The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership

by Avner, Yehuda

  “Can’t do what?”

  “Can’t dance.”

  “Can’t dance?” The woman seemed astounded, as if she had never heard of such a thing.

  “Not a step,” blushed the prime minister. “I’ll be treading on your toes all the while. I’ve tried it before. I’m no good at it.”

  “Have no fear, Mr. Prime Minister,” chortled a buoyant Mrs. Ford, taking him by the hand and leading him onto the ballroom floor. “When I was younger I used to teach dance, and I protected my toes from men far less skillful than you. Now this is how you do it: put your hand here. That’s right. And your other hand here. Very good! And now relax, and let’s go: one-two-three; one-two-three; one-two-three. Excellent! You’re doing fine, getting the hang of it!” and she rotated the crimson-faced premier around and around, he staring fixedly at the First Lady’s toes until Dr. Kissinger – himself no swinger – tapped him on the shoulder, and said in deadly seriousness, “Yitzhak, give up while you’re ahead. Let me take over. Mrs. Ford, may I have this dance?”

  “By all means,” said she, letting go of Rabin, who tottered toward his chuckling staffers, muttering, “If Henry Kissinger does nothing else for Israel but save me from that embarrassment I shall be forever in his debt.”

  A few months later, in March 1975, Secretary of State Kissinger returned to the Middle East to test the political waters, embarking on a remarkable odyssey unheard of in international relations. It was dubbed shuttle diplomacy – a whirlwind, improvised to and fro between Egypt and Israel to badger Rabin and Sadat into negotiating the next step. In a marathon schedule that created convoluted complications of timing, Kissinger would arrive in Jerusalem at abnormal hours of the day and depart for Cairo at eccentric hours of the night. He flitted back and forth in an antiquated Boeing 707 which had been Lyndon Johnson’s plane when he was Kennedy’s vice president.

  Since the talks were held at all hours of the day and the night, and frequently in haste, people’s nerves easily frayed. Rabin soon felt he was being unduly pressured, sensing that Kissinger was cajoling him into accepting an IDF withdrawal in Sinai deeper than he was prepared to concede in return for an Egyptian step toward peace smaller than he was ready to accept. In short, he felt Henry Kissinger was seeking a deal at almost any price to demonstrate to the Egyptian president that America alone could deliver Israel.

  The indefatigable secretary of state conjured up concessions and trade-offs, wheedling, rhapsodizing, hectoring, threatening, and sometimes going out of his way to charm his hosts with jokes against himself as a means of relaxing tensions. At one such session a furious row broke out over Rabin’s incessant insistence that Sadat give him something politically substantial in return for a sizeable IDF withdrawal in Sinai, just as he had advocated in Washington. He wanted the Egyptian president to commit himself once and for all to a “termination of the state of belligerency” with the Jewish State.

  “Sadat will never accept such language,” flared Kissinger. “It would be tantamount to his acknowledging the end of the state of war while your army still occupies huge swathes of his territory. The furthest I might persuade him to go is a commitment to the ‘non-use of force’ in return for your IDF pull-back.” But Rabin refused to budge, and his obduracy drove Kissinger berserk. The ever-composed Joe Sisco, Kissinger’s chief deputy, proposed a recess, and the legal advisers were brought in to try and come up with some ingenious linguistic compromise. While they were at it, Kissinger, poking fun at himself in an effort to reduce tensions, said, “Yitzhak, you have to understand that since English is my second language I may not always grasp its nuances. When I arrived in America it took me a while before I understood that maniac and fool were not terms of endearment. And, only recently, I offered to teach English to the Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. I told him, if you would allow me to teach you the language, you would be the first Arab leader to speak English with a German accent.”

  Such self-effacing wit – something Rabin himself did not possess – did succeed in bringing temperatures down, and the talks resumed in a less heated spirit.

  In those shuttle days, the media could not get enough of Henry Kissinger. Headlines catapulted him to superstardom, crediting him with the ability to perform deeds unheard of in contemporary diplomacy. This man crafted the doctrine of detente with the USSR, nudged Moscow to the arms control negotiation table, paved the way for Nixon to China, brokered the first disengagement deal between Egypt and Israel, and then between Syria and Israel after the Yom Kippur War, and coerced Hanoi into the Paris peace talks, opening up the prospect of an honorable U.S. exit from Vietnam.

  Wherever he traveled, the international press followed in droves. The most privileged were the “Kissinger 14” – so nicknamed because they were the senior Washington correspondents for whom the fourteen seats in the extreme rear section of the secretary’s aging aircraft were reserved. And though having to put up with much discomfort in flight, they alone were privy to the secretary’s midair, off-the-record, not-for-attribution deep briefings, given under the thin disguise of a “senior official.” These fourteen were more familiar with Kissinger’s inner thoughts than most of the Israeli officials who dealt directly with him. This I knew because I was acquainted with most of the “14” from my Washington and foreign press bureau days, and occasionally pumped them for information myself.

  Late one night, seven of the “14” straggled into the King David Hotel’s coffee shop, where I was passing the time with other correspondents. They had just arrived with Kissinger from Cairo for the umpteenth time (the shuttle had begun on 8 March and this was 21 March). They were NBC’s Richard Valeriani, ABC’s Ted Koppel, CBS’s Bernard Kalb, the Washington Post’s Marlyn Berger, the New York Time’s Bernard Gwertzman, Time’s Jerrold Schecter, and Newsweek’s Bruce van Voorst. All had the jet-lagged, haggard look of long-distance flyers. As they shuffled in, bleary-eyed and weary, the jaded correspondents already slouching in the coffee shop, bored for lack of news, offered them their chairs in the hope of picking their brains. I, too, was intent on acquiring information, with the aim of passing on to Rabin whatever useful tidbits might come my way.

  One lean Londoner from the Daily Telegraph, spotting a badge on Richard Valeriani’s lapel, called out, “Hey Dick, what’s that badge you’re wearing?”

  The tall, gangling NBC man responded by throwing him a mischievous grin, and turned to all corners of the room so that all present could clearly see his lapel, onto which a campaign-style button was pinned. All were in fits of laughter as they read: “FREE THE KISSINGER 14.”

  This show of camaraderie triggered colossal applause, and as it soared a fellow with a camera clicked and shouted, “Hey, you ‘14,’ is it true that King K. has confided to you, not for attribution, that President Ford is alive and well after all, but he’s just fast asleep?” Another wisecracked: “And is it true that Mr. Fix-it spills you ‘14’ so many beans his plane is flying on natural gas?” And a third called out, simply, “Will there be an agreement, yes or no?”

  A different pitch then took hold as the other journalists crowded around the seven, pressing them with specific questions: Was Rabin truly refusing to surrender the Mitla and Gidi passes in the Sinai desert? Was he still insisting on his “termination of belligerency” formula in return for a deep withdrawal? Was Kissinger truly threatening to fly back to Washington if Rabin refused to compromise, blaming Israel for the failure of his mission?

  The overwrought tone of these questions faithfully reflected the mood pervading the smoke-filled conference room at the prime minister’s office, with exhausted negotiators vainly seeking to break the impasse into which they had floundered. When I entered, Henry Kissinger was shoving a map across the table at the prime minister, and grumbling, “For God’s sake, Yitzhak, draw me a final line to show how far you are prepared to pull back in Sinai. Whenever I go to Sadat, he’s ready with his answers on the spot!”

  Rabin, with deliberate emphasis, responded, “Henry, unlike Egypt, I
srael is a democracy. I will not be dictated to. Those passes hold the key to an Egyptian invasion of Israel. You will get the final line only after I get final approval from the cabinet.”

  “And how long will that take?” asked Kissinger scornfully.

  “The last cabinet session lasted ten hours,” returned Rabin, provocatively.

  Kissinger threw down his pen. “You know what? I no longer care. Do with the map whatever you want.”

  There was a sudden silence: no movement, not even the whisper of a sound, until the door gently opened and in walked an American security agent. He approached the secretary of state reverentially, and whispered, “You left these in the car, sir.”

  He was holding a pair of spectacles.

  Kissinger glowered at him in contempt, as if to say, how dare you approach the secretary of state without permission?

  Humiliated, the security agent froze, the spectacles in his hand, not knowing what to do with them. U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Keating came to his aid by relieving him of the glasses, leaning across the table to hand them to Joseph Sisco who, in turn, handed them to Dr. Kissinger. The hierarchy of protocol thus preserved, the secretary pocketed his spectacles, gathered up his papers, muttered, “I’m off” and moved toward the door, his features downcast, knowing his mission had failed.

  “Henry!”

  It was the charged, deep voice of Yitzhak Rabin.

  Kissinger turned. The two men’s eyes locked.

  “You know very well we have offered a compromise at every step along the way,” fumed Rabin. “You know we have agreed to adopt your language on the ‘non-use of force,’ which means much less than a ‘termination of belligerency.’ You know we have agreed to hand over the Sinai oil fields. You know we have agreed, in principle, to pull back as far as the eastern end of the passes. You know we have agreed to allow the Egyptian army to advance from its present positions and occupy the buffer zone. And you know we have agreed that they may set up two forward positions at the western entrances to the passes. After all this display of goodwill and flexibility for the sake of the success of your mission – and at great risk to ourselves – to then accuse us of causing the failure of your mission, instead of laying the blame on Sadat’s intransigence, is a total distortion of the facts.”

  Kissinger listened, turned, and without another word walked out of the room. The Israeli negotiating team – which included Defense Minister Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister Yigal Allon, and Ambassador Simcha Dinitz – exchanged shocked looks. Instantly, Rabin picked up a phone and instructed his assistant to call the cabinet into emergency session. In the course of that session, a courier arrived with an urgent message from President Gerald Ford. Rabin read out the message to his ministers. It said:

  Kissinger has notified me of the forthcoming suspension of his mission. I wish to express my profound disappointment over Israel’s attitude during the course of the negotiations. From our conversations, you know the great importance I attached to the success of the United States’ efforts to achieve an agreement. Kissinger’s mission, encouraged by your Government, expresses vital United States interests in the region. Failure of the negotiations will have a far-reaching impact on the region and on our relations. I have given instructions for a reassessment of United States policy in the region, including our relations with Israel, with the aim of ensuring that our overall American interests are protected.38

  This was about as brutal a message as diplomatic dispatches get, and the cabinet ministers listened to it in dry-throated silence, weighing each word with the same intensity that its author had put into its drafting. There was no doubt in Rabin’s mind who that author was, just as his ministers had no doubt that it heralded the gravest of possible crises between the two countries. Gloomily they discussed consequences, and they were in the midst of their pessimistic assessments when an assistant entered to inform the prime minister that Kissinger was on the line asking if he could come over right away.

  Rabin received him in his inner sanctum, where the secretary of state, breathing heavily, tried hard to retain his composure.

  “Yitzhak, I want you to know I had nothing to do with the President’s message,” he said.

  Rabin, lighting a cigarette, glared at him through the flame of his lighter, and said, “Henry, I don’t believe you. You asked the President to send that message. You dictated it yourself.”

  Kissinger, shocked, began shouting, “How dare you suggest such a thing? Do you think the president of the United States is a puppet and I pull his strings?”

  Rabin did not answer. He just stood there in stony silence.

  Kissinger, beside himself with frustration and rage, yelled, “You don’t understand, I’m trying to save you. The American public won’t stand for this. You are making me, the secretary of state of the United States of America, wander around the Middle East like a Levantine rug merchant. And for what – to bargain over a few hundred meters of sand in the desert? Are you out of your mind? I represent America. You are losing the battle of American public opinion. Our step-by-step doctrine is being throttled. The United States is losing control of events. There will be insurmountable pressure to convene a Geneva conference with Russia sharing the chair. A war might break out, the Russians are going to come back in, and you’ll have to fight without an American military airlift because the American public won’t support one.” Then, tantrum full-blown: “I warn you, Yitzhak, you will yet be responsible for the destruction of the third Jewish commonwealth.”

  Rabin, red in the face, hurled back, “And I warn you, Henry, you will be judged not by American history but by Jewish history!”

  The following morning the two men – longtime friends and longtime adversaries – closeted themselves in a room at Ben-Gurion airport and, according to what Rabin later told us, had an extremely emotional exchange. Rabin once again told Kissinger exactly what he felt – that though he fully realized the new situation could deteriorate into war, Israel could compromise no further. This was not just a matter of acute political consequence to him as prime minister, but, equally, of acute anxiety to him as a man, for he felt personally responsible for every IDF soldier, as though they were his sons. Indeed, at that very moment his own son was serving on Sinai’s front line, in command of a tank platoon, as was his daughter’s husband, who commanded a tank battalion, and he knew what their fate might be in the event of war.

  “And how did Kissinger react to that?” we asked him.

  “I’ve never seen him so moved,” responded Rabin. “He may have wished to reply but his voice was so cracked with emotion he couldn’t. It was time to go out to his plane where we both were to make brief farewell statements. When it came to his turn he was so full of emotion he could hardly speak. Besides being upset at the failure of his mission I could see his inner turmoil, as a Jew and as an American.”39

  Once airborne, the secretary of state made his way to the rear of his aircraft to brief the “14,” as was his wont. He told them, ‘not for attribution,’ that Israel was to blame for the breakdown of the negotiations; that the failure of his mission would inevitably radicalize the Middle East; that war was now likely and, with it, an oil embargo; that the Egyptian and Syrian post–Yom Kippur War disengagement agreements would collapse; that the mandate of the United Nations forces deployed under those agreements would not be renewed; that Russia would replace America and again become the dominant force in the Middle East; that Europe would turn its back totally on Israel; that Russia and the Arabs would rush to convene an international conference at Geneva, leaving America without a policy and Israel without an ally; and that American public opinion would swing against Israel for having squandered the one chance of an interim agreement – a chance that had taken a year-and-a-half to germinate.

  Hearing this from Rabin, who had heard the story from one of the journalists on the plane, I recalled Professor William Fort’s conjectures about the convoluted psychological profile of Dr. Henry Kissinger – his tendency to overreact
when things did not go his way, his penchant for petulance and tantrum when crossed, his Machiavellian manipulations, and his innate inclination to bend over backward in the name of a spurious objectivity.

  Photograph credit: Moshe Milner & Israel Government Press Office

  Prime Minister Rabin with leader of the opposition Menachem Begin, 3 September 1975

  Chapter 24

  Collusion at Salzburg

  Like a concert audience come to hear a classical recital, the journalists in the press gallery of the Knesset chamber stirred with anticipation as Yitzhak Rabin stepped down from the podium having given a dry, matter-of-fact report on the crumbled negotiations with Egypt, and Menachem Begin stepped up to respond. This oratorical virtuoso, whose mastery of style and pace could grasp and command any gathering, got off to a flying start when he fixed Rabin in his determined gaze, and said to him in a schoolmasterly voice:

  “Mr. Prime Minister, I would have wished that you and your colleagues had refrained from insisting on the use of the expression ‘termination of belligerency.’ It stems from the Latin bellum gero, and its practical meaning is so vague and obscure that nobody really understands what it legally implies.”

  Cries of offense and defense rose from the benches, stretching from wall to wall.

  “The point I am making, Mr. Speaker,” pressed Begin, cutting through the clamor and stabbing a finger at the government benches, “is this: why ask for something so nebulous as a ‘termination of belligerency’ when you should have been demanding an end to the state of war?”

  Again, cries for and against swept the House floor, and Begin switched tone from stern hammering to thunder:

  “Yes, that’s right, you understand me well. I’m talking about a peace treaty. No withdrawal in Sinai without a peace treaty. And the first clause of any peace treaty speaks not about the termination of belligerency but about the cessation, the termination, of the state of war, plain and simple. It should, therefore, be made clear to all free nations, and most particularly to our American friends, what our enemy’s intentions truly are – his refusal to end the state of war even in return for a deep IDF withdrawal and even after further and ever-deeper IDF withdrawals.”