Despite their fearsome reputation, the Syrians were always impeccable hosts, making up in courtesy for the Spartan accommodations in the guest house. Khaddam insisted that I have dinner with him despite the late hour. Tom Scotes, head of the Interests Section, had warned me that a light supper was awaiting me. “Light supper,” I later complained to Asad, “does not even translate into Arabic.” The lavish meal and Khaddam’s uncharacteristic cordiality showed that Syria had staked a great deal on disengagement on the Golan. He told me that Syria appreciated my efforts enormously — an unheard-of compliment from this exemplar of Baathist militance. He was benign also about the Washington Energy Conference. He did not dispute that oil prices were too high, but he blamed the price explosion on Israel; without the war, he insisted, the producers would not have taken such dramatic advantage of market conditions. He could not forgo the opportunity to explain that historically Palestine had been part of Syria — a complex proposition since Syria in its modern form has existed only since 1920 (though a satellite Kingdom of Syria, including all the territory between Turkey and Egypt, had come into being as part of the Ottoman Empire). But Khaddam was also at pains to point out that Syria would not let itself be provoked. This was a promising hint that it would not break off the talks if Israel’s first proposal turned out to be unsatisfactory, as I had consistently predicted.
All this was really just filling the time until President Asad had completed a State dinner for visiting Romanian President Nicolae Ceauşescu. At midnight I was summoned to a session with Asad that was to last more than three and a half hours. We met as usual behind drawn velvet curtains in the womblike upstairs sitting room of the grandly named Presidential Palace. Asad and I took our places on straight-backed chairs and our advisers on sofas, the Syrian group again stationing themselves below the inspirational painting showing the destruction of the last Crusader strongholds by Mohammedan armies.
Asad began the conversation by stressing his reliance on our active role:
ASAD: Certain information media and certain of your statements gave the impression that you were just an innocent conveyor of messages here and there.
KISSINGER: That is the public impression.
ASAD: It is very innocent. Even if we wanted this, it is impossible with you.
KISSINGER: You do not think I am innocent, or you do not want me to be innocent?
ASAD: The word “innocent” may have more than one sense. The needed impression may be that Dr. Kissinger does no more than just convey the viewpoint of one side to the other; this suffers from an absence of any dynamism, the impression that you are not doing something effective. This could be called an innocent role, but not [for] Dr. Kissinger.
A word must be said here about the distinguished individual who served as interpreter for my meetings in Damascus and Riyadh. All Arabs paid him lyrical tributes for the accuracy of his translations into Arabic (which not all of them were in a position to judge) and for their literacy and poetic quality (which they were). Isa Sabbagh, Palestinian by birth, was a gray-haired gentleman whose goatee and courtly manner suggested a retired scholar of the turn of the century from a family fallen upon hard times. He was famous in the Arab world from his many years of broadcasting for the BBC and Voice of America. I never found out what twist of fate had made Sabbagh an American citizen and pillar of the Foreign Service (his principal job then was special assistant to our Ambassador in Saudi Arabia). It was my good fortune to team up with a man whose background reflected the Middle East’s tragedy and passion. I am certain that Sabbagh’s heart was with the Palestinians; yet his work for me was in the service of a policy that gave that problem a relatively low priority. His conduct throughout was impeccable, as if he could spur the aspirations of his people best by the scrupulousness and excellence of his performance.
When we turned to the procedure for giving Mrs. Meir the list of Israeli prisoners, Asad agreed with the next key step in my scenario: Red Cross visits could start promptly, and to show his goodwill Asad offered to begin them the next day or as soon as possible thereafter. He used another of his allegorical news stories to stress his desire to cooperate. He had read some news accounts, he said, alleging that I judged his flexibility more limited than Sadat’s because of domestic pressures. (This was indeed my view, though I remembered no story making that claim.) He denied that this was true. There were no groupings hostile to him; he was as “mobile” as any other Arab leader. I took his point, responding in a manner most compatible with his fierce pride:
I think I understand you. Your situation is more complex, you are closer to Palestine, you are not dealing with a desert, and with less territory. Your situation is not like Sinai, and you run risks through the process. That is my judgment. [Asad nods yes.] You have more neighbors than Egypt.
And that was in fact the case. Asad’s turn to moderation would be challenged at home as well as by his radical neighbor Iraq; my summing up had rephrased, not denied, that condition.
It rapidly became apparent that Asad had grave misgivings about the negotiating procedure that I had outlined. He had wanted to convey that his hesitations reflected conviction, not weakness. I had proposed on February 5 that Syrian and Israeli officers meet in the Egyptian-Israeli military working group that still technically functioned in Geneva, though it had not met since early January. The idea had come from Sadat, who thought it would relieve Asad of the embarrassment of a separate Syrian-Israeli negotiation, and incidentally provide an assurance of Syrian “good behavior.” But the idea carried risks: It would be difficult to exclude the Soviets from any Geneva meetings as Gromyko’s insistence made clear; and the effort to assemble a direct Syrian-Israeli meeting anywhere invited a dangerous early deadlock.
Asad saw this sooner than I had. He argued that any Geneva meeting of Syrian and Israeli officers should take place after an agreement in principle had been reached. In other words, Asad clearly wanted me to handle the principal negotiation as I had done with Egypt:
We could discuss all you have mentioned when it is achieved. But with the list and the Red Cross visits, . . . immediately thereafter . . . to send the officers [to Geneva], when the statements are emanating, would be a bit much.
Nor did he want the Soviets to be part of it, as he made clear by telling me proudly and in great detail how he had prevented Gromyko from visiting Damascus while I was there. The Soviet Foreign Minister was scheduled to arrive after my departure and to leave the morning of my next return to Damascus on March 1 — hardly glorious treatment for Syria’s principal weapons supplier.
The idea that I would be stuck with the entire Syrian negotiation filled me with horror. “I would have to spend all my time here,” I said more presciently than I realized. In fact, there was no alternative. And it also enabled me to avoid the most serious pitfall I saw ahead. If Asad turned down the first Israeli proposal, which I had promised to bring him on my return in forty-eight hours, we would be bogged down both in the disengagement talks and in our efforts to lift the embargo (however we might disclaim any linkage). What I had to do, I realized, was to get through the next few days without a blowup. If worse came to worst, I would have to stall until the embargo was lifted and count on political and economic pressures to keep it from being reimposed.
I therefore repeated my refrain of the preceding weeks. The Israeli plan I would bring when I next came to Damascus would probably not be acceptable to Syria, given the state of Israeli coalition politics. Asad had already told me he could not settle for restoration of the pre-October 6, 1973, line; he needed more Israeli withdrawal than that or else he would have incurred 6,000 dead for nothing. I was sure that the Israeli proposal would be even less favorable than the October 6 line. I therefore stressed to Asad that the major significance of whatever Israeli proposal I brought in two days would be that it committed Israel to negotiate on the Golan. Whatever it contained, I would ask Mrs. Meir to send a senior official to Washington in a few weeks for further discussion and possible modificati
on of the first proposal. After that, a senior Syrian official should visit Washington to continue the talks. Once the issues were sufficiently narrowed, I would return to the Middle East to finish the negotiations. The two visits to Washington would serve as the substitute for the Geneva military working group.
Asad accepted the proposal. He could have given no better proof of his commitment to the disengagement process than agreeing to so vague and noncommittal a procedure that would see us safely through the forthcoming oil ministers’ meeting.
Though it was by now close to 3:00 A.M. Wednesday morning and my day had started in London, it ended, as did nearly all my meetings with Asad, with another hour of general conversation. Asad wanted to know when we had first learned of the Egyptian-Syrian plan to attack on October 6. He was inordinately pleased to hear me confirm that we had had only a few hours’ warning. We reminisced about the Jordan crisis of 1970, like two old veterans whom fate had placed on opposite sides of nearly forgotten battles but whose conflict created a firmer bond with each other than with those who had never known the passions of the struggle at all. We agreed to meet again in the morning — a few hours hence — largely so that I could use the pretext of an uncompleted meeting to avoid briefing the press. I did not want what little there was to report to reach Israel before I did.
I staggered to bed in the guest house at 4:00 A.M. for a few hours’ sleep, only to fall victim to what I considered in my exhausted state an example of Syrian psychological warfare. The state guest house was right next to a mosque. Starting at 4:30 A.M. the muezzin began to call the faithful to prayers, aided by an electronic amplifier that seemed to be placed right next to my bedroom window. I implored my aide Larry Eagleburger to get the noise stopped. He made the officious moves of a Foreign Service Officer confronted by a demented Secretary of State. Fortunately for me, he had the good sense to make no attempt to interfere with sacred religious observances.
Asad and I met again at 9:40 A.M. on Wednesday, February 27. Though the session had been planned as a formality, it extended over three hours. Asad asked for a day’s delay for technical reasons before the start of Red Cross visits to Israeli prisoners. We reviewed the agreed-upon procedures. Asad could not let me leave without taking another run at extracting a guarantee that the final disengagement line would show he had gained territory from the October war (an objective not even the most moderate Israeli could share with him). There was no little bravado in his claim that he would rather keep the existing situation than to end the war with Israel’s relinquishing only its newly won territory:
It is not necessary that we extract our right today; we can get it tomorrow. But for the result of this war to be begging Israel — that is impossible. Neither would I be accepting it, as a person. No. After having said this, I want to say we will leave no opportunity unutilized to achieve peace. But there is a difference between peace and surrender.
The words were defiant, but the actions bespoke a desire for accommodation. He had first given us the number of Israeli prisoners, then the list of names; he had agreed to Red Cross visits; and he had accepted a procedure that for all he knew might be designed primarily to waste time. The leader of the most militant of Israel’s neighbors was putting all his chips on the United States. In the Syrian context this was an act of daring comparable to Sadat’s change of course some weeks earlier. But, unlike his Egyptian colleague, Asad went no further. Having made his initial move, he acted as if it was now up to the United States to accomplish his goals and solve his dilemmas. He saw no need — or perhaps had no scope — for the acts of grace by which the Egyptian President created the psychological framework that left no alternative to peace.
But on February 27 we considered it achievement enough to have started the process of negotiation. The morning meeting, as it turned out, had lasted too long for a planned sight-seeing visit to the Omayed Mosque, a glorious edifice that had once been a Byzantine church and that now presided grandly over the bustling Damascus bazaar. The postponement may have saved my life. We learned the next day that mines had been buried in the road to the mosque, to be detonated under my car. This was discovered only when the Palestinian terrorists who had planted them sought instructions for my return forty-eight hours hence: Should they try again to blow me up? We took no chances on the answer.
Security became even tighter afterward. We varied the routes of my travel within Damascus; we even once resorted to a dummy motorcade as a decoy while I rode in a separate caravan. Whether this confused the terrorists as much as it confused me, I cannot say. We later received reports that they always knew what motorcade I was in. The Syrians were extremely embarrassed (and angry at the fedayeen), and the terrorists seem never to have organized another attempt. But I never got to visit the Omayed Mosque.
When I left Damascus, I was not aware of any of this. I was heading for Israel hoping that we had nursed the negotiations through the first stage.
Drama in Israel
THE demoralizing aspect of negotiating between Syria and Israel was that what one side considered a huge concession would be taken for granted by the other. For Asad, turning over the list of Israeli prisoners and agreeing to Red Cross visits were a major gesture and a political risk. He would have preferred to deal with the POWs in the North Vietnamese manner: to release neither names nor information about their condition, treating them in effect as hostages. But for Israel, which had been prepared for a mutual exchange of POWs ever since the ceasefire,II the list of names was a paltry minimum and not a concession requiring reciprocity. Likewise for Syria, any negotiation that merely restored the October 6 line — returning only the salient captured by Israel in the 1973 war — put into question why the war had been fought and thus weakened Asad’s domestic position. Any other likely new line also had its problems, implying Syrian acquiescence in Israeli occupation of the remainder of the Golan Heights. But Israel perceived that its military interest favored doing nothing; its forces were only thirty-five kilometers from Damascus on a line easier to defend than any other. In short, by the end of February I had nudged these two most fractious horses almost to the starting gate; my problem now was to make them run.
Israel’s caretaker cabinet was hardly ideal for such a negotiation. It was a coalition of Labour (Golda’s party) and the National Religious Party. But the Religious Party was refusing to continue in coalition with Golda on various pretexts, a major reason perhaps being the precipitate drop in her popularity as a result of the October war. One focal point of attack was Moshe Dayan, who as Defense Minister was an easy target for critics of Israel’s unpreparedness for the October war. Every public appearance led to demonstrations: the cry of “murderer” frequently greeted the architect of Israel’s military victories in 1956 and 1967. But Dayan controlled the important Rafi faction within the Labour Party, so that if he withdrew, it would complicate Golda’s task of cabinet-making even more — to the point of unmanageability, in fact.
That is, however, precisely what Dayan did. Just before I left on my shuttle, he dramatically announced that he would not serve in Golda’s new cabinet. There were even rumors that he would not meet with me on this trip, that he would be out of the country. The impact on the Syrian negotiations could have been disastrous. Dayan was grudgingly admired in the Arab world as a man of imagination and even flexibility. It was known that the last phase of Egyptian disengagement had been ushered in by Dayan’s January visit to Washington; indeed, the Israeli cabinet position was widely considered to have been Dayan’s plan. I had been dangling before Asad the prospect of a Dayan visit to Washington as a token of progress. His refusal to participate just as I arrived to elicit an Israeli disengagement proposal would have been widely misconstrued — including by me. I made strenuous appeals for Dayan to reconsider. Ultimately, Golda persuaded him to stand again for the cabinet. But the aftershocks of the controversy were still being felt when I arrived. We did not find Dayan in his most creative mood — sullen and bitter would be more apt descriptions.
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In fact, I could not have come to Israel at a worse moment. The new government had yet to be formed and the last thing Golda and her caretaker cabinet needed was another divisive problem. Any new line on the Golan, wherever drawn, would inevitably be closer to Israeli settlements. Golda had just about as much opposition as she could handle. The dominant mood in Israel was for procrastination. While en route to the Middle East, I received a message that Israel would demand the actual release of prisoners as the first agenda item of any disengagement talks. This, of course, was a new condition. It was certain to lead to stalemate. I returned a sharp reply that I would stick strictly to the procedure of February 5, which had insisted only on prisoner lists and Red Cross visits. Golda via Dinitz had replied with the attitude that there had been no harm in trying: She had been misunderstood; she wanted the prisoner release as one agenda item. That, of course, scarcely needed saying.
Years of Upheaval Page 141