Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  A meeting between Gromyko and me in Geneva was much less than what the Soviets wanted; it turned out to be more than Egypt favored. On April 18 — the day Sadat publicly declared the end of an era of Egypt’s exclusive reliance on Soviet military aid — Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy called on Nixon. He was in the United States in connection with a UN Security Council session on Lebanon. Fahmy underlined what he had already conveyed to us from Cairo, that any visible Soviet role in the Middle East would undermine American influence and Sadat’s freedom of maneuver; Egypt sought American political support, he said, and a “red light” to the Soviets. Some helpful European allies had allegedly told him that we had committed ourselves to joint action with the Soviet Union in the Middle East. There was no problem in reassuring Fahmy about our strategy, though we did not have the same interest in humiliating Moscow and flaunting its impotence as Egypt had in seeking to justify its switch from reliance on the Soviet Union to close cooperation with the United States.

  The Arab World

  THE exclusion of the Soviets gave the United States a relatively free hand, for there was already a consensus among Arab leaders on the priority of a prompt Syrian negotiation. Radical Asad and Boumedienne agreed on this, as did moderate Faisal and Hussein. So even did Yasir Arafat of the PLO.

  The PLO was heard from again in early 1974. We had as little desire to involve Arafat as we had to share the table with Gromyko, for we viewed the PLO as a potentially disruptive force.

  It is important to recall how the PLO appeared at that time. Not yet recognized even by most Arab states as the sole spokesman for the Palestinians, it presented itself to us largely as a terrorist group. The PLO program still called for the destruction of Israel under the slogan of creating a secular state in Palestine. Its determination to destroy the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan had been personally expressed to us in our sole high-level contact with the PLO.

  I have described in Chapter XIII the meeting between a senior PLO leader and General Vernon Walters, then Deputy Director of the CIA, in November 1973. This had been to encourage PLO quiescence in the delicate postwar phase when we were assembling the Geneva Conference and preparing for Egyptian-Israeli disengagement. We were at a comparably critical juncture now.

  Since we had briefed the Arabs (and the Israelis), it was not surprising that there was some follow-up, though as long as the PLO did not disavow its terrorist aims or recognize Israel, our position on its unacceptability as a negotiating partner remained unchanged. A few days after the end of the January 1974 shuttle, Sadat briefed Ambassador Hermann Eilts on Arab attitudes in the wake of disengagement. Sadat mentioned that he had talked with Arafat and King Hassan of Morocco; a meeting for me with the head of the PLO could be arranged at any time I wished. I evaded the proposal.

  On February 10 Fahmy proposed that Eilts establish contact with PLO representatives in Cairo. We were anything but eager to link Egyptian policies to those of the PLO or to involve Egyptian prestige in messy West Bank negotiations. So when on February 12 we were approached through Morocco for another meeting with Walters, it seemed to solve several problems at once. It defused the Cairo pressures; it would ease the decision of various OPEC fence-sitters with respect to the oil embargo; most important, it could calm the atmosphere for the planned Syrian shuttle. Therefore, on February 16 we agreed to another meeting between Walters and a PLO representative in Morocco.

  The meeting was actually held on March 7. Once again Walters had only a listening brief. He played for time, as was our plan, by telling the PLO leader that we were not ready for further contacts until after a Syrian disengagement. The PLO representative had nothing to add to his previous presentation, either. He tried to pressure us by stressing that the PLO had the option of dealing with the Soviet Union, not to mention the huge oil revenues now available to it. He took credit for aborting an attack on my airplane when I had planned to visit Beirut in December (see Chapter XVII). Walters in turn pointed out that I had not been overjoyed by the threat on my life in Damascus in February (see Chapter XXI). Walters warned, as in the previous meeting, against acts of terrorism directed at the United States. Neither Walters nor the PLO representative touched on the issues of a peace settlement.

  On April 20 an associate of Arafat’s approached an American Embassy officer in Beirut asking for clarification of the American attitude toward future PLO participation in Geneva. On May 1, after the start of the Syrian shuttle, we returned a bland reply. Aside from some low-level technical contacts during the 1976 Lebanon crisis, we engaged in no further exchange with the PLO during my tenure in office.

  But one trend was clear. The longer the delay of negotiations to relieve Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the more inexorable the growth of the political status and weight of the PLO. Stalemate on the West Bank spelled humiliation for King Hussein; it undercut his claim that his moderate course would return Palestinian lands to Arab control.

  Hussein was understandably in a somber mood when he visited Washington on March 12. After our talk in Aqaba in January, the King had followed my advice and put his modest scheme for disengagement along the Jordan River directly to the Israelis. The timing reflected Hussein’s growing impatience, for it was clearly premature to raise the West Bank issue formally while a new cabinet was being formed in Israel. Not surprisingly, Hussein’s proposal was flatly rejected. The Israelis countered with their old scheme of inviting Jordan to take over civil administration in the West Bank while Israeli military occupation continued.I This Jordan could not accept; it was, in fact, an amazing reflection of how little the Israelis understood Arab psychology that the proposal was continually put forward; not even the most moderate Arab head of government could accept administering the West Bank under Israeli occupation.

  Hussein was depressed; he recognized that it was impossible to ask the Israeli cabinet to deal simultaneously with the Golan Heights and the West Bank. And he agreed that the explosive military dispositions on the Golan and the insistence of all Arab states made it imperative to give Syria pride of place. But Hussein was beginning to wonder whether the same constellation of forces might not thwart him later on as well; he was seriously considering withdrawing from the negotiations altogether. This, however, would make the PLO Israel’s only valid negotiating partner and Hussein continued to be convinced that its hostility toward him and his dynasty was implacable.

  I shared Hussein’s frustration. During his call on Nixon on March 12, I said: “Israel hasn’t faced what their real alternatives are. They have to deal either with King Hussein or with Arafat. They can’t deal with neither.” But I also knew that there was no choice about priorities. We had to wait for the Syrian negotiation to be completed before turning to the West Bank. We did not want the full fury of Arab radicalism turned on Jordan, or Asad in frustration blaming Sadat for the impasse on his front. Given the tenuousness of the Israeli domestic situation as well as our own, I was not sure whether we were pursuing an intellectual theory or an operational plan. I felt like the character in the nightmare who finds himself tied to a railway track and struggles for release as the express train thunders toward him. With respect to the West Bank we did not quite make it.

  Prelude to the Shuttle

  AT this stage, we had no cause to be sanguine, either, about the Syrian negotiation. Bringing off agreement between two nations so bitterly suspicious of each other had never been a warming prospect. Daily artillery duels on the Golan Heights continued. But other clouds hovered.

  The predominant one was Israel’s prolonged cabinet crisis. The negotiations for a new government proved bitter and inconclusive. There were extreme demands by all sides, including by the National Religious Party — Labour’s indispensable coalition partner — over the price for joining a new Meir government. But much of the turmoil raged around the figure of Moshe Dayan. As Defense Minister he continued to be assigned a major part of the blame for the success of the Arab surprise attack in October. On February 25, as noted in Chapter XXI, he
dramatically announced his unavailability for the new cabinet. His colleague and disciple Shimon Peres followed suit. But this deprived Golda of the eight seats of their faction and strengthened the Religious Party’s determination to stay out of the government. By March 4, after Golda herself threatened dramatically to resign, Dayan had been induced to change his mind. Artillery duels with Syria on the Golan Heights had intensified — which enabled Golda to give him the pretext of a threat of war for doing so. On March 10 Golda was able to announce the formation of a new government with Dayan and Peres back in their old positions.

  But the storm surrounding Mrs. Meir’s new government did not abate. On April 2, the Agranat Commission, set up in November to investigate responsibility for the October intelligence failures, issued its first report. Casualties of that report — which focused on individual “direct responsibility” for the failure to anticipate the Arab attack — included Chief of Staff General David Elazar, who had to resign immediately. It is a rule of politics, which I have never seen broken, that when a political crisis passes a certain point, the offering of sacrifices whets appetites rather than slakes them. With Elazar as victim, his superior Dayan became an even more logical target; it was hard to maintain the position that the Defense Minister was not responsible for the performance of the Chief of Staff.

  After that, it was only a question of time until the tide inundated Golda. Recognizing this, on April 10 Golda told her party leadership that she had had enough. On April 11 she announced her resignation formally to the Parliament. She immediately became head of a caretaker government while a successor was chosen. The nominee was my old friend Yitzhak Rabin, former war hero, Chief of Staff, and Ambassador in Washington. It was then Rabin’s turn to negotiate with Israel’s fractious factions to put together a coalition. Thus the Syrian-Israeli negotiation overlapped the Israeli coalition negotiations — complicating our already difficult prospects.

  At the end of March 1974, what roused Israeli passions in foreign policy was not the prospect of a new disengagement with Syria but implementation of the existing one with Egypt. The disengagement of forces in the Sinai was completed on March 5. Inspection of the new force deployments by the UN and by American reconnaissance flights began shortly afterward. By March 10 it was discovered that three sites capable of receiving surface-to-air missiles had been built by Egypt in the thirty-kilometer zone where the missiles were prohibited. The UN inspectors considered it an open question whether sites without launchers or missiles were technically a violation; they certainly were against the spirit of the agreement, for they would enable Egypt to deploy a forward air defense literally overnight. It was also discovered that Egypt had double the number of 122-mm howitzers we had thought were permitted in the zone of limited armaments (seventy-two as against thirty-six). There were also six more tanks than allowed.

  The violations confronted us with a problem. I was certain what Israel’s reaction would be. Having ceded territory in return for security arrangements, Israel had to be adamant in insisting on the letter of the agreement; if it stood still for a gradual erosion of the security provisions, the negotiating process would turn into unilateral unconditional retreat. But I was convinced that Sadat would not knowingly jeopardize his strategy for such trivial benefits. It was not unlikely that the violations reflected either a misunderstanding of the terms of the agreement or lower-level actions of which Sadat was ignorant. And for our part, we needed Sadat’s support for the Syrian negotiation.

  It seemed to me, therefore, unnecessary and unwise to turn the issue immediately into a public confrontation with Sadat. A formal charge of violation might involve Egyptian prestige in a test of wills or humiliate Sadat by forcing him to back down publicly. So I sent an intelligence expert to brief both Sadat and the Israelis on what our reconnaissance had found. Sadat was to be seen first. I instructed the briefer to tell him that the next overflight would take place a week hence. Sadat was thus given an opportunity to bring Egypt into conformity with the agreement in the meantime without admitting a violation. To make the arrangements to dispatch the expert took several days after we had the reconnaissance pictures. The Israeli cabinet would be briefed two days after Sadat by the same intelligence expert.

  The briefing of Sadat went well enough. Sadat immediately ordered the removal of all tanks from across the Canal, fulfilling the promise he had made to me during the disengagement talks. Sadat explained the excess artillery on technical grounds: The agreement permitted six batteries of howitzers in the zones of limited armament. The Israelis (and we) had assumed that an Egyptian battery contained six guns, whereas it had twelve. Nevertheless, in the presence of Ambassador Eilts he ordered the Egyptian War Minister to comply with our understanding of the agreement.

  But it was expecting too much to assume that a caretaker Israeli government would handle the matter quietly. Word began leaking to the press that Israel was charging Egypt with “violations,” particularly excess artillery — just what we had been trying to avoid. I complained to Dinitz on March 21: “Please keep the debate down with Egypt. Egypt cannot act for you in Syria if you keep attacking Egypt.” On March 22, afraid that the Egyptian military would drag their feet in carrying out Sadat’s orders, I warned Fahmy that in January it had taken me enormous effort to persuade the Israeli government to accept the existing limits. I therefore had “a personal responsibility for the number of guns to be limited to a total of 36. I hope this misunderstanding can be worked out without further difficulties.”

  Fahmy grudgingly agreed to speed up the withdrawal but pointed out that removing the extra artillery pieces required a modification in Egyptian military organization and could therefore not be accomplished in time for the next reconnaissance mission on March 25. To save Egyptian face, I arranged a delay for another few days. This launched me in short order into a fracas with Golda. Tormented by her domestic critics for negligence before the October war, even then accused (amazingly) of being too soft, she sent me an ultimatum on March 23, just before I was leaving for Moscow: If the excess artillery pieces were not removed by March 27, Dayan would cancel his March 29 visit to Washington that was to begin the Syrian negotiation.

  If there was anything I needed less than a public showdown with Sadat, it was the collapse of the Syrian negotiation a little more than a week after the oil embargo had been lifted. Asad had gone along with what he knew was a charade to give Israel an opportunity to get through its domestic crisis. But a cancellation of the Dayan trip — the one tangible “achievement” of my previous shuttle — would force him back into confrontation and reliance on Soviet support, especially since Asad was due to visit Moscow shortly. Linking Syrian disengagement to Egyptian controversies, moreover, would generalize the Mideast crisis after we had spent months trying to split it into its components. And all this for the timing of the removal of thirty-six howitzers that Sadat had already agreed to withdraw.

  I therefore made a blistering complaint to Dinitz: “It cannot be in your interest to have a public confrontation with Sadat. . . . You cannot want to emphasize violations while I am in Moscow, for God’s sake.” I threatened that if Dayan did not appear on the agreed date I would withdraw from the negotiations — though in retrospect it is not clear to me why an American abdication would have improved our position or why I thought Israel would be heartbroken at the prospect. A tantrum would normally not have moved Golda unless it coincided with her preferences. Having shown her toughness to her opposition, she withdrew her ultimatum. On April 3 we were informed by Cairo that the offending guns had been removed; photo reconnaissance on April 6 confirmed it. During the delicate phase ahead of us, the Egyptian front settled down with no further dispute.

  Dayan Visits Again

  AT last on March 29, the day after my return from Moscow — and on the eve of my wedding — the real Syrian negotiation began with Dayan’s long-awaited trip to Washington. Under the best of circumstances no single diplomatic visit could have carried the weight assigned to this on
e. For two months we had used it as a pretext for repeated postponements of concrete proposals. Nor did Dayan come close to moving matters forward. He was showing the strain of the abusive, humiliating, and grossly unfair attacks on him at home. And he was unable to rise above his tormentors, for he was acutely sensitive. Self-centered, poetic, aloof, a brilliant manipulator of people and yet emotionally dependent on them, Dayan at his best had the most fertile and creative mind of Israel’s leaders. When he felt rejected he would withdraw and turn bitter. In the present circumstances, even had Dayan been less vulnerable politically or emotionally, he would have had a hard time initiating a breakthrough on the Golan Heights. For the Israeli cabinet, fighting for its life, was being asked to pull out of land captured at tremendous human cost from a hated enemy, and it saw few corresponding benefits.