Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  With the thoroughness of a bloodhound, Golda — one eye on preelection polls — probed all issues she anticipated the opposition might raise in Parliament or that coalition partners might exploit to her discomfort. The Israeli negotiators raised questions about what specifically was meant by “moderate” use of the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb; where the checkpoints would be on the Cairo-Suez road; who actually controlled the road between checkpoints — in fact, all the points on the fudging of which the whole agreement hinged. On the surface we seemed to be in a kind of never-never land; the Israeli negotiating team tended simply to “bank” what had been achieved and to talk as if Israel, suddenly confronted with Egyptian acceptance of its own proposal, had the option to take back the marginal concessions that had made the Egyptian breakthrough possible in the first place. However, Golda was wise as well as tough. After putting Sisco through the wringer for several hours and making a record of vigilance, Golda asked Sisco to tell me what no doubt she had concluded immediately:

  We will meet with the Cabinet tomorrow morning. I hope we will have no difficulty. If so, we will try to overcome it. Give him my best and tell him that this is a fantastic achievement.

  Dinitz conveyed a similar message to Scowcroft during the morning of November 8. Nevertheless, within hours things began to unravel. Golda had overestimated the pliability of her cabinet, which insisted on another hallowed ritual of Israeli negotiating tactics: a “Memorandum of Understanding” between the United States and Israel. The consciousness of having only one friend among the nations of the world produces an endless quest for reassurance in the form of additional concessions or side letters on the interpretation of existing agreements. In this case the Memorandum of Understanding was a detailed statement of how Israel intended to interpret the provisions of the six-point accord. These interpretations were not unreasonable; we were prepared to accept them privately and commit ourselves to support Israel should there be a dispute. What we could not do was what the cabinet seemed to want: turn the Israeli-American Memorandum of Understanding into the basic Egyptian-Israeli agreement. This would have required going back to Sadat and asking him to confirm formally what he could only accept de facto: such as lifting of the blockade at Bab el-Mandeb; Israeli control over the Cairo-Suez road; and the details of resupply of the Third Army, which would have brought home its plight to every Arab. Saunders wisely suggested that Golda declare Israel’s interpretation to the Parliament and we would not contradict it. However, we could not ask Sadat to agree to it formally even while he acquiesced in practice. That seemed to settle things.

  Sisco and Saunders caught up with me in Riyadh. We planned to announce acceptance of the six-point agreement by means of a public letter from me to UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim the next day, Friday, November 9. I sent messages to that effect from Riyadh to both Cairo and Jerusalem.

  Everything seemed in train when early Friday morning a cable from Fahmy informed me that Israel was insisting on a new interpretation of the agreement. The Israeli negotiator at the Kilometer 101 talks, General Aharon Yariv, had gone ahead with what Sisco and Saunders had told Israel was impossible; he had in effect demanded Egypt’s formal acceptance of the agreed Israeli-American interpretation. Fahmy also complained that Jerusalem had leaked the private understanding regarding the blockade and was insisting that Israel “controlled” the road. He suggested delay of the announcement until matters were clarified.

  I had been afraid of something like this. Private understandings are useless to an Israeli cabinet, especially at election time; they leave the government open to the charge of having failed to achieve all it could. I can think of few memoranda of understanding that did not become public in short order. As for General Yariv, he had clearly decided to try to prove erroneous our judgment of what the traffic would bear.

  I feared that if we delayed, the negotiations would be smothered in endless detail. I decided to split the difference. Still in Riyadh, I immediately sent a message to Fahmy that gave him a face-saving way out. We could not prevent speculation about the easing of the blockade at Bab el-Mandeb, but we could commit ourselves not to confirm such speculation. The other issues should be discussed between the military representatives at Kilometer 101; they seemed to me all technical and not matters of principle. I repeated our interpretation of them along lines Sisco had agreed with Israel but I did not ask Fahmy to take a position on that interpretation. I ended with a strong plea to announce the agreement at the appointed time, now less than ten hours away, lest new complications prevent any agreement altogether.

  I cabled in the same vein to Golda from Islamabad. (I was in Pakistan on my way to Peking.) I recounted Egyptian complaints and urged the Israelis to avoid inflammatory press and public interpretations. I also told her Sadat had taken the position that “a visible [Israeli] presence on the road will make his position with respect to the agreement untenable.” I reviewed the reply already sent to Fahmy, then urged Golda to go ahead with the agreement on schedule: “It is important that Israel proceed now to follow through on the terms of the agreement in a positive spirit and that your negotiators not act in a harassing manner.”

  Fahmy replied positively within three hours. He understood that it was in everybody’s interest not to put forward too detailed an exegesis for an agreement that sought a face-saving formula for what was imposed by reality. So Fahmy professed to be satisfied by my “explanations” and urged me to proceed with the letter to Waldheim as planned.

  Golda reached the same conclusions, though in a stormier manner. She professed to be outraged by the suggestion that an Israeli negotiator would harass anyone. She called in the American Ambassador, Kenneth Keating, and portrayed my cabled message as another “ultimatum” — a description not easy to follow since Egypt had accepted Israel’s basic program and we had agreed to support Israel’s interpretation of it. All we had asked for was a little less explicitness to permit practice and not theory to determine the arrangements. Golda spoke darkly of resigning in favor of a tougher negotiator — a truly frightening prospect, which we happily knew was unfulfillable.

  But the conclusion she drew from her outrage was moderate indeed. As so often, Golda used the language of challenge to achieve the reality of cooperation. Since we were talking about an American letter to Waldheim, she said, she had no right to prohibit it. As far as she was concerned, Israel would announce its acceptance in principle subject to “clarifications” that she knew very well she had already received. It must be a pleasure to issue an ultimatum to which you already have the answer in hand. (It was also a good way to leak out the substance of the Memorandum of Understanding.)

  We decided to go ahead. At the last moment Fahmy wanted us to delete a phrase from my letter to Waldheim on some esoteric point. We told him it was now too late. Announcement of the six-point plan was made in the United States midday on November 9. (Israel, however, delayed the signing ceremony until the eleventh because of the Sabbath.) From Islamabad I answered Golda with a conciliatory letter belying my less-than-calm mood. (I took my frustration out on the genial Ken Keating, who in my view had not responded firmly enough to Golda’s diatribe — proving that he was wiser than I.)

  Like Fahmy a day earlier, Golda now professed to be extremely pleased by the outcome; Keating found her “relaxed, warm and forthcoming.” Having proved that she was no pushover — a point she felt more need to confirm than did we, who still bore the scars of her earlier assaults — she maneuvered the agreement through her cabinet with record speed. It was signed on November 11 at Kilometer 101 while I was in China.

  In the two months the agreement was in effect before it was superseded by the disengagement accord, no major trouble appeared in implementing it. The Memorandum of Understanding was never invoked, proving that the parties had understood each other much better than had been suggested by the raucous posturing of which I had been the foil.

  Amman

  THESE Egyptian and Israeli exchanges had to be conducted from t
he various far-flung capitals to which I was making flying visits. My first stop after Egypt, on November 8, was Jordan. It was quite a transition from cosmopolitan Cairo to dusty Amman, clinging to the hills on the east bank of the Jordan River, from which on clear nights one can see the lights of Jerusalem. The arrival gave me another opportunity to practice the reviewing of troops. This time I managed to slow my pace to that of my escort officer, though the art of moving in rhythm with the band’s music still eluded me.

  We were driven to the King’s palace, which by royal standards in the Middle East was modest indeed. The King greeted us with his accustomed courtesy and the comradeship that at that time still informed the relations between our countries. It was one of our sorrows that our best Arab friend was only at the periphery of this phase of the peace process. Having stayed out of the war (except for a brigade in Syria), he had no cease-fire line to stabilize. Having remained friendly to us (and because of the historic quarrel of the Hashemites with the Saudi dynasty), he had no oil pressures invoked on his behalf. The result was that the conversation was confined to abstractions or recollections.

  Hussein deplored the sequence of events that had led to the war, the timing of which, he said, had taken him by surprise. He stated his dilemma accurately:

  Jordan is the Arab country most involved in terms of both land and population. Participation in the war could have led to the destruction of Jordan and the creation of a vacuum which radical elements would have filled. Non-participation could have led to the total isolation of Jordan and to our becoming the scapegoat.

  It was an acute analysis. Unfortunately, the middle road provided few incentives for outside support — and as the peace process reached the Palestinian issue, Jordan’s unique role would become increasingly crucial. Hussein summed it up as follows:

  Our situation is different from that of Syria and Egypt, which are not connected with the Palestinian problem and which already had international boundaries before the 1967 war. Jordan’s 1967 border was the armistice demarcation line. The West Bank is both Jordanian territory and part of Palestine. The population is Jordanian and Palestinian. The rights of the Palestinians have to do not with the West Bank and Jordan but with Israel. The question is who represents the Palestinians. Our position is that the West Bank is Jordanian-Palestinian territory occupied by Israel. It is Jordan’s duty to recover that territory with minor changes on a reciprocal basis. In addition, we cannot give up responsibility for the Moslem and Christian parts of Jerusalem which should, however, remain a unified city.

  In short, Hussein rejected a role for the PLO on the West Bank as firmly as Israel. If Palestinian territory was to be recovered for the Arab nation, Jordan, according to the King, should do the negotiating. Afterward, a process of self-determination would operate. The King was clearly concerned lest his interests be neglected. He would not oppose disengagement agreements on other fronts but he urged a delay in their implementation until a comprehensive settlement could be concluded as a “package.” The trouble was that in the immediate aftermath of the war, the disposition of the opposing armies did not give us this choice. The Third Army could not remain in the desert or for that matter the Israeli army twenty miles from Damascus while the Palestinian issue was being sorted out.

  I told Hussein that disengagement would have to be the first step. The best way to protect Jordan’s interests on the Palestinian question was to invite Jordan as a founding member of the Geneva Conference; this made it the spokesman for the Palestinians. I also briefed him on the six-point plan.

  We were playing for time to overcome the vestiges of the war before turning to the issue of peace. Sometimes it is the best that can be done. But time is neutral; it is not a substitute for policy. In this case, as I shall discuss, time was to run out on the Jordanian option, because of Israel’s (and America’s) domestic situation, Arab passions fueled by radicals, and the necessities of the disengagement process. It was a great pity.

  Riyadh

  DURING my peregrinations across the Middle East, Watergate was winding its inexorable way through Congressional and judicial procedures. The House Judiciary Committee, in the wake of the “Saturday night massacre,” was considering eight impeachment resolutions. On November 5, Leon Jaworski was sworn in as Special Prosecutor to replace Archibald Cox; he had exacted a promise from Nixon that he would not be dismissed or have his independence limited unless it was approved by designated members of Congress. On November 9, while I was in Riyadh, six of the Watergate defendants were sentenced by Judge John Sirica.

  Understandably, Nixon was eager to demonstrate that none of these disasters had affected his mastery of foreign policy; indeed, that his foreign policy achievements buttressed his claim to continue in office. Haig reported that Nixon was “elated” at the just-announced six-point agreement. He had every right to take pride in what had been made possible by his fortitude — all the more remarkable in the face of the adversity he was enduring. By now, however, no foreign policy success could overcome the crisis; since the attack was on Nixon’s domestic conduct, it could not be resisted by achievements abroad. This was less clear at the White House, which became seized with the idea that a spectacular outcome could be engineered at every stop on my itinerary. Agreement in Cairo should be topped by an end to the oil embargo in Riyadh, where I arrived on November 8. This, Haig stressed, must not be announced on my trip; it must be seen as resulting from an initiative by Nixon. Therefore Haig wired me:

  He hopes that progress made in this area could be announced by him from the White House after your return. In conjunction with such an announcement and as Scowcroft advised you earlier, he would hope to have meeting as early as next week with Faisal in Washington. Following that meeting he would hope to announce progress on oil issue.

  Long hours and heavy buffeting by conflicting Mideast pressures produced in me a reaction far less understanding than Nixon’s genuine travail warranted. It was natural for any President to want to be viewed as the chief architect of a triumph; given Nixon’s high standing in Saudi Arabia this was, moreover, a reasonable reflection of reality. But it was academic. There was no chance that Saudi Arabia would lift the embargo within two weeks of imposing it. If by chance it did, it would not be possible to keep this fact secret for the remainder of my trip, which was to last ten more days. A visit by Faisal to Washington so soon after the war was absolutely inconceivable; it would defeat the entire thrust of Saudi strategy, which had been to build credit with radical Arab regimes.

  I cabled Haig:

  An attempt to set up meeting with Faisal in Washington is total insanity. Every Arab leader I have talked to so far has made it clear that it is far easier for them to ease pressures de facto than as public Arab policy. Only repeat only course that can work is course we are now on. Invitation to Faisal would be interpreted throughout Arab world as US collapse. It would magnify, not reduce, Arab incentives to keep pressure on US via oil weapon. Nor is there any conceivable reason for Faisal to be willing to come to Washington for friendly meetings at this early phase of peace settlement process. If it should turn out that Faisal is willing for any public announcements of accord on oil matter, I of course would have no repeat no objection to having President announce it in Washington.

  The occasion that Nixon longed for never presented itself. There turned out to be no possibility of any dramatic move in Riyadh, for the spectacular is against the very tradition of the country and the psychology of its leaders.

  By the fall of 1973, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had been drawn reluctantly into the vortex of world affairs. It had to brave the turbulence all around it from an historical and psychological background differing from that of almost every other Arab state.

  Mecca and Medina are the holy places of the Moslem world. The Prophet had preached his message first across Arabia’s stern deserts and craggy mountains; from there issued forth the armies that spread his faith across a large part of the then known world. Shortly afterward by the reckon
ing of history, the curtain was drawn again and the succeeding centuries have been etched more deeply in the memory of the tribes and rulers inhabiting its vast territory than in an historical record. Little is known of the turmoil, the suffering, the victories and defeats that must have occurred in that vast plateau where man sustained a marginal subsistence by a noble faith.

  What is today Saudi Arabia emerged from Turkish rule after World War I. The Kingdom bears the family name of Ibn Saud, the first dynastic ruler, who unified the various feudal principalities scattered across the Arabian peninsula and held them together by patriarchal allegiance and religious devotion to an exacting, puritanical ethic. The Saudi is wary of the infidel and suspicious of the foreigner. In this he does not differ from many peoples in this dramatic region. But where the Egyptian trusts his suppleness to manipulate the stranger, and the Syrian half believes that he can defeat him in battle, the Saudi seeks to protect himself by remoteness; this is why the Saudis appear withdrawn, impervious, detached. One cannot conquer a mystery, for its essence is immune to the accidents of political power. So Saudi Arabia obscures its vulnerability by opaqueness and hides its uncertainty about the motivations of outsiders by an aloof pride.

  The royal family faces daunting tasks. It governs tribes living in the traditional nomadism and fiercely loyal to the crown, as well as urban concentrations approaching those of western metropoles. An emerging middle class here exists in the context of an age-old, semifeudal sense of reciprocal obligation. It is a tribute to the subtlety and wisdom of the ruling princes that they have combined a monarchy with a system of consensus by which the far-flung members of the extended royal family have some share in decisions. Unknown but surely substantial numbers of foreign workers — Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, Egyptians, Pakistanis, and Yemenis — combine in a mosaic held together by the bond of Islam and respect for traditional authority.