what her instinct told her would now be Israel’s challenge: that the direct negotiations Israel had demanded with such fervor for so many years would undoubtedly have to be fueled by Israeli concessions. To her the war was already a thing of the past. Alone among her colleagues, she was getting ready for the next battle, which she saw as depriving the outside world — and especially the United States — of any temptation to ease its problems at Israel’s expense (or what she considered Israel’s expense, which usually was any alteration of the status quo). Warily she prowled the lair of the Guest House, ready to defend her country’s interests, insistent on selling Israeli compromises for the highest possible price. I knew that I, as her interlocutor, would bear the brunt of her tenacity and strength.
General David (“Dado”) Elazar, the Chief of Staff, was at the other end of the spectrum. He knew that each war has its victims; he would be the sacrifice offered up for Israel’s complacency. His career in the military or the government would end as soon as the political process could turn to a postmortem. I will not venture into the debate about the precise degree of his responsibility for Israel’s failure to mobilize in time, for it is irrelevant to my purpose. Elazar struck me as a man of rare quality, noble in bearing, fatalistic in conduct. He briefed us matter-of-factly but with the attitude of a man to whom the frenzies of the day were already part of history. He resigned the next year when an Israeli governmental commission laid the blame for Israel’s unpreparedness largely on him. He entered private life, which did not interest him. A year later he died. The medical diagnosis was heart attack; it is the best term those trained in tangibles can find for a broken heart.
Dayan’s case was the most complex. One of the ironies of Israel’s history is that a people often persecuted for being cosmopolitan and excessively intellectual has created a new type of leader in the process of forming its own state: the peasant-hero rooted in the soil, matter-of-fact, not burdened by excessive imagination (except in the sense of a premonition of catastrophe), a pioneer defending every square inch of his acquisitions not only as if diplomacy were another form of warfare— which Clausewitz had already noted — but as if it obeyed exactly the same rules. Dayan was a singular blend of the old and the new. Among his colleagues, he was unique in the sweep of his imagination, the nimbleness of his intellect, the ability to place Israel in a world context. His hobby was archaeology; this gave him an historical perspective beyond even the long history of his own people. He understood that the experience of catastrophe was not peculiar to Jews, even if destiny seems to have meted it out to them more amply than to most other peoples. He therefore had more understanding, and more tolerance, of the viewpoints of
other societies — especially the Arabs’ — than was characteristic of most Israeli leaders. He had the intuition of a poet. Sometimes he was able to see so many sides to a question that he lost the single-mindedness essential to all leaders and very marked in his own Prime Minister. Still, I had always believed that his special qualities would prove most needed whenever a peace process started; that indeed Dayan was the Israeli statesman most likely to lead Israel toward peace.
It was Dayan’s tragedy that like Moses he was permitted a glimpse of the Promised Land but the journey to that mountain top had deprived him of the ability to implement his own vision. Like most talented and artistic men, he knew his own worth; he was not free of vanity. He had served for twenty years in positions that underutilized his extraordinary capabilities. He had sustained himself by his public image as a hero of the war of 1956; later, as the savior summoned in 1967 to engineer the stunning victory (whatever Rabin might think about who deserved the real credit). Yet, by a cruel irony, at the precise moment made for his talents Dayan was losing his aura. If the Chief of Staff was to be blamed for Israel’s being taken by surprise, so inevitably would be the Defense Minister. Fundamentally, every criticism of the Chief of Staff applied as well to his immediate superior.
What made his fate so unendurable was that Dayan, the preeminent visionary among Israeli leaders, failed to recognize his own predictions when they at last came true. For years he had warned that war would be inevitable if Israel insisted on remaining along the Suez Canal. He had favored disengagement of forces, or if necessary a unilateral Israeli withdrawal to create a buffer zone. He had never been able to persuade his cabinet colleagues or Golda. They simply had no category of thought for unilateral withdrawals. Dayan’s foresight was vindicated but in circumstances that nearly destroyed him. There were a host of explanations for his failure to recognize that the very attack he had been warning against was imminent; many others had drawn the same wrong conclusions about Egypt’s intentions. But heroes lose something of their faith in themselves when they admit fallibility. Dayan had so identified himself with his own public image that he could not bring himself to take the only course that might have enabled him to transcend his misfortune, and the one, in fact, taken by Golda: to admit an honest miscalculation.
Years of Upheaval Page 83