Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  The nature of the situation is, can the United States effectively back up an Israeli position over an extended period of time? I don’t believe we can back up a negotiation that breaks down on issues that the American public doesn’t understand, leading to an oil embargo, leading to a constant series of crises and maybe to war. We will be under great pressure from the Jewish community to do so. But I call your attention to the difference between crisis management and speeches. One can make great speeches and still manage crises in such a way that step by step you lose everything. And speech-makers can continue their rhetoric and even be tough and still be ineffective. (May 5)

  [I]t cannot be beyond the wit of man, when we are committed to your defense and you are determined to survive, for us to make an assessment of the essential factors — the role of the Soviet Union; the role of the Arabs; the role of the Europeans; the problem of the arms race in the area and what is to be expected, how the U.S. can use its political, economic and military strength in such a way that it isn’t just muscle-bound; how crises are to be managed. To improvise these things, to wait for something to blow up, is totally irresponsible. (May 14)

  On May 2, my first day in Israel, I met Golda and her colleagues in varying combinations with only brief interruptions from 12:15 P.M. until 1:30 A.M. Formally, the Israelis maintained the position of the Dayan plan. But I could sense that they were reviewing it. It was not that I convinced the Israeli negotiating team of an unfamiliar point of view. Rather, I provided a pretext to modify a proposal imposed by internal politics; many on the Israeli negotiating team knew their plan would not work even if they were not yet ready to embrace my ideas. Late at night, Dayan came up with a “personal” concept: Maybe the Israeli line of separation could be pulled west a bit (by broadening the UN buffer zone) so that the eastern part of Quneitra could be given to Syria; Israel would keep the western part. Syria would never accept a divided Quneitra, and it made no sense even from Israel’s point of view, except for domestic politics. But that was not the point. Dayan’s “personal” idea showed that Israel had crossed the psychological Rubicon; it was at least considering pulling back from the prewar line.

  Clearly, Israel’s journey toward the negotiable would be painful and prolonged. And exasperating as Israeli negotiating tactics could be, it was not in our interest to seek subservience. For, as I have said, once it was proved that we could make Israel do anything, Arab demands would escalate. Then we would be blamed for Israel’s failure to meet Arab terms, which would be raised with the ease of their accomplishment. Our strategy depended on being the only country capable of eliciting Israeli concessions, but also on our doing it within a context where this was perceived to be a difficult task. There is no doubt that the Israelis dedicated themselves to the second part of that proposition with more intensity than to the first.

  So I decided to return to the tactics of the previous journey. I would go to Damascus without a firm proposal, exploring subsidiary issues to give Israel more time for reassessment. I would have a merry initial reception in the Syrian capital, but I was convinced that if we embarked on the road of imposing terms, we would transform an Arab-Israeli conflict into an Arab-American one. From Damascus I would go to Alexandria to mobilize whatever Arab support was possible behind my strategy and then return to Israel. I was now into the sixth day of the shuttle. At a comparable period in the Egyptian case we had made our breakthrough and were cleaning up technical points. Here at the beginning of my long-awaited Syrian shuttle, I had not even presented an opening position in Damascus.

  It was a strange situation. So far, the negotiations had been between me and Israel. For weeks a series of Israeli propositions had been made — all unacceptable, as not only Asad but all other Arabs had told me. I had conveyed them to Syria, sometimes through other Arabs, not as plans but as “illustrations” of Israeli thinking, as examples of the difficulty of the problem, as models; as anything, in short, other than a formal proposal. Asad had thus not been given an opportunity to reject any specific scheme; his prestige was not yet involved. I thought it best to reserve that for when the two positions were closer to each other. By the same token, in Israel I never put forward the original Syrian line as anything but an illustration of Asad’s thinking. Strictly speaking, I was less a mediator on this trip than a consultant on what the traffic would bear, a philosopher of the structure of international order, a political and psychological adviser about a neighbor who was as mysterious as a visitor from outer space.

  Asad had turned over the list of Israeli prisoners to me more than two months earlier because of my promise that I would bring an Israeli proposal in return. Now, at the beginning of the shuttle, I was still seeking to avoid the decisive issue of the location of the line of separation; I wanted first to explore subsidiary issues in the hope that Syrian flexibility on them would make it easier for Israel to pull back the line.

  The gap between the two sides was brought home on the car ride into Damascus from the airport when at last on Friday, May 3, I went to Syria to begin negotiating. If Golda considered the relinquishing of any territory a threat to Israel’s security and a reward for an aggressor, Syrian Foreign Minister Khaddam, who escorted me into Damascus, felt with equal fervor that for Syria to regain what it considered its own territory was not a boon but a right or else a duty:

  KHADDAM: Wouldn’t it be also true that the Israeli people, so beleaguered for 25 years and living under the pall of uncertainty, would want peace?

  KISSINGER: In the long run. But they were beleaguered so long that it is very hard for them to accept the idea of peace. And especially they have a complex about Syria. They have the impression you are very tough. I tell them the opposite — that you are very gentle, easy to deal with, conciliatory. [Laughter.]

  KHADDAM: Do they seriously believe we could be lenient when they are on our own territory?

  Damascus had no lavish facility for entertaining foreign guests. Khaddam had therefore arranged a lunch for me in the Orient Club — a restaurant and social club frequented by prominent Syrians — to meet other Syrian ministers; it was a gesture not without meaning. The proud Syrians would not have risked their domestic position by associating themselves with what they thought was a doomed enterprise or one whose outcome would prove unpopular.

  The lunch went off amiably enough. But the atmosphere in Asad’s conference room soon afterward turned less friendly — though neither then nor later did Asad abandon his personal courtesy. Luckily, Gromyko gave us an opening subject. He had announced himself in Damascus for two days hence (May 5), to the discomfort of his Syrian hosts, who knew it would interrupt the shuttle. Simultaneously, Dobrynin had approached Scowcroft to arrange a meeting with me in Damascus. I rejected Damascus once again and proposed Cyprus. I picked May 7 to give the Israeli cabinet more time to deliberate; indeed, it gave me another pretext for slowing things down because I was not eager to have Gromyko dissect the opening positions. I now informed Asad that I would not return to Damascus until May 8 or after Gromyko had left the area — giving the Syrians an incentive to cut the visit short. Thus real negotiating would only start on the eleventh day of the shuttle — assuming we had by then brought the two sides close enough so that we could present their positions as formal proposals.

  Historians studying the record will no doubt conclude that despite this long hiatus Asad and I did everything possible that afternoon to avoid getting to the point. Asad had a genius for creating the impression that he could go on talking about irrelevancies forever. We bantered about Gromyko. Asad told me of a visit of a group of business leaders sponsored by Time. I gave him my usual tutorial in response to his acute questions, this time about Israeli domestic politics. But all this was atmospherics; it conveyed goodwill; it implied the probability of progress. That attitude was severely strained when I lifted the veil on the Dayan plan — not as a proposal but as a project the Israeli cabinet was in the process of reconsidering. (I did it in part, as I told Sadat later, because the Daya
n plan was so far off the mark that it would make any later Israeli modification look good.)

  My gloss did little to assuage Asad’s feelings. The plan was “insulting”; it made him “nervous and irritable”; it proved that Israel preferred conquest to peace. Showing that in a contest of intransigence the Syrians were no amateurs, Asad reaffirmed the plan Shihabi had brought to Washington, requiring Israel to withdraw from over half of the prewar Golan area: “If my line is unacceptable, we won’t reach an agreement. . . . There is no room for bargaining on our line. . . . I am not going to accept one meter less than the line we have set down.” That was no more probable than that Israel would insist on the so-called Dayan plan. Both sides had gone too far not to make a serious effort to bridge their differences.

  I discreetly decided to turn to secondary issues. We did better here. Asad agreed to reduce artillery fire against the Israeli pocket and to stop probing raids altogether while I was in the area. He accepted the principle of a demilitarized buffer zone under UN supervision, modeled on the Egyptian agreement. He agreed to a prisoner exchange. With respect to zones of limited armament, Asad did not commit himself. Demilitarization was a more difficult problem on the Golan than in the Sinai because it was envisaged that Syrian civilians could return to the entire area evacuated by Israel including the UN zone; Syria did not relish leaving them undefended. I raised the issue again with Khaddam on the way to the airport early Saturday, May 4. That afternoon Asad sent a message to me in Alexandria conveying Syria’s “non-approval” of the idea of arms limitations. The term “non-approval” was clearly something less than rejection but neither was it approval.

  One of Asad’s aides told Tom Scotes that I had brought “nothing” from Israel; he was not far wrong. The Syrian leaders, he added, were “disappointed, surprised and discouraged.” It had taken a six-hour meeting to get this far. Clearly, it would be a long negotiation.

  I decided to mobilize Arab support for a compromise plan whose chief attribute at this point was that none of the parties had seen or approved it. Back in Alexandria on May 4,1 reviewed with Sadat what Egypt could support. Sadat defined the issue acutely: Could Asad recover a few kilometers beyond the October 6 line to save face? I had Hal Saunders explain the topography — the hills three kilometers west, the two hills just to the north and south, all of which the Israelis prized as valuable defensive positions. Sadat replied:

  A very difficult problem, but it should be approached from a political aspect and not only from the military aspect. It is to their benefit, and ours too, that this fire should be ceased. Both sides are suffering casualties. And at the same time we have the Soviet Union which is maneuvering for extreme positions. For Israel’s internal problems, they need quiet, a breathing space, to sort out their house. I, myself, want breathing space to prepare everything for the next step. Can’t they understand this? Asad is raising hell for me in the Arab world. They should have an understanding of this. It is in their benefit, 100%. We are not trying to get their settlements, but we are saying that psychologically they [the Syrians] must have something beyond October 6. What it is, we can discuss. It must include Quneitra. I can sell it to the whole Arab world, and save face for Hafez Asad.

  And again Sadat added:

  Let’s give the Syrians the whole pocket first and any distance we can have with the Israelis, including Quneitra, beyond the October 6 line. It is purely psychological. Anything like that I can support 100%, even in the Arab world.

  The trouble was, of course, that Israel had agreed to none of it — not even, yet, to withdraw completely from the “pocket.” We were assembling Arab pressures on Syria on behalf of an as-yet nonexistent Israeli proposal that Asad was likely to reject. Nevertheless, Sadat proposed that his confidential aide Ashraf Marwan accompany Saunders immediately to Saudi Arabia and Algeria to enlist their support.

  Marwan and Saunders were received by King Faisal within an hour after their arrival late on May 4. This was unusual given their protocol level; even more so was the King’s readiness to listen to a joint US–Egyptian position. I had instructed Saunders to brief Faisal but to ask for nothing specific; the King would know himself what to do — if indeed he felt disposed to act. Faisal was his ambiguous, uninformative, and oddly supportive self. He did not object to the compromise scheme; nor did he clearly endorse it. We could count on his assistance for Egypt and Syria, whenever it was needed, he said in his Delphic fashion.

  The next day Saqqaf followed the usual procedure of spelling out the meaning of the King’s allusions. What gave particular force to Saqqaf’s remarks was that he was accompanied by Rashad Pharaon, who was perhaps Faisal’s closest adviser — and a Syrian. He might not be in touch with Damascus, though I suspected he was. But he would surely be sensitive to what the traffic would bear there. If the Israelis would leave Quneitra and if Quneitra came under Syrian administration, Pharaon said it would be a good agreement that Saudi Arabia and, he thought, Algeria would support. By now I had learned enough of Saudi methods to grasp that a Saudi royal adviser “thought” only what he knew.

  Saunders and Marwan went on to Algeria. Boumedienne was cautious. Israel’s quibbling over a kilometer or two raised serious questions about its ultimate intentions, he said. However, he could state as a general principle that Asad had to achieve something comparable to what Sadat had obtained — in other words, some slice of territory beyond the prewar lines. He wished me luck; he would do nothing to complicate my task. He told Marwan privately that his reaction was positive. Marwan went on alone to Kuwait, whose reaction too was positive.

  We had assembled as much Arab support as possible. It was, in fact, remarkable that so many Arab leaders would commit themselves to a plan not yet approved by Syria. This Arab hegira also served the purpose of getting my ideas to Asad. I could be sure that every Arab leader consulted was reporting — not giving himself the worst of it — to Damascus.

  But we still lacked an Israeli proposal. From Egypt I returned to an Israel torn by demonstrations. In long sessions (on Saturday, May 4, from 8:15 P.M. to 1:15 A.M. and on Sunday from 10:15 A.M. to 1:30 P.M.), I reviewed where we stood. I reported the various Arab reactions, emphasizing that the first Israeli proposal would never be accepted. Even should Asad want to do so, he could not ignore the opinion of every other Arab leader. Dayan’s “personal” proposal that Quneitra be divided between Israel and Syria would be even more dangerous. It would inflame injury with insult:

  The problem we have is, I repeat, as follows: One, to get an agreement. Two, if we cannot get an agreement to have it break down on any issue other than the line — zones of limitation, status of UNEF, anything of a technical nature that does not lead to an issue of absolute principle. Three, if it breaks down on the issue of a line, to have it break down in such a way that it does not elicit the united opposition of all of the Arab states, the Soviet Union and Western Europe.

  Golda was adamant; she would not recommend withdrawal from Quneitra; the Syrians had no right to gain territory after losing a war. “So what we are [really] bringing to the cabinet is not giving up Quneitra to the Syrians.” The cabinet would go no further than to make Dayan’s proposal official: the eastern third of Quneitra to Syria, the western two-thirds to Israel. We were down to haggling. Having agreed to divide that city, however, the Israelis had breached the prewar line; it made no sense to risk the whole step-by-step process over a few streets in Quneitra. There was a good chance that Golda was putting me through these paces to prove to her cabinet (perhaps to herself) that the proposal would not fly. So I formally requested a reconsideration. To give the cabinet a chance to reflect, I left for Amman. After over a week of the shuttle I had been in Damascus exactly once.

  Hussein did me the greatest kindness imaginable during my overnight visit on May 5: He brought no pressure. Like his Arab brothers, he agreed with our general strategy; unlike them, he knew that he carried little weight in Damascus. Hussein thought that in the end Asad would almost surely accept what I
was seeking, in effect a minor rectification of the prewar line plus Quneitra. If the agreement succeeded, it would make it possible for Asad to change Syria’s radical course. As for Jordanian disengagement, I promised to turn to West Bank problems after Syrian disengagement and after the impeachment issue was settled, which I hoped would be during the summer.

  When I returned to Jerusalem on Monday evening, May 6, I found that the cabinet had made new modifications. The grudging Israeli procedures, the interminable working sessions, the innuendos about duress, the Talmudic precision, the obvious anguish of our interlocutors, created an atmosphere compounded of petty irritation and a strange kind of exaltation at witnessing a people baring its soul so nakedly. It obscured the fact that crabwise, in a manner least calculated to get it credit, the Israeli cabinet was extending itself to overcome its nightmares and grasp its future. In the new plan, Israel’s retreat from east Quneitra now became the official government position. More important, the Israeli defense line would be moved behind the October 6 line to the west of Quneitra. But Israeli domestic politics prohibit any sweeping and generous gesture. Married to this scheme was a complicated proposal according to which Quneitra would still be divided: Syria could administer the eastern part of Quneitra, a mixed UN-Israeli group the central part, while Israeli settlers would be permitted in the western outskirts. (The reason for this plan — Israeli domestic politics apart — must have been to prevent Syria from resettling the town so close to Israeli farmlands.) It was a preposterous concept, especially for so small a town. What had tormented a cosmopolitan city like Berlin — a wall in its center — was bound to be even less tolerable in a small provincial city. On the other hand, the new Israeli position seemed to me a stage by which Israel’s leaders slowly convinced themselves that time could be an ally and was worth a few kilometers on the Golan. That the Israeli cabinet had understood the problem was shown by some helpful changes it was considering in the prewar line in the south.