Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  We were aware that the PLO contained many divergent elements, some avowedly terrorist, others more ambiguous in the formulation of their objectives, though none of them accepted the State of Israel. And various Arab nations controlled factions of the PLO as a means of protecting their own domestic tranquillity by influencing Palestinian policies. But this created its own complexities. For example, Syria’s favorite group was the Saiqa, which was certainly more responsive to the government in Damascus than to the PLO leadership in Beirut.

  Thus before 1973, the PLO rarely intruded into international negotiations. In the 1972 communiqué ending Nixon’s Moscow summit, there was no reference to Palestinians, much less to the PLO. Neither did the abortive “general working principles” on which Gromyko and I worked in 1972 mention them except as refugees.2 The 1973 US–Soviet summit communiqué spoke of the “legitimate interests of the Palestinian people” but did not define them. All planning and discussions with other governments regarding the West Bank of the Jordan River had assumed that King Hussein would be Israel’s negotiating partner.

  The issue of contacts with Palestinians was therefore not in 1973 a major policy problem for the United States. It arose most infrequently, almost invariably in low-level intelligence channels. The idea of a Palestinian state run by the PLO was not a subject for serious discourse.

  Then in mid-1973, the PLO took an initiative toward us. In late July, our Ambassador to Iran, Richard Helms, in the United States in connection with a visit of the Shah, informed me that one of his aides had been approached by a close associate of PLO leader Yasir Arafat. Arafat was reported to be interested in a dialogue with the United States, which would be based on two premises: that “Israel is here to stay”; and that Jordan should be the home for a Palestinian state (in other words, that Hussein must be overthrown). The PLO also wanted clarification on certain questions: What did we understand by “Palestinian interests” in the Brezhnev-Nixon communiqué? How did we intend to pursue them? How committed were we to the continued existence of the Kingdom of Jordan? “The issue is whether you want to have policy talks with the fedayeen or not,” Helms correctly pointed out.

  I told Helms I would think about it. My reflections were unlikely to be positive, however. I considered King Hussein a valued friend of the United States and a principal hope for diplomatic progress in the region. Our aim should be to strengthen his position, not to encourage a group that avowed its determination to overthrow him in its very first communication with us. A Palestinian state run by the PLO was certain to be irredentist. Even should it change its professed aims, it would not likely remain moderate for long; its many extremist factions would see to that. Its Soviet ties, too, would lead it in the direction of becoming a radical state like Libya or South Yemen. Any Palestinian structure on the West Bank had every incentive to turn on Jordan — if only to gain a secure base for later operations against Israel and to avoid the provisions of a peace accord that would inevitably demilitarize the West Bank.

  The PLO’s hints of possible coexistence with Israel were contrary to the 1964 Palestinian National Covenant, the founding document of the organization; PLO policy at its most moderate called for a mixed Moslem-Jewish-Christian secular state in Palestine — a euphemism for the dismantlement of Israel. Of all the Arabs, the Palestinians had the bitterest grievance against the Jewish state. Even should Israel return to the 1967 borders on the West Bank and relinquish the Old City of Jerusalem — and there were few who thought this in the realm of possibility — the Palestinians would covet the territories to which their very name connected them. To them a West Bank mini-state could be only an interim step toward their final aims.

  On August 3, I told Helms that we had “a nothing message” to send back, largely taking refuge in the generalization that our goal was peaceful coexistence among the states and peoples of the area. The United States would be interested to hear the ideas of the Palestinians on how this objective could be promoted through negotiations. We were unequivocal in response to the third question: The overthrow of existing governments in the Arab world was not acceptable; we were committed to the survival of the Kingdom of Jordan.

  Interestingly enough, on August 13 we received essentially the same kind of PLO approach through Morocco. King Hassan passed the identical questions to Lieutenant General Vernon A. Walters, then Deputy Director of the CIA, who was visiting the King in Casablanca. The next day, I took care to inform Israeli Ambassador Simcha Dinitz of Arafat’s two approaches and of our response:

  [W]e will tell him we can’t enter into discussions having to answer three questions. The one thing he wants, of course, is that we make Jordan dispensable. We will never agree to anything like that. You can tell the Prime Minister that.

  Dinitz made no response then or later. On August 17, I told Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban that our policy was based on Jordan, not the Palestinians. (I made it as a general comment, leaving it to Golda to inform her Foreign Minister of the Arafat approach.) Eban suggested we leave no doubt “that when you talk about the Palestinians you mean it in the context of an Israeli-Jordan settlement.” I had no difficulty agreeing to a proposition that reflected American policy.

  On September 3, 1973, King Hassan told General Walters that it would be possible to establish a dialogue with the PLO; Morocco offered to help arrange it. On October 10 — four days into the Middle East war — we heard from Arafat, though not through Morocco. Instead, as I have described in Chapter XI, that message reached us through Beirut. Arafat predicted that though Egypt and Syria would be routed, they had achieved enough “face” to engage in serious negotiations. The PLO was prepared to participate in Arab negotiations with Israel; the “score” it had to settle was with Jordan, not Israel, but this need not be part of the current phase of diplomacy.

  We returned no reply while the war was going on. But its tense aftermath caused us to take another look at the Palestinian feelers. In case of a confrontation with the Soviets it was important to minimize Arab support for Soviet intervention. And once that danger had passed, it was in our interest to create the best environment for moderate governments to join the peace process. The PLO had a high potential for causing trouble all over the Arab world. We wanted it to be on its best behavior during the delicate early stages of our approaches to Egypt and while we were seeking Saudi support. On October 23, moreover — the day that the confrontation over cease-fire violations was heading for its first climax — we received a further message reiterating Arafat’s interest in talks.

  On October 25, the day of the alert, we decided to take up the offer in order to gain some maneuvering room. In the only significant communication to the PLO while I was in office, a message was sent via Morocco that we were prepared to send a representative to meet with PLO officials in order to enable us to develop a United States reaction to Arafat’s proposals. (In other words, our emissary would not be empowered to negotiate; a formal reaction, if any, would follow his report.) We designated General Walters as our representative. He had acted as our secret channel to the North Vietnamese and Chinese in Paris and was an expert at discreet missions. A meeting was suggested for the beginning of November, just preceding my trip to Cairo, thus ensuring PLO quiescence during this delicate phase.

  The meeting took place on November 3 in Morocco’s capital, Rabat. My instructions to Walters were to gain the maximum amount of time and to get as clear a view of Palestinian thinking as possible. He was to make no proposals; he should take the postion that as an intelligence officer he had only a “listening brief.” As to the future political role of the Palestinians:

  The United States has no proposals to make. It is not so expert in the history of intra-Arab politics and culture that it can invent solutions. The Palestinians must understand, however, that the United States has a fixed principle that it does not betray its friends. We regard the King of Jordan as a friend. We would expect, nevertheless, that in the context of a comprehensive settlement, the relationship betwee
n the Palestinian movement and the Hashemite Kingdom could develop in the direction of reconciliation.

  In other words, we proposed to treat the Palestinian problem not as an international but as an inter-Arab concern. It was up to the PLO to straighten out its relationships with the other Arab states — with one proviso: We would participate in no maneuver aimed at Jordan; the PLO’s real option was reconciliation with the Hashemite Kingdom, not its overthrow.

  What applied to Jordan was even more true of Israel. Walters was to make clear that the United States would oppose any threat to the survival of Israel and any challenge to its legitimacy. And we would go over to active opposition if any more American blood was spilled by the PLO.

  Walters carried out his assignment with his characteristic swaggering efficiency and discretion. The PLO representative, a close associate of Arafat’s, described the injustices done to the Palestinians. The thrust of his presentation was aimed at Jordan: Palestinians could never live in a Hashemite state; nor could they build a state of their own confined to the West Bank and Gaza. It followed that the Hashemite dynasty would have to be overthrown to provide a national homeland for the Palestinians. He evaded the question of under what conditions, if any, the PLO would recognize Israel. He spoke of a secular state (code words for the destruction of Israel), or of possibly reducing Israel to its status under the UN partition plan of 1947 — which meant truncating even pre-1967 Israel. The PLO representative did not make a concrete proposal any more than Walters did. First meetings always involve this tentative kind of exploration, neither side wanting to put itself at the disadvantage of having been rebuffed, each probing for flexibility in the other’s position.

  As it turned out, the beginning of our dialogue with the PLO was also its end. There was only one more meeting, in March 1974, but it did not advance matters beyond the point of the first one.

  This was no accident. At this stage, involving the PLO was incompatible with the interests of any of the parties to the Middle East conflict. Even should some PLO leader accept Resolution 242 and the legal right of Israel to exist — something the organization has refused to do to this day — the dynamics of the movement made it unlikely that such moderation could be maintained indefinitely. The talk in Rabat made clear in any event that the 1967 borders were considered only the first phase; a PLO nation would be ideologically committed to the dismantling of the Jewish state. And Jordan faced even more immediate dangers; the PLO contact left no doubt of the organization’s designs on the Hashemite dynasty.

  Though the meeting in Rabat was supposed to be secret, it was potentially too explosive to risk its uncontrolled leakage to other countries. Moreover, if word spread only through the Arab gossip mill, it would take on a more dramatic significance than we intended, disquieting especially those countries on whose support we relied for a moderate evolution. I therefore informed Hussein, Sadat, and Boumedienne, and later discussed it with Asad. Brent Scowcroft briefed Ambassador Dinitz.

  Walters’s meeting achieved its immediate purpose: to gain time and to prevent radical assaults on the early peace process. After it, attacks on Americans — at least by Arafat’s faction of the PLO — ceased. Otherwise the meeting yielded no lasting results.

  My First Middle East Journey

  I LEFT Washington on Monday, November 5, bound for Morocco and Tunisia prior to the critical visit to Egypt. I hoped that King Hassan and President Habib Bourguiba, old friends of the United States, would give moral support to our efforts with their brethren in the Arab world.

  We reached Morocco around 10:00 that evening, for my first step on Arab soil. It was also my first experience with a guard of honor. The latter was a daunting event, all the more so because nobody had briefed me what to expect.

  As I emerged from the airplane, I was greeted by the stunning sight of a rifle company of tall Berber troops in flowing red and white robes and white turbans. The next day at the King’s palace I encountered an even more impressive corps of Royal Guardsmen wearing baggy scarlet and green uniforms and wielding swords. An officer with drawn saber invited me to review them. I had not the foggiest notion of the correct procedure. Impelled by an overwhelming desire to get it over with as quickly as possible, I moved along the front row of the soldiers at a clip obviously faster than expected. It may even have been a world’s record, for when I turned around, my escort officer was goose-stepping behind me, still halfway down the line. I waited and, when he caught up with me, extended my hand — a gesture frustrated by the unsheathed sword thrust outward at a 45-degree angle in the perplexed officer’s fist. He proved equal to the occasion. Throwing at me a look of mixed pity and condescension, he sheathed his sword, removed his immaculate glove, and offered me a handshake — by which time I had withdrawn my hand and was offering him a salute. Finally, I shook his hand and departed quickly. The same day at the Royal Palace, Joe Sisco was seated in one of the ornate gold and red velvet chairs in King Hassan’s sitting room, tipping it back while reflecting on some profound matter. It collapsed, leaving Joe prostrate, just as His Majesty came into the room. Moroccan-American relations managed to survive these setbacks.3

  Morocco is at the crossroads of Africa, Europe, and the Arab world, bordering the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Its dramatic mountains and barren deserts have spewed forth conquerors who ruled North Africa and Spain, sometimes brutally, occasionally magnanimously, for several hundred years. But its pivotal location has also exposed it to periodic invasions. Alternately anvil and hammer, Morocco has seen the glories and the foibles of man, his triumphs and his degradations. Its upper classes are elegant and jaded, influenced by French rationalism but molded by Moslem certitudes. The mass of the population endures, as it has through the centuries, largely oblivious to what geography has imposed. Morocco has been for the past century at the intersection of the grand strategies of others, forcing its rulers to navigate by skill, shrewdness, and self-assurance.

  A tradition of hereditary rule, dating in the existing dynasty from the seventeenth century, was reinforced by the fact that the father of Hassan was the principal leader in the struggle for independence against France. The monarchy mirrored the duality of Morocco’s soul. A man of the world with sophisticated tastes, King Hassan II never made the Shah’s mistake of professing an ostentatious secularism. At the same time a Moslem scrupulously sensitive to the religious conservatism of his country and a polished and rationalistic politician, King Hassan practiced the ceremonial authoritarianism rooted in Moroccan history. Ruler of the Arab state farthest from the conflict with Israel, he used his influence for moderation, making his country available not only for Walters’s clandestine meetings with the PLO but also for the secret meetings between Israelis and Egyptians that led to Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem in 1977.

  Morocco’s neighbors had styles of government less rooted in history. Socialist Algeria was always looking for an opportunity to weaken its neighbor and rival; revolutionary Libya fomented subversion. In the face of these radical challenges, the King maneuvered to avoid appearing backward or feudal. He has been among the most persuasive supporters of the Palestinians, never failing to press their case. He loyally sent a contingent of Moroccan troops to fight on the Syrian front in the 1973 war. Withal, the King had no illusions about radical policies. He knew that he could deflect the pressures on his country only if the balance between moderates and radicals within the Arab world tilted in favor of the moderates. For this, American support was essential, and he earned it through many acts of friendship as well as wise counsel.

  In our first meetings, I explained the necessity of our airlift to Israel with the argument that we could not permit Soviet arms to defeat American weapons in the Middle East without turning the whole area over to radical and Soviet influences. The King shared our perspective. “We could not have survived,” said the King. We conducted our review in the enormous palace in Rabat, first in a large plenary meeting and then alone in his private office. I wanted him to know our strat
egy: to avoid wasting our diplomatic capital on the cease-fire line and to move instead straight to a broader disengagement of forces. Hassan was supportive. He told me he would send a message to Cairo on my behalf, assuring Sadat that

  [Kissinger] does not follow classic diplomatic intentions and he prefers to remain far from emotions and imagination, preferring to tackle problems and realities in a cool, calm and objective fashion. We insist upon our chief impression that if he gets into a commitment, he will honor it.

  Where so much depended on intangibles, giving Sadat psychological reassurance was the greatest service the King could render to us.

  I took my leave of King Hassan and flew on to Tunisia on November 6 to line up the support of another moderate leader and friend of the United States, President Habib Bourguiba. Bourguiba was of the original generation of independence fighters whose driving ambition was to be permitted to join the Western system of values, not to destroy it. Of middle-class background, he had been educated in France; not even frequent periods of imprisonment or exile extinguished his desire to bring the culture and modernity of the metropole to his country. Having achieved independence as long ago as 1956, Tunisia was already in danger of becoming a relic. Bourguiba remained staunchly pro-West, moderate in his pronouncements, measured in his policy. As with his colleague in Morocco, support of the Palestinians was a way of showing devotion to the Arab cause. But Tunisia, coveted by its neighbors Algeria and Libya and surviving in part because of their rivalry, needed a world of restraint. It could survive best by cooling passions; it feared the growth of Soviet influence and Arab radicalism.