This had two consequences: It drew Lebanon into the Arab-Israeli confrontation in a way that could not conceivably correspond to its national interest, for the frontier between Lebanon and Israel had never been disputed. And it illustrated also the dynamics of the Palestinian liberation movement. It would seem that any country that plays host to organized Palestinian paramilitary forces risks its own sovereignty. Their principal purpose is to conduct raids into Israel, using the host country as sanctuary; this draws the inevitable Israeli retaliation, engulfing the host country in a war it did not seek. (Hussein forbade such raids into Israel, which was one cause of his battle with the Palestinians in 1970. Lebanon was not strong enough to do so.) If allowed to implant themselves and build up their military power, the Palestinians can become a state within a state, first ignoring the writ of the central government in areas they control and then seeking to impose their own will. Again, what Hussein had prevented by force in 1970, backed by the loyal Bedouins of the Jordanian army, Lebanon with its jerry-built governmental structure and weak, divided army proved unable to overcome.
Already in 1973, the danger while nascent was already visible. The Palestinians were beginning to be a disruptive element in Lebanon. The result was that the Lebanese government, one of the most moderate in the Middle East, was the most passionate advocate of a Palestinian homeland: It was a way to get the Palestinians out of Lebanon!
That was indeed the theme of the conversations I had with the Lebanese leaders at Rayak Air Base thirty-eight miles from Beirut. We met there for security reasons. The presence of two Palestinian refugee camps directly in the approach path of airplanes arriving at Beirut airport seemed to my security officers too much of a risk to take in the age of Soviet-made shoulder-carried surface-to-air missiles; general concern was given a concrete content by a report that there was in fact a plan to shoot down my plane; there were also mobs demonstrating in Beirut. Thus the military elegance of the Officers’ Club at the air base was the venue for my conversations first with Foreign Minister Fu’ad Naffa’ and his staff, and then with President Suleiman Frangieh and Prime Minister Taqi al-Din al-Sulh and their associates. The Foreign Minister had a list of a dozen questions similar in import to those put by Asad. I gave substantially the same answer: Discussion of final frontiers was premature and Palestinian aspirations had to be taken into account in a final settlement. As in Damascus, I refused to go into detail about the meaning of these propositions. I explained the procedures for the Geneva Conference, the subgroups, and the first phase of disengagement. Our hosts could not have been more understanding or appreciative. They welcomed America’s interest in the peace process; they had no concrete proposals. Their major concern was that the Soviet role in the Middle East be diminished and, above all, that we help solve the Palestinian problem, finding them a home anywhere other than in Lebanon.
I did not have the heart to tell President Frangieh that, from what I had heard in the Middle East, he was unlikely to obtain relief from his devouring guests. In the judgment of all the other Arab leaders I had met — with the possible exception of those in Saudi Arabia — very few Palestinians would want to return to the West Bank whoever ruled there. Moreover, since Israel would surely insist that any part of the West Bank returned to Arab control be demilitarized, and since it was inconceivable that the Palestinians were going to disarm themselves everywhere, Lebanon was not likely soon to be spared the presence of armed Palestinians.
I think with sadness of these civilized men who in a turbulent part of the world had fashioned a democratic society based on genuine mutual respect of the religions. Their achievement did not survive. The passions sweeping the area were too powerful to be contained by subtle constitutional arrangements. As it had attempted in Jordan, the Palestinian movement wrecked the delicate balance of Lebanon’s stability. Before the peace process could run its course, Lebanon was torn apart. Over its prostrate body at this writing all the factions and forces of the Middle East still chase their eternal dreams and act out their perennial nightmares.
Israel
AT last on Sunday evening, December 16, I reached Israel, the third country on that day, the seventh in the four-day Middle East journey. I had come to persuade Israel to go to Geneva on the basis of a bland letter that left all issues open. But I had no illusions. With elections two weeks away, no Israeli leader would risk his or her position for a conference that none of them was overwhelmingly eager to see take place.
But election politics were only the surface manifestation of a deeper anxiety. Israel’s tenacious rearguard action reflected not arrogance, as many Arabs imagined: Rather, it was founded on a premonition of potential disaster. The nitpicking legalistic method of negotiation stemmed from the knowledge that a people of three million amidst a hostile population of over a hundred million is historically weak whatever the relative state of armaments at any given point. Deep down, the children of the ghetto knew, railed against, and perversely contributed to their own nightmare: that they had created a state which once again had become a ghetto — ostracized by its neighbors, thrown upon itself, dependent on the support of a faraway country with many other priorities.
Even the complex strategy I was proposing could only ease their dilemmas, not end them. I defended the step-by-step approach as a means of preventing the formation of a global coalition against Israel. Golda was not convinced:
When, in March or April, the world begins pressing again, we’ll be X kilometers from the Canal. We’ll fight at a great disadvantage. And the world will not say, “a plague on both your houses”; the world will say, “a plague on the House of Israel.”
And Golda was close to the mark: Our strategy offered no surcease from anguishing retreat, only mitigation of its impact. Golda was tough enough to look at the real situation, no matter how painful, without flinching. “If we are realistic and honest with ourselves, we Israelis,” she said about disengagement, “it really means we have come out of this war, which was as it was, by pulling back. That’s what it really is, if you call it by its right name. Just pulling back, that’s what it is.”
Golda was right and Sadat was the only Arab who understood that she was right. It is a measure of her stature that she traveled that road nevertheless, trading territory for time and geography for acceptance. But it was too much to ask her to do so joyfully or even graciously. Sadat was a great man because he understood the importance of intangibles. Golda had to cling to what she had; circumstance did not permit her to be artful. Yet when the accounts are finally balanced, it must be recorded that she was as indispensable to the process of peace as the Egyptian President and that she performed her duty with courage, occasional snarls of defiance, and constant dignity.
All our sympathy for Israel’s historic plight and affection for Golda were soon needed to endure the teeth-grinding, exhausting ordeal by exegesis that confronted us when we met with the Israeli negotiating team. We went through the letter of invitation line by line. In fact, we had won most of the battle when Sadat agreed and Asad acquiesced in omitting the explicit reference to Palestinians; the empty formulation in our new final version stated only that the “question” of “other participants from the Middle East area will be discussed during the first stage of the Conference.” (The specific reference to “the Middle East” was in fact Asad’s indirect contribution; he had pointed out that if we did not mention the region, any country could ask to participate.)
Having prevailed on the Palestinian point, the Israeli negotiating team tried its luck on the other issues. Deeply suspicious of the United Nations, they showed infinite ingenuity in suggesting alternative formulations to weaken the convening authority of that organization and the role of its Secretary-General. Luckily, it was mostly for the record; it was not pressed with the usual persistence, thus ensuring us a few hours’ sleep. The solution of the Palestinian point took the steam out of my interlocutors — although even unaroused Israelis can never be described as easy.
After we had
substantially agreed on the letter, we went line by line through an accompanying Memorandum of Understanding that the Israelis wanted. At one point I said in exasperation:
I’m trying to bring a sense of reality to this discussion. The mood in America is such that if Israel is increasingly seen as the obstacle to the negotiations and the cause of the oil pressure, you’ll have tremendous difficulty. Memorandum or no memorandum.
“I know that,” Golda replied wearily. She had her own domestic problems — a belligerent and united right wing and an insecure public. What we were about was not foreign policy but psychology. She had to show that she had raised Israel’s concerns and that we had heard them. Our acting on them would belong to another historical period.
Finally at 12:42 A.M. early Monday, after five hours of nonstop negotiation, we were finished with all the documents, including a new draft letter.V It omitted any reference to Palestinians and confined the authority of the United Nations to convening the conference, not supervising it. It was only a minor victory for Israel, since nothing could prevent the Palestinian issue from being raised at the conference. Still, while driving us to the edge of nervous exhaustion, Israel had committed itself to a negotiating process that it knew would have to be fueled with its withdrawals. At 1:00 A.M. the cabinet met and gave its approval. My weary staff had to draft messages to the White House, all other Mideast participants, and the Soviet Union to make certain we had their final acceptance of the suggested changes.
The Israeli cabinet has — or at least had then — a seemingly endless capacity for self-flagellation: If it could not alter the course of events, it would instead reassure itself again and again that nothing slipped by it through inadvertence. The two negotiating teams were back together for another four-hour session on Monday morning, December 17. This time the subject was disengagement. We went through the history of the Kilometer 101 talks, examining the various schemes that had been presented there. I reviewed Sadat’s latest thinking; I outlined my own ideas and listened to Israel’s preliminary views. Detailed discussion would not come until January. Nonetheless, I now felt convinced that Egypt and Israel had a reasonable chance to complete the make-or-break diplomacy on which we had hazarded our Middle East position.
Just before leaving Jerusalem, I visisted Yad Vashem, the memorial to the six million Jews who had died at the hand of the Nazis. I barred the press from accompanying me. It was a moment of solitary reflection upon my own past, the pitilessness of history, and the human stakes in the exertions of statesmen. And it was intended as a reassurance to the people of Israel that I understood and would respect their fears in a process of peacemaking that was simultaneously inescapable, full of hope, and wrenchingly painful.
As I departed Israel on the afternoon of December 17,1 was confident that our strategy was about to unfold much as we had intended. The Geneva Conference was almost certain to assemble in three days’ time. A disengagement agreement between Israel and Egypt seemed within reach. I sent messages to Sadat, Hussein, Asad, Faisal, Boumedienne, and the Shah informing them of my discussions of recent days. Our diplomacy depended on confidence, which made it necessary that all of the area’s leaders knew what was being said and done. (And because communications from the United States were precious in the Middle East rumor mill, we made certain that the messages were substantially similar — but not identical. Sending the same message word for word would have devalued the communication as it made the rounds of Arab capitals. It would have looked too much like a circular dispatch.) Our NATO allies were informed as well. On December 18, with some other small changes, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and the Soviet Union accepted the letter of invitation. We made a final check of Asad as promised, on December 18, sending our Ambassador in Beirut, William Buffum, to Damascus with the new text of the letter of invitation. But as expected, Asad reiterated that Syria would not attend the peace conference. Thus, at the last moment the letter to Waldheim was adjusted to delete specific names of countries in favor of saying the “parties concerned” would attend Geneva.
There was one last squall in Washington, where Nixon, still smoldering from Israel’s obstinacy the week before, wanted to hold up one-quarter of the $2.2 billion postwar supplemental aid request for Israel as insurance of Israel’s good behavior. I opposed it, convinced that desperation would make Israel more defiant. And there were really no outstanding issues to warrant such a step. After some exchanges between me and Scowcroft, the idea was dropped. On December 19, I sent a long report to Nixon outlining the prospects for Geneva and after. (It is included in the backnotes.)5
We were at last at the starting gate. It remained to be seen whether we knew how to run the race.
The Geneva Conference
BEFORE reaching Geneva, I stopped in Lisbon, Madrid, and Paris. I owed the Portuguese government a show of support for its assistance during the airlift. We were in the midst of negotiations with Spain over US bases there. I was in Paris for my last meeting with my old North Vietnamese sparring partner, Le Duc Tho, who was growing more unbearably insolent as America’s domestic divisions gradually opened up new and decisive strategic opportunities for Hanoi. In the French capital I also briefed President Georges Pompidou on our plans and strategy for the Geneva Conference. In his illness, he had to strain to the utmost to maintain his customary calm and courtesy in the face of the exclusion of France from the proceedings. I understood this proud man’s attitude. On the other hand, there was not a single controversial Mideast issue — and precious few in other areas — on which France had taken our side in recent months. So long as France saw its future in the Middle East in one-sided support of the radical Arab program, the consequence of its participation would have been to isolate us in our encouragement of more moderate and limited and, in our view, more attainable goals.
Before I left Paris, Algerian Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika, whom I had seen only a week earlier in Algiers, accepted an invitation to call on me at the residence of the American Ambassador for a personal briefing on my tour of the Mideast. I summarized the various conversations I had had; I assured him I understood the reasons for Syria’s reluctance to attend the conference. I reiterated our determination to promote a disengagement in the Golan after concluding the one in the Sinai. Bouteflika the revolutionary espoused the cause of his fellow radicals, the Palestinians, in the usual sacramental language, but Bouteflika the man of the world understood that Palestinian disunity and the ulterior motives of Arab governments hindered a resolution of the issue. He frankly acknowledged to me that the problem of the Palestinians was complicated by the fact that each country of the region supported its own group of Palestinians. The upshot was that Algeria no more than Syria would oppose the procedure or the strategy.
Late Thursday afternoon, December 20, my peregrinations of two weeks at last culminated in my arrival in Geneva. While the conference itself had been designed for modest achievement, I hoped with all my heart that it would mark the beginning of a process worthy of the suffering that had led to it and justifying the arduous exertion of the months just past. And in this buoyant mood I spoke to the media at the airport:
The fate of Arabs and Jews has been inextricably linked throughout their history, rising and falling together. In recent centuries both had been reduced to an equally cruel state — the one dispersed and persecuted throughout the world, the other deprived of autonomy and freedom in its own former empire. But over the past quarter century both have stood on the verge of overcoming their past, no longer restrained by outside forces but by their struggle with one another. Thus in the land of Arabs and Jews, where the reality of mistrust and hate so tragically contradicts the spiritual message which originates there, it is essential for the voice of reconciliation to be heard.
A warm and generous backchannel message from Nixon awaited me:
On the eve of the convening of the historic conference on the Middle East, I wanted to express to you my respect and the gratitude of the American people for your crucial ro
le in this great enterprise. Without your diplomatic skill, perseverance, and dedication to the cause of peace, this Conference would not be taking place. While this is but the first step on the road to a just and durable peace in the Middle East, it is a vitally important step, and the American people are proud that it was their Secretary of State who brought it about. Needless to say, you have my full support as we work together in this vital pursuit.
Warm regards.
It was probably too much to hope that those gathering at Geneva would display a conspicuous spirit of reconciliation. Each of the contending parties could sustain its experiment with peace only by proving its constant vigilance to the hard-liners back home. And all of the key actors understood that the sole achievement of the conference would be its opening; the progress that was foreseeable would take place in other forums.
That realization had at last dawned on Andrei Gromyko, with whom I dined Thursday night, before the plenary session on Friday. The conference had been assembled by the efforts of the United States, with the Soviet Union playing a subsidiary role if any. Gromyko had forgotten that he had assigned the task to me in order to saddle me with the onus for failure or at least for exacting changes in the letter from reluctant Arab participants. Throughout, the behavior of Soviet diplomats had been either incompetent or duplicitous — probably a combination of both. But far from reducing the influence of the United States, the exertions needed to arrange the conference — and the final success — emphasized our indispensability to all the Arab states, even the radicals.
When Gromyko grumbled that the Soviet Union would not let itself be excluded from the peace process, his frustration must have been all the greater because he must have known that the Soviets’ dilemmas were both self-inflicted and insoluble. So long as the Soviet Union had no ties with Israel, we were the only superpower conducting a dialogue with both sides. So long as the Soviets simply repeated the radical Arab program, we were — as I had said to Asad — always better off dealing directly with the Arab states and getting credit for any achievement. Gromyko sought to combine the advantage of close association with our peace effort with unconditional backing of every Arab demand. We refused to play this game. But it was primarily the flat-footedness of Soviet diplomacy, not our maneuvering, that doomed Moscow to increasing irrelevance. We were systematically creating the framework for bilateral diplomacy between the parties through our mediation after the conference. The absence of a Soviet alternative caused even its clients, like Syria, to fall in with a procedure that was the only hope for progress.
Years of Upheaval Page 117