President Carter
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Long afterward, Carter told me that he realized he had lost a tremendous amount of Jewish support because he talked about a Palestinian homeland and “dealt with very sensitive issues in a politically foolish way.… You don’t accumulate support from the moderates who say that is a good idea; you accumulate collectively fervent opponents.”33 In fact, the very day after his remarks, I was traveling on Air Force One with him and relayed a private request from Dinitz for Carter and his team to be more prudent in what they said about Israel during the weeks before Rabin faced Israel’s voters. Carter was noncommittal, but asked me to continue to transmit personal messages outside normal diplomatic channels. I remained a back channel with Israeli ambassadors and their senior staff for as long as Carter remained in office, explaining the president’s policy, seeking Israeli views, and often passing along ideas at Brzezinski’s request.34 (I was not the only one. Leon Charney, a New York lawyer who was also the American attorney for Ezer Weizman, defense minister during the Camp David talks, served as an essential and unsung channel with White House Counsel Bob Lipshutz to Weizman and Begin, especially in tying up the details of the peace treaty.)35
At a cabinet meeting in mid-March, Carter reviewed the situation after Rabin’s visit and defended his comments as “proper and necessary to break loose positions on both sides.” He said the Arabs were right to insist on the pre-1967 borders for Israel and that Israel had no justifiable claim on the territories it had captured, but at the same time the “Arabs need to get their act together” and agree on ending the state of war with Israel, on new borders, and on settling the future of Palestine.36
He was soon to discover how difficult it would be to settle such matters between Israel and only one major Arab state, let alone more than a dozen of them.
SADAT’S TRIUMPHANT VISIT
Early in April, Sadat came to Washington, and the contrast with Rabin could not have been more pronounced. Carter saw Sadat as a “shining light” who brightened the prospects for Middle East peace and, more practically, a potential friend and ally.37 Rabin had been so cool and reserved that he made Carter look warm—no small feat—and it was easy to be mesmerized by Muhammad Anwar el-Sadat. He was warm, ebullient, loquacious, and jocular—a natural politician who cut a striking figure with jet-black curly hair, wide lapels on his tailored suits, and striking ties. He had an almost regal bearing and, like the general he had been, he stood ramrod straight. He was one of thirteen children born to an Egyptian father and a Nubian mother, who passed on her dark skin color. It was clear from first sight that he was a devout Muslim, since his forehead bore the mark that comes from a lifetime of kneeling with head to the ground during daily prayers.
Although both men had fought to free their countries from their British colonial master, the formation of Sadat’s early military career was the exact opposite of Rabin’s, who had begun his service with a Jewish unit of the British army. Among Sadat’s influences were Kemal Atatürk, who created the modern secular state of Turkey, the non-violence of India’s Mahatma Gandhi, and at the other end of the spectrum, Adolph Hitler, less for his violent ant-Semitism than his opposition to the British.
One common thread also connected Sadat and Begin. Each in his own way had resisted the occupation of his country, and each had been arrested or hunted by the British for doing so. But Sadat’s path was far different. After World War II, Gamal Abdel Nasser and other disgruntled junior officers including Sadat formed a secret group that overthrew the sybaritic and corrupt King Farouk in a 1952 military coup. Nasser became a hero of the Arab world for his pan-Arab vision and strong opposition to Israel. He appointed Sadat to a succession of senior positions and ultimately as his vice president. When Nasser died in 1970, Sadat succeeded him, and surprised virtually everyone by emerging from Nasser’s long shadow. Egypt’s early military success in the 1973 Yom Kippur War electrified the Arab world and made Sadat a hero.
But he understood that neither Soviet arms nor Soviet military advisers had saved him, and came to view the Soviet Union as a declining power. He expelled its advisers and pointed Egypt in a Western, specifically American, direction. But Middle East peace was not his first priority when he sat down to dinner with Carter and his advisers; that came later in his private meeting with the president. He made a forceful appeal for U.S. arms to replace those no longer coming from the Soviet Union and to help stop the Soviet incursion in Africa.38 With the Cold War raging and the Soviets supporting Cuban proxies throughout Africa and the developing world, there was a critical need to support Sadat. Then as now, Egypt was a Middle East linchpin as the largest and most powerful Arab state. To supply Sadat with American arms and resolve the Middle East deadlock by encouraging Israel to withdraw from the Sinai in exchange for peace would not only strengthen Sadat’s hand, but significantly enhance Washington’s standing and influence at Moscow’s expense. This geopolitical dimension was not fully grasped by the Israelis and much of the American Jewish leadership.
As he had done with Rabin, Carter took Sadat upstairs to the private residence, but with more positive results. He assured Carter he would cooperate with his administration but would never have diplomatic relations with Israel and never open the Suez Canal to its ships—but, as Carter later related, “he would be willing to help me.”39 A CIA leadership profile prepared for Carter advised him that Sadat “wants to go down in history as the man who improved the economic and social well-being of the ordinary Egyptian.… A consummate politician, he looks at most issues in political terms.”40
But his closest advisers were not certain about their own leader. Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy, a friend from their revolutionary days, wrote later that while sincere and direct, Sadat “also seemed to be very isolated, with no special relationship with anybody, in fact, distrustful and contemptuous of those around him.”41 Sadat’s ability to stand apart from his own delegation became vital to the peace process. Because Sadat trusted Carter, he was repeatedly willing to take Carter’s word that certain steps were necessary. And because Carter truly believed Sadat wanted peace, he was willing to take repeated political risks to maintain the momentum of the negotiating process. For example, while Sadat held out against recognizing Israel, he was open to the possibility of ending Egypt’s trade boycott and of establishing demilitarized zones in the Sinai.
THE SWITZERLAND OF THE MIDDLE EAST
About that same time, though, Israeli politics were shifting in a way that would change it and the Middle East, not just during the Carter years, but for the decades that have followed. As Sadat’s visit to Washington was ending, Dinitz called me to warn that Rabin’s resignation was imminent—even before the elections—although he would stay on until then as caretaker prime minister. The Israeli press had uncovered dollar bank accounts in the name of his wife, Leah, most likely left over from his years as ambassador in Washington. In those years Israel erected strict currency controls, and individual Israelis had to have official permission to hold money abroad. Even though the law was more honored in the breach than the observance, no Israeli politician could survive such a disclosure in a country where a modest style of life was a foundation of the pioneer culture.
Dinitz added that Shimon Peres, an experienced cabinet minister and protégé of Ben-Gurion, would almost certainly be Rabin’s successor and lead the Labor Party list in the elections. I let Brzezinski and the president know immediately.42 What followed had been foreseen by no one in Washington. Ben-Gurion’s party had dominated Israeli politics since independence, but like so many parties too long in power, it suffered from general fatigue in its own ranks and with the public. Rabin’s bank account was apparently the last straw for the governing party’s leaders.
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Thus unfolded a series of exchanges with Dinitz through the month of April into early May. He insisted they must be held in strictest confidence because any leak could lose the election for Labor. Dinitz told me that he had instructions from Rabin and Peres to pass on “reliable Israeli intelligence
reports from Cairo” that Sadat had confided to his intimate circle that he interpreted his talks with Carter to mean the president could trade Egypt’s cooperation for the territory the country lost in 1967 and obtain a state for the Palestinians in the West Bank, as well. That would mean an Israeli withdrawal from the Egyptian Sinai, one of Sadat’s goals to reverse the humiliation of two Egyptian military defeats.
Then we got to the fundamental fear of the Israeli establishment. Dinitz said Israel might be forced into a deal concocted behind its back in Washington: “We can’t accept the fact that the U.S. has a plan, as this would foreclose negotiations.”43 I told Dinitz that I could not conceive of the president telling Sadat these things privately, but I would find out. He phoned again the next day with more alarming intelligence: Sadat was telling his people in Cairo that not only would the Americans continue to patrol the demilitarized Sinai as part of a peace agreement but “possibly Russians, too, if both sides wanted it.” Even more upsetting—to both of us—was Dinitz’s claim that Sadat and Fahmy were saying Carter had assured them the Israelis would accept all this. We knew that they had not even been consulted, and when I reported to Carter, he instructed me to tell the ambassador his intelligence was “incorrect on borders, the PLO, and the demilitarized zone.”44
While I cannot say Dinitz was entirely satisfied, he was at least somewhat relieved.45 Nevertheless the back channel continued humming with another warning from Dinitz that the Arabs were beginning to think “they will get what they want, and if they don’t, they can be driven to war.” He feared that Carter would publish a peace plan, and with as much emphasis as he could muster, he said: “If the president will devise a formula and Israel will not like it, there will be no reason to negotiate with the Arabs, and we will be on a collision course with the United States. The more public and precise the president is with a plan the worse it is.” The American role, he said, should be to consult with all sides and create a framework for negotiations, but not create any plan that would push Israel back to its 1967 borders and accept a Palestinian state: “No Israeli government, however moderate, can accept this.”
Dinitz then handed me a three-page paper containing excerpts, marked with ominously underlined sentences, from recent remarks by Carter, Vance, and UN Ambassador Andrew Young, all bearing the imprint of classic American diplomacy. The State Department has long been an Arabist redoubt, if for no other reason than that there is only one Jewish state and 22 Arab states, some with huge oil reserves. In fact America had always moved cautiously; most people forget that Truman, after recognizing Israel following the UN vote, imposed an arms embargo when the fledgling state was fighting its war of independence. In most administrations, the White House counterbalances the State Department’s bias because of domestic political considerations or a greater sensitivity to Israel’s security needs.
In the Carter administration, while Mondale, Ham, Lipshutz, and I served as ballast, none of us were decisive actors. And without a weighty counterbalance, Carter’s instincts mirrored those of the State Department and were reinforced by Brzezinski. Zbig saw almost every issue of foreign policy through the anti-Soviet lens of a true Cold Warrior, and likewise saw Israel standing in the way of a diplomatic process that would weaken Russia’s hand in a strategically important part of the world.
Thus I was not surprised when Dinitz alleged that Brzezinski had warned him that, depending upon whether there was a peace agreement, his small and vibrant nation could either be the Switzerland of the Middle East or the region’s Vietnam. Dinitz stressed that this warning had been delivered in a “threatening tone regarding Israel moving toward America’s views—or else.”46 I wondered if Dinitz had embellished Zbig’s comments into a threat.
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Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter’s first excursion into diplomacy in the Arab world seemed to yield results. On May 9, he met with the brutal dictator of Syria, Hafez el-Assad, in Geneva because Assad had sworn he would never come to the United States.47 He ruled by murder and assassination, but he was an impressive negotiator and strategist and could turn on his charm when it suited his goals. He could sit across the table for hours without taking a bathroom break, all the while offering heavily caffeinated tea to his American interlocutors. Carter found—or thought he did—a constructive attitude he had encountered in neither Israeli nor Arab leaders. To Carter, Assad was somewhat flexible, and he noted that Assad had told him that a year or two earlier it would have been almost suicidal in Syria to talk about peace with Israel—but they now seemed willing to cooperate.48 (He later revised this view in his memoirs when it turned out that Assad sabotaged the Geneva peace talks by refusing to attend.)
Returning to Washington, Carter met with Saudi crown prince Fahd, who indicated that the Arab side wanted peace. But what the president ultimately came to recognize in his dealings with both the Arab leaders and American Jewish leaders was a “disparity between their private assurances and their public comments.” While the Arab leaders were more flexible during private talks about ideas for peace and, aside from Sadat, unwilling in public to acknowledge a willingness to deal with Israel, American Jewish leaders, he said, would privately “deplore Israeli excesses, but in a public showdown on a controversial issue, they would almost always side with the Israeli leaders” and condemn the administration.49
For a president who would make Middle East peace his prime goal and a priority for his time and energy, Carter brought little previous experience in the region. He was in no way unsympathetic to the American Jewish community or to the state of Israel, and his deeply held Baptist beliefs honored the place of a Jewish state. But coming from a rural upbringing and a place with few Jews, unlike an urban politician, he had not experienced the organized Jewish community firsthand. Moreover, although he certainly knew about the impact of the two millennia of Jewish exile from Israel—the horrific discrimination, violence, and expulsions of Jews from one nation after another, culminating in the massive Nazi Holocaust, I do not think he fully internalized the collective impact on Israeli attitudes. Nor did he fully appreciate the deep spiritual symbolism of Jerusalem in Jewish prayer, the longing for a return to Zion, and the consequent emotional hold of the new state of Israel on the American Jewish community. To them it had been created almost miraculously out of the ashes of the Holocaust on the very same land where the Jewish religion was born thousands of years before. At a minimum—and usually much more than that—Israel was an anchor against the insecurities of Diaspora Jews, to say nothing of the Israelis themselves surrounded by a sea of armed enemies.
While Carter was engaging the Arabs, I held my first of innumerable meetings with Alex Shindler, a silver-haired and sharp-tongued Reform rabbi who was the president of the umbrella Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, representing some forty in all. He suggested a monthly meeting of a dozen or so of the Jewish leaders with Carter’s cabinet-level diplomatic and security team—a somewhat unrealistic request. These meetings took place only periodically, although if they had been convened more frequently, we might have avoided some of the political downdraft from the president’s aggressive pursuit of Middle East peace.
I received anguished telephone calls about the president’s position on Israel from special Atlanta Jewish friends—Cantor Isaac Goodfriend of the synagogue of which my family were longtime members, and who had been invited by Carter at my request to sing the national anthem at the inauguration; and the esteemed Orthodox rabbi Emanuel Feldman, who read me a headline from the Jewish Press: “Carter Tilts Toward Arabs.”50 While I assured them of Carter’s strong support for Israel, Carter told me that his meetings with Arab leaders had convinced him they “are really willing to have peace with Israel.” He confided he had to decide “by the summer whether to make a go-or-no-go on Middle East peace.” He felt the time was ripe, and reassured me that the “Arabs don’t want an independent Palestinian state and are as concerned as we and Israel about its potential militancy.”51 He repeated this in stronge
r terms before a meeting with congressional leaders: “The Arabs are not feeding me BS and are serious about peace.”52
Shortly afterward, I joined Brzezinski for his first meeting with the American Jewish leadership. They were headed by the dean of Jewish leaders, Max Fisher of Detroit—a rather impolitic choice as spokesman because he was an ardent Republican and supporter of Nixon and Ford. I sat in and took notes.53 Brzezinski began by asking that, in order to encourage frank exchanges, the Jewish leadership keep the substance of their meetings out of the newspapers, a request honored only in the breach. He spoke forcefully of a “special organic relationship with Israel” and reemphasized the administration’s commitment to Israel’s security. Fisher echoed Israel’s official concerns and the apprehensions in the Jewish community over the administration’s policy toward Israel. He then referred to a supposed “American plan” for Israel to withdraw from and turn over the conquered territory to “an independent West Bank state headed by the PLO.” This was a wild exaggeration, and Brzezinski calmly replied that now that Israel’s permanence as a state was secure, it was time to start asking what type of peace Israel should have if the Arabs ended their state of war. He explained that “any change is painful” and that “Israel could become the Switzerland of the Middle East if there was peace,” the same phrase Dinitz had reported to me, but without any sense of threat.
This entire exercise quickly demonstrated the special triangular relationship among Israel, the American Jewish leadership, and the Congress in effectively applying pressure on the presidency to modify U.S. policy to Israel’s benefit. This is unique in the annals of diplomacy. There are other countries, such as Britain, that have a favored relationship with the United States but exert their influence through traditional diplomacy rather than relying heavily on a domestic American constituency and lobbying Congress. For a vulnerable, small country like Israel, surrounded by enemies, perfecting this unusual brand of political diplomacy was essential. While it existed to a more limited degree before the Carter administration, it was honed to much greater use during our term in office. Since then it has only grown in dimension and intensity to be one of Washington’s most effective lobbies. Carter was to discover this through painful experience.