Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  What we were about to explore, it will be recalled, was how far Israel would go, and for what price, in giving up not only the territory freshly gained in the October 1973 war — started by Syria — but also some symbolic piece of territory, even if it were only a sliver, of what Israel had taken in the 1967 war. The 1973 fighting had ended with minor Israeli advances on the southern end of the Syrian front, but in the north, Israel had carved out a big bulge running from west to east into Syria to a point only twenty miles from Damascus and backed up by Mount Hermon overlooking the Damascus plain. Disengagement would establish a new dividing line between Israel and Syria, running north and south, with a demilitarized buffer zone to be patrolled by a United Nations force, and zones of limited armaments on either side of the central line. During my previous shuttle, Israel had argued that any territory conquered in the last war from which it withdrew should be turned over to the United Nations; Syrian civilians should not be permitted to return there.

  Dayan’s new plan marked a considerable step forward. It conceded that Syrian forces could return to about a third of the salient, which would become a zone of limited armaments; it waived the objection to civilian repopulation of the UN area, thereby agreeing that civilians could return to two-thirds of the salient. The Israeli forward line, or line of separation, was, however, still drawn east of the prewar line (toward Damascus). This meant Israel proposed to end the war by acquiring about a third of the salient. The Israeli concessions were important, but every Arab leader, radical or moderate, had told me that Asad could not even settle on restoration of the October 6 line; he had to keep pace with Egypt, which had recovered a slice of the Sinai; some symbolic comparable Syrian gain of lands taken by Israel in 1967 was imperative.

  The trouble was that some twenty Israeli settlements had been established on the Golan Heights after the 1967 war — some as close as five kilometers to the line before the October war (see the map on page 938). The issue of the negotiation was whether in the name of disengagement we could draw some line in that narrow belt that yet did not touch Israel’s settlements so that Syria could show some gain comparable to Egypt’s. I told Dayan:

  From abstract logic, you are reasonable. The civilians returning is reasonable. But these lines are impossible. We can present it only on the basis that something else can be done. . . . I have told your Ambassador, some slice of the Golan Heights, including Quneitra, will have to be part of this arrangement. I know you’re not authorized to discuss it here. You don’t have to discuss it. But one reason I am going in so leisurely a pace is to let Israel reflect on it.

  I assumed from Dayan’s silence that we had not yet heard Israel’s last word — only that he did not want to be the minister to put it forward.

  My next task was to keep Asad aboard. My usual report to all interested parties — a procedure designed to minimize the danger of suspicions fed by rumors — would be pretty skimpy this time. I had already exchanged several cables with Asad. I had resisted an attempt by him on March 7 to commit me in advance to a Syrian disengagement line that implied abandoning some Israeli settlements. I had repeatedly stressed to all the Arab leaders that Israel would not give up a single settlement for disengagement and I had told Israeli leaders I would not press them to do so. On the other hand, I had made the most of an unofficial talk with Foreign Minister Abba Eban, who dropped in on me in Washington on March 15, and his subsequent public statements stressing Israel’s desire for a Golan disengagement. Now on March 30 I reported on Dayan’s visit to President Asad, listing with some straining its positive elements — including redefinition of the zones of limited armament and the return of civilians. I pointed out that I had told Dayan that “in the light of [my] knowledge of President Asad’s position,” the latest Israeli proposals were not likely to be sufficient. I took care as well to brief Sadat, Hussein, Fahmy, and Saqqaf.

  On April 3 I wrote to Prime Minister Meir that a new Israeli proposal was needed along the lines of my presentation to Dayan. On April 9 she responded that the plan Dayan brought remained the official position of her government — in the light of Israel’s constitutional procedures, she could not do otherwise than to back the cabinet’s position. But she hinted at some flexibility by agreeing to discuss during my visit “any ideas you may wish to offer.” The next day she announced her resignation to her party and the day after to the Parliament — so that during the negotiations that followed, she was a lame duck. Ironically, once relieved of her burden she was freed of the day-to-day political pressures, and the lioness rallied herself for one more heroic effort to bring about an agreement with the hated Syrians for which she had no heart but which she recognized was essential for the security of her country.

  The Syrian Emissary

  ON April 13 the Syrian negotiator arrived at last. It was the first time in twenty years that a senior Syrian emissary had been dispatched to Washington. He, like us, was uncertain of the significance of Golda’s resignation. We wondered whether it would abort the negotiations or at least delay them. We decided to proceed as if nothing had happened.

  President Asad had selected Brigadier General Hikmat al-Shihabi, Chief of Staff for Intelligence of the Syrian army. A good friend of Asad’s, he was well suited for his assignment; he seemed sincerely interested in improving relations with the United States. He reflected as well the dilemma of his country — fiercely proud and at the same time a little insecure, challenging and yet deep down eager for acceptance. Syria was not strong enough to insist on its views, but it was also too unsure of itself (hence the braggadocio) and too distrustful to rely on the help of others. It could not prevail by force but neither was it able to impose itself by moral assurance. And yet — like Israel — it was making a major effort to transcend its preconceptions and its premonitions. Asad had sent me a letter on April 1 establishing that Shihabi was not coming in a confrontational mood. Everybody would be waiting to see what I could deliver.

  Like Dayan, Shihabi brought concessions that were far-reaching in the Syrian context though I knew they would not go nearly far enough for Israel. In our meeting on the morning of April 13, he accepted the idea of reciprocal force limits on both sides of the dividing line — heretofore rejected as incompatible with Syrian sovereignty. He favored a UN buffer zone, though given the presence of thousands of Syrian civilians he wanted the inspectors to have a nonmilitary character. He urged a simplification of the zones of limited armament (which, from the Egyptian experience, I guessed was attainable). Shihabi would not consider the line of separation that Dayan had put forward; instead, he brought with him a slightly modified version of Asad’s original idea of an Israeli withdrawal deep into the Golan. I told Shihabi what I had said also to Dayan: “have always told your President that I do not think I can achieve the line he proposed. But I will achieve the maximum line that is possible.”

  Carried away by my eloquence I summed up where we stood:

  So the . . . components will be: a movement forward of Syrian forces, a withdrawal of Israeli forces, a thinning out of Israeli forces beyond the line of withdrawal, and return of Syrian civilians to the vacated territories. Those are the positive elements that have already been achieved. What has not yet been satisfactorily achieved is the line. . . . Therefore what remains to be done when I come to the Middle East is to move the line. And to agree on the disposition of forces. On both sides.

  It was like saying Switzerland would be a flat country if someone would move the Alps. Shihabi, who did not have to deliver the prescription, assented happily enough. When I airily told him that only two issues were left — the line and the limitation of forces — I was influenced too headily by the memory of the Sinai negotiations.

  It is relatively easy to learn from failure. But the nemesis of success is the refusal to believe that there is anything to learn. The temptation is overwhelming to seek to repeat earlier achievements. But while the rhythm of history may echo itself, concrete conditions can rarely be replicated. The wise statesman will av
oid acting by rote; he will analyze carefully the actual circumstances as well as the distinguishing and unique characteristics that had made for past success. The Sinai disengagement had worked rapidly because both sides were eager for an accord. Israel’s pocket across the Suez was over 100 miles from Israel, sustainable only by continued substantial mobilization. Israel needed to reduce the danger of the resumption of hostilities; Golda was eager to have the negotiation completed before her new Parliament engulfed her in the foreseeable struggle to form a cabinet. Sadat was anxious to free his Third Army and above all to make a sharp change in the direction of Egyptian policy. He did not wish to risk the unraveling of his patiently nursed design as a result of military actions that were nearly inevitable if the status quo continued. Israel without faith and with much hope, Egypt with much faith but less hope, were both feeling their way toward a state of peace. And Sadat was available to help sort out the trivial from the crucial by one of his dramatic moves.

  Neither the compulsions nor the convictions existed on the Syrian front. Both Syria and Israel — certainly Israel — considered the military situation quite tolerable. Neither believed that it was starting a new, much less an irreversible, process. For all the plight of the Third Army Egypt did have five divisions across the Suez Canal, along the line that marked the new boundary after disengagement. There were no Syrian troops anywhere near the line deep in the Golan claimed by Asad or even near any more modest line beyond the prewar frontier. Asad was claiming in the negotiation what he had not achieved on the battlefield. To the Israelis, a Golan disengagement looked suspiciously like a unilateral withdrawal to enable Asad to proclaim that Syria had not fought in vain — not a compelling goal for the victim of surprise attack.

  The Egyptian disengagement left Israel still holding most of the Sinai as a bargaining chip for the later peace conference. But in Syria, if Israel accepted the judgment that it would have to make a token withdrawal westward beyond the 1967 line — if only for the sake of Syrian equivalence with Egypt — its cupboard would be bare for Geneva (since Golda quite literally could not imagine giving up Israeli settlements on the Golan).

  But Syria, too, had to alter deeply held convictions. For it, the willingness to break with a generation of nonrecognition and to negotiate with the hated adversary was a traumatic event. To draw a line on the Golan for even an interim disengagement agreement almost unthinkably granted Israel some right to be there. To define this line, even tacitly, by the existence of Israeli settlements was an agonizing concession deeply wrenching for any Syrian leader. Even the limitation of forces was a psychological problem. Given the distances involved, any zone of limited armaments would come perilously close to including Damascus. And it would involve a retreat of the Syrian forces from some of their prewar positions.

  For both Israel and Syria, in short, the negotiation was an anguishing experience. Doubt, frustration, and at times impotent fury assailed both sides. Once during the shuttle when I pointed out the strategic stakes, Golda responded emotionally that she was not prepared to pay for even very important American objectives in Israeli coin:

  As I said over and over and over again, we have no oil, we have no nuisance value. We can’t say to the United States, “You won’t do this for us, so we will invite Gromyko to come.” He won’t come, and we have no oil to stop pumping. We have nothing, except one thing: a determination to live and not to have our people killed. . . . But the only one thing that I can’t agree to — maybe it is not nice — is that Israel has to pay the price for all these things.

  What Golda considered “her” price Asad regarded as “his” territory. He was too fierce to engage in Golda’s biblical soliloquies, but late in the shuttle he ventilated the parallel view that disengagement might not be in the interests of the Arabs: “The disengagement concept itself, as seen from the Arab point of view, has been like deflating various balloons, taking away the certainty of the preparedness, the readiness, the unison of the Arabs.” Unfortunately, psychological travail did not ensure acceptable proposals. On the contrary, both sides needed so much psychic energy to generate any proposal at all that they were tempted to consider its mere existence as transcending any substance.

  This made it tough on the mediator, who functioned at once as alibi and deus ex machina. Syria entered the negotiations to begin the process of pushing Israel off the Golan Heights; those Israelis who favored disengagement on the Golan — a bare majority — saw in the negotiations a means to cement Israel’s hold there. This gap was unbridgeable in preliminary talks. Whatever compromise was possible would have to be made at the highest level.

  And yet everybody needed the appearance that progress was being made: the moderate Arabs, to justify the lifting of the oil embargo; Syria, to keep open the possibility of regaining at least the territory lost in the October war; Israel, to liberate its prisoners; the United States, to preserve its dominant role in the peace process and its growing influence in the Arab world. Disparate, sometimes incompatible motives produced a de facto collusion in a complicated make-believe without which, however, the real negotiation could never have taken place.

  Even before the shuttle started there were many twists and turns. On April 27, on the eve of my departure, came another ominous sign. Asad suddenly claimed there had been a misunderstanding. Having let Shihabi agree to a UN buffer zone, Asad now informed me it was unnecessary to have zones of limited armaments as well — to which Shihabi had also agreed. But it was inconceivable that Israel would tolerate having the main force of the Syrian army follow it into territories evacuated as a result of the agreement. I was thus faced with two conditions certain to blow up the negotiations: If Israel maintained its view about the location of the line of separation, the negotiation would collapse in Damascus. If Asad insisted on his second thoughts about zones of limited armaments, the shuttle would come to a halt in Jerusalem.

  That was not the way it turned out, however. For as each leader voiced doubts, each also was careful to leave some room for hopes. Asad and Golda, for all their distrust of each other, were engaged in an extraordinary battle with their preconceptions and those of their colleagues. In the main meetings, Golda was always surrounded by key members of her cabinet. Asad would first listen to me alone and then make me repeat the same arguments to his principal advisers — probably to avoid the charge that he had been taken in. Gradually, they closed a gap that yawned as a chasm when they started. When it was all over, with anguish, doubt, and many small compromises the two leaders, so distrustful of each, wrote another chapter in the Middle East’s history of faith.

  Lebanese Interlude

  THE built-in hesitations and complexes of the parties were sufficient problems in themselves. But circumstances continually threatened the fragile imagery of progress. On April 11 Palestinian guerrillas infiltrated from Lebanon attacked the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, killing eighteen inhabitants, all civilians. Israel retaliated with air attacks against villages in southern Lebanon that it suspected of harboring terrorists. Events after that were a classic case history of modern United Nations practice. That radical guerrillas attack a sovereign state from sanctuaries in a neighboring country seems to be regarded as normal by a growing number of members of the world organization; the implication is that the nation being attacked is somehow outside international law. Acts of retaliation by the victim are condemned. The double standard requires unusual reserves of hypocrisy when the victim is, like Israel, a member of the United Nations. But the world organization has always risen undaunted to the occasion and voted its prejudices.

  By now, UN practice for the cycle of terrorism and retaliation was well established: The Lebanese government felt compelled (in part by radical pressures) to call for a Security Council meeting wherein everyone demanded a resolution condemning only Israel’s response, not the original attack. We would then veto it. In this instance, the scenario was routine, but the surrounding circumstances were not, for I was about to launch the Syrian shuttle.
I had every reason not to antagonize Israel, which would have to make the larger concession in the negotiations. At the same time, I needed — or thought I needed — the support of other Arab states to induce Syria to abandon its own extreme demands. The moderate Arabs argued that an American veto would seriously impair their ability to urge restraint. And the Lebanese Foreign Minister, a decent and harassed representative of a government caught in the meat grinder between uninvited guerrillas and determined neighbors, prophetically implored us to find a way to affirm Lebanon’s territorial integrity lest his country’s independence be taken too lightly.

  As a general proposition, it is best in such a situation to cut through the rhetoric to the heart of the matter. Oddly enough, to do the right thing is the wisest in practical terms. Once one begins to maneuver among conflicting pressures, one in fact encourages extremes as each side digs in to pull the “middle ground” as close to its own preference as possible. And the right course here was to condemn either both sides or neither. Once one obscures the simple verities with manipulation, the fundamental is lost in the expedient. This is especially true in the never-never land of UN voting procedures. There, soothing inanities tempt one to lose track of the reality that progress must have other criteria than amending the outrageous to the preposterous.

  That wisdom most certainly eluded us on this occasion. A “nonaligned” draft resolution circulated; it contained seven operative paragraphs, five of which strongly condemned Israel’s attacks on Lebanon; none mentioned the terrorist attack on Kiryat Shmona. The United States circulated a counterdraft “deploring” both the attack on Kiryat Shmona and Israel’s retaliation. It found not a single supporter. A European “compromise” condemned all “acts of violence” but singled out the Israeli retaliatory attack on Lebanon for specific mention. It seemed at the time a safe middle ground between the various pressures on us, all the more so as it enabled us to make a unilateral public statement insisting that the attack on Kiryat Shmona was one of the “acts of violence” being condemned.