Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  The upshot of the dinner was a procedural gimmick designed to save Soviet face. Earlier, the Soviet Union and United States had agreed to designate permanent representatives to the Geneva Conference, of ambassadorial rank. Gromyko proposed that these ambassadors remain in Geneva to stay in contact with each other after the ceremonial opening session. They should also be available to meet with the subgroups should the parties so desire — a contingency my trip had ensured was unlikely to arise. Gromyko pressed for this as a way of complicating separate bilateral moves outside the conference. I agreed because I did not think that at this stage the unfolding of our design could be stopped by procedural gimmicks. I designated Ellsworth Bunker, one of the great men of American diplomacy, sure enough of himself so that he would not harass us into a pace incompatible with our plans. Gromyko appointed Vinogradov, who having outworn his welcome in Cairo was available for reassignment. He was to prove the wisdom of a remark by Metter-nich about a Russian diplomat of Tsarist times: “No one is easier to defeat than a diplomat who fancies himself shrewd. Only the totally honest are difficult to vanquish.” Bunker and Vinogradov met sporadically in January. Afterward, Bunker started devoting more and more time to the Panama Canal negotiations, which I had also assigned to him. By June we had completed two agreements elsewhere than in Geneva. Vinogradov had left town. The conference never convened again.

  On Friday morning, December 21, 1973, the problem was to assemble all the participants at the Palais des Nations for the formal laying on of hands. But after weeks of effort that one might have thought would cover all imaginable trivia and some beyond previous imagination, an unexpected scrap arose. It concerned the seating arrangements. Gromyko proposed to Waldheim a seating plan that was as transparent as it was unacceptable. He suggested that the USSR, Egypt, and SyriaVI be placed on the right of the Secretary-General, with the United States, Israel, and Jordan on the left. This would have neatly placed Jordan outside the Arab fold by grouping it with Israel and the United States, while displaying the Soviet Union as the champion of the supposedly genuine Arab cause — defined by a previous history of reliance on Soviet help. From what I knew of Sadat’s thinking, the symbolism would appeal no more to him than to the parties Gromyko had assigned to our side of the table.

  Since Gromyko’s proposal made no rational sense and accorded with no known diplomatic usage, Waldheim rejected it — showing that Waldheim knew who held the stronger diplomatic hand. He proposed instead the UN procedure of seating the Middle East delegations in alphabetical order. Unhappily, this created a new problem because it would have placed Egypt between Israel and the Soviet Union, a position Fahmy thought it prudent to avoid. His counterproposal would have placed Jordan, but not Egypt, next to Israel, but Jordan would have none of that symbolism.

  Just when I thought that all was lost — indeed, when the time scheduled for the opening of the conference had passed — a Solomonic solution emerged from the nimble brain of Ephraim (Eppie) Evron, then Deputy Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. The United States would sit between Egypt and Jordan, the Soviet Union would wind up between Israel and the empty Syrian seat at a seven-sided table. There was no more rationale for this seating arrangement than any other but it did the trick. Having started with a transparent ploy, Gromyko concluded with a show of goodwill. And he continued it by agreeing to meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban. Moscow had broken diplomatic relations with Israel but I agreed with Eban that Israel’s request for a meeting was reasonable. Gromyko accepted, explaining coolly that it is normal procedure for a participant in an international conference to pay a courtesy call on a co-chairman.

  At last, the Geneva Conference was under way. As planned, it consisted of a battery of public speeches through which each of the participants sought to protect himself against the accusations that could do him the most damage at home. For Egypt, this was the Syrian charge that Cairo was toying with a separate settlement; for Jordan, that it was less Arab than its brothers. Israel had to navigate between being accused of softness by its right-wing opposition at home and being blamed for any deadlock by Europeans and Americans. The Soviet Union wanted to stake a claim to a continued role; we, to underline our indispensability to the entire process.

  Gromyko opened with what was, by Soviet standards, a restrained presentation. He repeated standard criticisms of Israeli “aggression” and called for a return to the 1967 frontiers. But he also emphasized that the Arabs needed to accept Israel’s sovereignty and its right to national existence. It was conventional Soviet fare put forward noncontentiously. It offered no perspectives; it did nothing to exacerbate the situation.

  I spoke next and made four principal points: the importance of maintaining the cease-fire; the need for some realistic appreciation of what could be accomplished in a short period of time; the imperative of early disengagement of forces as a first step; and the necessity of realistic negotiations between the parties themselves, who would have to live with the results. At least no one could say afterward that I had not given public notice of our strategy. I also amused the assembled dignitaries by attempting to quote a proverb in Arabic. As with a similar display of bravado in China, my audience did not discern what I was doing until hearing the official translation into the same language that I was purporting to speak.

  Fahmy was next. With an eye to Damascus, he gave an oration uncompromising on substance. It demanded the total withdrawal of Israeli forces to the 1967 borders; it asked self-determination for the Palestinians. But it also granted every state — and therefore by implication Israel — the right of territorial inviolability and political independence. With impeccable principles firmly established, Egypt was thus free to turn to the problem of disengagement — a subject that Fahmy happened to omit from his speech.

  The most hard-line rhetoric came from Jordanian Prime Minister Zaid Rifai, whose actual views were, in fact, the most moderate. His catalogue of Israeli transgressions was considerably longer than Fahmy’s, his references to a peaceful settlement far fewer. But then his negotiating position was far more precarious. Jordan was the most suspect in the Arab world for its friendship with the United States and willingness to settle with Israel. Afterward, Rifai admitted to me privately that his tone reflected the necessities of Arab politics. It was a bizarre peace conference — though surely not the only one in history — at which the public positions of the contending parties had on the whole to be seen as a counterpoint to what they were actually doing. The belligerence of the oratory was in direct relation to the conciliatoriness of the policy.

  Israel’s Foreign Minister Abba Eban spoke at the end. He had requested to be the last speaker, perhaps to reflect on some points made in the morning session, probably to set off his eloquence by having it stand alone — an unnecessary embellishment. In a statement punctuated by the oratorical flourishes for which he had become renowned, Eban gave the longest and clearly the best speech of the conference. Moderate in tone, firm in substance, it stressed the importance of legal obligations of peace, rejected the concept of a Palestinian state, and asked for patience in what was bound to be a prolonged effort. Fahmy found it necessary to rebut; then the formal session of the Geneva Conference was at an end.

  I had private meetings with Fahmy, Rifai, Eban, and Gromyko to go over the procedures once again. Fahmy thought it desirable that the conference remain juridically and procedurally in session to provide a framework for the disengagement talks I had promised for January. He was so distrustful of Israeli motives and so eager to prove to his brethren that “something” was going on that he requested the immediate presence in Geneva of an Israeli military officer so that military talks — a continuation of Kilometer 101 — could be seen taking place in the interval. I arranged this with Eban despite my premonitions of what that officer would produce. An Israeli officer promptly appeared for talks starting on December 26 and was to cause no little havoc.

  All the tactical maneuvering was the surface manifestation of a fun
damental change. The Geneva Conference, whatever its bizarre aspects, was not an inconsiderable achievement in itself. For the first time two Arab states — Egypt and Jordan — sent high-level representatives to sit around the same table with Israel. While all three made speeches designed for their domestic audiences, each carefully avoided setting preconditions or taking positions that would close the door to future negotiations. No one walked out. And all present agreed to the American step-by-step approach.

  Equally significant was the attitude of Syria. True, it did not attend the conference. But that its absence was largely tactical was reflected in Damascus’s acquiescence in keeping a place at the table for it with its nameplate. Syria was thus a charter member of the conference, with the option of joining either the plenary session or a subgroup.

  So Geneva was a major step forward in the strategy that we had tenaciously pursued since the October war. During that war, our nightmare had been a triumph of Soviet arms, growing Soviet influence in the Middle East, Israeli panic, the rallying of Arab nations behind a radical program in hostility to the United States, and a coalition of Europe and Japan dissociating from us and backing radical pressures out of fear of losing oil supplies. In such conditions, no constructive diplomacy could have followed the war.

  We had begun a peace process, and had done this in the midst of Watergate. America’s executive authority was draining away daily. My best explanation for this paradox is that the Arab states could not admit to themselves the impotence of their deus ex machina nor the Israelis the potential weakness of their protector. They helped us sustain a mirage of American decisiveness and purposefulness, which, like so many acts of faith in the Middle East’s turbulent history, created its own reality.

  Thus, the Geneva Conference of 1973 opened the door to peace through which later Egypt and Israel walked, and through which it is to be hoped that other nations of the Middle East will walk in the fullness of time.

  * * *

  I. We did not think Israel could make any concessions before its general elections scheduled for December 31. The Geneva Conference was first set for December 16, then December 18, and finally opened on December 21.

  II. For the six points, see Chapter XIII, p. 641.

  III. The Israeli attitude was not without justification from a military point of view. Even the Egyptian War Minister, General Ahmed Ismail Ali, told an American diplomat in mid-November that withdrawal to the October 22 line would place the Israeli forces on the west bank of the Canal into a very constricted and vulnerable position; the only scheme that made any sense was a broader disengagement of the two forces.

  IV. It was interesting that Boumedienne considered our tilt toward Pakistan in 1971 as “progressive.”

  V. The final text of the letter of invitation is in the backnotes.4

  VI. An empty seat was left for Syria in the symbolic hope that it would attend at a later time.

  XVIII

  The First Shuttle: Egyptian-Israeli Disengagement

  The Origin of Shuttle Diplomacy

  SHUTTLE diplomacy” has become the catch phrase for my negotiations in the Middle East — as if commuting between capitals had been invented for that special purpose. In fact, the term was coined by the indefatigable Joe Sisco as we found ourselves flying back and forth between Aswan and Jerusalem during the second week of January 1974. And the idea of completing the Sinai disengagement negotiation in one continuous assault came from Anwar Sadat, who suggested that my January trip — conceived as an effort to define principles of disengagement — be turned into the occasion for a definitive agreement.

  In truth, the seeds of the “breakthrough” of January 1974 had been sown at least three months earlier. It was the culmination of the strategy we had imposed on the October war: to thwart a victory of Soviet arms; to prevent the humiliation of the Arabs, especially on the Egyptian front; to convene a peace conference in which subgroups would negotiate detail away from the rhetoric of plenary sessions; to seek results step by step rather than in one comprehensive negotiation; and to cement ties with Egypt, which was courageously willing to show the way.

  A rapid separation of forces along the Suez Canal was the key. I was sure it would bring Syria in its wake, almost certainly result in an end to the oil embargo, and enable us to pursue the peace process with less danger of a blowup.

  Sadat had been pondering disengagement ever since we had agreed, during my November trip, that it would be the first item on the agenda of the Geneva Conference. He had put forward general ideas then and in December, with the sweetener for Israel that after disengagement he would clear and reopen the Suez Canal (blocked since the June 1967 war). Israeli and Egyptian military officers had discussed disengagement at Kilometer 101, where the Israeli representative, General Yariv, had outlined an Israeli “concept.” While the talks had ended in an impasse, they had served a very useful purpose in educating both sides about the outer limits of what was possible.

  After the Geneva Conference opened on December 21–22, Egypt was so eager to show progress toward disengagement that it pressed for a meeting of the Egyptian-Israeli military working group at Geneva on December 26 — in essence an extension of Kilometer 101 — even though everyone recognized that nothing could happen until after the Israeli elections on December 31. Separately, I had secured the Israeli government’s promise to submit a formal disengagement proposal immediately after the elections. In the complex world of Israeli domestic politics, this was not a simple matter. In Israel’s history no party has ever won a majority; every government has been a coalition of competing parties in turn split into factions more cohesive than the party organization. Cabinet unity is all the more tenuous in the aftermath of an election — especially one with ambiguous results. As it turned out, in the December 31, 1973, balloting, the governing Labour Party lost 5 percent of its strength, which translated into a loss of seven seats in the 120-member Parliament (to 49 seats, down from 56). The setback was incurred largely because its prestige had been tarnished by the October war. It could still muster a majority with its traditional coalition partner, the National Religious Party, but the influence of that party, dedicated to annexing the West Bank, would be much greater. Golda could remain as Prime Minister if her party wanted her; but her standing, too, had been diminished by the war’s outcome.

  Volatile as Israeli cabinets are, however, they are paradoxically at their most stable in the run-up to elections or while coalition negotiations are taking place. By a quirk of the constitution, ministers are not permitted to resign during that period; the composition of a caretaker government is, in fact, frozen.

  It was at such a time — as coalition negotiations were just starting — that Defense Minister Moshe Dayan appeared in Washington at the beginning of January 1974. He brought with him the first feasible disengagement plan approved by the cabinet. Dayan’s new plan put meat on the bones of the “concept” offered by General Yariv at the Kilometer 101 talks. In characteristic Israeli negotiating style, he presented the scheme as one without flexibility; the cabinet insisted that there would be little margin left for negotiation.

  Dayan envisaged allowing Egypt to keep the territory it had won, to a line roughly six to ten kilometers forward on the east bank of the Suez Canal, and withdrawing Israeli forces to a new line about twenty kilometers east of the Canal. This meant that Israel was relinquishing its bridgehead on the west bank — in what Golda liked to call “Africa” — by which Israel had cut off the Egyptian Third Army in the southern portion of the front.

  Egyptian-Israeli Disengagement: Dayan’s Plan, January 4, 1974

  At the same time, Dayan proposed a “thinning-out” of military forces on both sides of the Canal. Specifically, he put forward five separate zones of arms restrictions extending over a total of ninety kilometers. In the Sinai the two sides would be separated by a United Nations buffer zone of a width of six to ten kilometers. On either side the military forces would be thinned out in a “light security zone” of six
to ten kilometers; and beyond it on each side would be a further zone of arms limitations to a distance of thirty kilometers. Israel’s main forward line would be just to the west of the two Sinai passes.

  The practical consequence of Dayan’s scheme was to require the withdrawal of all the Egyptian forces that had crossed the Suez Canal during the war except for a mere two or three battalions (or 1,800 men). Two Egyptian field armies, numbering 70,000 men, 720 tanks, and 994 pieces of artillery, would have to leave the Sinai. Dayan was especially adamant that no Egyptian tanks remain on the east bank of the Canal. Behind this belt, in Egypt’s zone of limited armaments (the thirty kilometers west of the Canal), Dayan wanted a ceiling of 300 tanks and a pullback of artillery and antiaircraft defenses so that they could not reach the Israeli line. Clearly, Dayan was taking advantage of the fact that it is the mediator who must bear the brunt of the other side’s outrage at a one-sided proposal.

  Dayan demanded as well a number of political conditions from Egypt, adding a new dimension not previously explored at Kilometer 101: an end to the state of belligerency between Egypt and Israel, lifting the blockade of Bab el-Mandeb, and a pledge to reopen the Suez Canal and permit the transit of Israeli ships and cargoes. From us Israel wanted an assurance of long-term arms supply.