Heroic Diplomacy

Sadat, Kissinger, Carter, Begin and the Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace

Kenneth W. Stein

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781135962517
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

From the prelude of the October 1973 Middle East war through the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty in March 1979, Kenneth W. Stein grippingly traces American involvement in the Arab-Israeli negotiations. He provides an extraordinary range of first-hand accounts, recollections and anecdotes from over eighty bureaucrats, diplomats and military leaders who participated in Arab-Israeli peace talks in the 1970's and since. Since the official public record remains unavailable for reasons of national security, these interviews provide unequaled insight into the internal divisions, political intrigue and untold stories of the peace process. Charting the complex and often contradictory goals of Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Syria, the US and the USSR, Stein chronicles the evolution of these negotiations and analyzes the key roles of Sadat, Kissinger, Carter, and Begin. An introduction and epilogue place this period in context of Arab-Israeli history since 1948 and the current status of the peace process.

Chapter 1

The Key Players in Arab-Israeli Diplomacy

1973–1978

FOR ISRAELIS, Egyptian President Gamal Abd al-Nasser personified Arab hatred of Israel. When Nasser died in September 1970, Israelis sighed in relief, but they still faced many other implacable enemies. Israel ‘was victorious in the June 1967 War, devastating Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian armed forces. What Israelis did not know then was that their occupation and control of the Sinai Peninsula, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, West Bank, and east Jerusalem would become the future focus of Arab-Israeli negotiations: Under what circumstances and over what period of time would Israel give back some or all of these territories? and what would Israel receive in return from Arab neighbors in terms of understandings, agreements, and assurances? For the rest of the century, the Arab-Israeli negotiating process was based on delineating Israel’s exchange of land and resource assets for less tangible Arab diplomatic promises and agreements. At Nasser’s death, Israel’s military superiority had been established, and Syrian-Jordanian relations were rancorous. Jordan was slugging it out with the PLO for future control of any of the West Bank that Israel might relinquish. Yet, Israel was still not at ease. Peace treaties did not result from Israel’s smashing victory three years earlier; Israelis were not gambling in Cairo, visiting Petra, scuba diving in Aqaba, or taking day trips to Damascus. The war brought more territory but not normalization of Israel’s place in the Middle East. Pervasive anti-Israeli feelings transited the war. From the Arab media, Israeli anxiety was reinforced regularly. Constant barrages of rich anti-Israeli sentiment were mixed with nasty political cartoons, many depicting Zionists and Israelis as Nazis. Israel’s existential fears thus remained. From the almost twenty years of Nasser’s rule, Israelis neither considered nor expected any Arab leader to end the Arab commitment to destroy Israel.

In the early fall of 1970, Israeli decision makers had no reason to believe that Egypt or its leadership would be any less hostile to the Jewish state. No Arab leader could consider recognizing Israel as a political reality and expect to survive either domestically or in an inter-Arab context. So when Anwar Sadat became Egypt’s second president on October 15, 1970, he was viewed by Israelis and Americans alike as someone inextricably bound to the policy priorities of his predecessor— a strong relationship with the Soviet Union, Cairo’s leadership in inter-Arab politics, and coordinator of the anti-Israeli caravan. Evidence for Sadat’s public antagonism toward Israel came quickly from his speeches and interviews, during which he repeated what Nasser had claimed: Israel was illegitimate, a foreign body artificially implanted in the Middle East by imperial or colonial powers. Sadat’s remarks were stereotypical and harshly anti-Jewish. He accused Jews of holding the keys to money and controlling the television and press throughout the world. He denigrated Zionism and acknowledged ruefully that Israel was backed by the United States.¹

Neither American nor Israeli officials knew much about the new Egyptian president or the subtle changes taking place within Egypt in the waning years of the 1960s. Those in the State Department who dealt with the Middle East considered Sadat not a serious but a minor political player, an interim caretaker, or perhaps a transitional president.² Egyptian and foreign analysts postulated that there would be some form of internal political struggle between Sadat and those who were considered leftist or pro-Soviet in their orientation, at least more closely identified with Nasser. Considered a lightweight because he had played a lesser role in Egypt’s 1952 revolution, he had no distinguished record of public or military service. After becoming president, Sadat enjoyed the legitimacy of being connected to the Nasser period, but he distanced himself from the mistakes of Nasser’s rule. Sadat was part of the officer’s group that deposed the corrupt King Farouk in 1952 and went on to rid Egypt of Britain’s colonial presence. When Sadat took office, four major issues required attention: the economy was in deep trouble; there was a dominant dependence upon the Soviet Union; Arab states were apprehensive about Cairo’s imperious attitudes; and Egyptians remained psychologically hurt by the Israeli victory in the June 1967 War. Sadat saw the need to change Egypt’s political course, which he did slowly. First, he consolidated his rule, then he attacked Israel with the purpose of appealing to the United States to help Egypt diplomatically and economically. By the force of his will and with the collaboration of Henry Kissinger and Jimmy Carter, he changed the course of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Sadat aligned with the United States and pushed the Soviet Union out of Egypt. He did what he did for Egypt, neither to please the Americans nor to make peace with Israel. Each agreement with Israel was a building block, an interim step toward the achievement of his objectives. Some of those steps were small, some sudden, others of great magnitude, but each was connected to the next and based upon the previous one. If he could have avoided a peace treaty with Israel, he would have done so. In pursuit of his goal, he provided Israel with what its leaders never expected: in March 1979, the most populous, culturally significant, and militarily powerful Arab state accepted Israel as a legitimate political entity. His heroic and unconventional diplomacy succeeded both because Menachem Begin, a man steeped in Jewish history and horrific memories of the Holocaust, was willing to compromise his own ideology for the good of the Israeli state, and because President Jimmy Carter was determined not to let the possibility of an Egyptian-Israeli agreement slip through his hands. Sadat’s turn toward Washington and apparent moderation made it possible for Americans finally to trust an Arab leader. By doing so, Sadat changed the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Legitimately supporting an Arab leader’s political requests forced Washington to be a broker and mediator, not just Israel’s trusted partner. Israeli leaders were not pleased by this reality, nor were they happy that their carefully defined treaty with Egypt became a cold peace, yet it lasted for the remainder of this century. In his Arab context, Sadat’s embrace of Israel sharpened divisions in inter-Arab affairs and also set the pace: the Arab world caught up to Sadat a dozen years later when the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference established the background for eventual Palestinian-Israeli and Jordanian-Israeli agreements and, in turn, a redefinition of general Arab-state attitudes and relations with Israel.

The combination of Sadat’s background, flamboyance, disdain for foreign control, secretive style, and impatience redirected Egypt’s orientation. Neither Israelis nor Americans saw this change coming. Born on Christmas Day in 1918, Sadat was fifty-two when he became president. Coming from peasant stock, Sadat was raised in the small village of Mit Abul Kom in the Nile River Delta. There a premium was placed on not just belonging to a family but also to the village and the land. In 1925, when Sadat was seven, his family moved to Cairo, where the next quarter century was spent struggling against British imperial presence in Egypt. Protecting Egyptian land and ridding it of foreign domination were core threads in his political fiber. As an Egyptian patriot, he struggled for Egypt’s independence, always putting Egypt’s national interests first. He had strong beliefs and a vision of what he wanted for Egypt: restructuring the Egyptian economy; moving away from the Soviet Union; moving toward the United States; and restoring Sinai to Egyptian sovereignty. Everything else was negotiable. Possessed with an enormous ego, Sadat intertwined his personal and national priorities so that neither he nor Egypt played second fiddle to anyone. According to Usamah al-Baz, a key official in shaping Egypt’s foreign policy for the last quarter of the twentieth century:

Sadat was a man of vision who looked beyond today’s constraints and possessed a messianic sense. He had a mystical, almost prophetic feeling that the average Egyptian man supported him no matter how unconventional his choices were. Intellectuals, he felt, were wrapped up in their own ego, rhetoric, and self-interest. And yet he was pragmatic, not a dreamer, nor simple-minded, nor gullible. His willingness and ability to take courageous political steps and unprecedented risks were greater than what Nasser was ever willing to do.³

Sadat possessed unalterable objectives, but not fossilized ideologies, as well as a strong will, national pride, and a capacity for enduring until his goals were achieved. Gradually he developed a sense of self-confidence. It evolved after he solidified his grip on power in May 1971, and steadily increased because of his partial victory in the October War and after he secured Kissinger’s attention and engagement in Egyptian-Israeli diplomacy. He lacked neither faith in his own judgment nor boldness in execution of his policy choices. When he made a proposal in February 1971 for a staged withdrawal of Israeli forces from Sinai, he did not tell Foreign Minister Mahmoud Riad about the idea before relaying it through Washington to Jerusalem.⁴ Neither did he consult with anyone prior to his expulsion of the Soviet advisers in July 1972. Launching the October 1973 War on the Israelis’ most holy day of their calendar year was typical Sadat. In planning the war, he did not tell King Hussein exactly when the war would begin and furtively kept from Assad his priority intention to seek only limited military objectives. During the war itself, he intentionally kept Assad uninformed about the state of his military deployment. What he told Kissinger in cable or in person he did not necessarily reveal to Moscow, and when he pleaded with the Soviets about an issue or policy, he shaped his remarks for their ears only. When he decided to go to Jerusalem in November 1977, he kept his own counsel. When he decided to have a preparatory meeting in Cairo prior to returning to a Geneva conference format in December 1977, he told no one in advance and informed the Israelis about it via Cairo radio. Americans and Israelis were repeatedly stunned and perplexed by such unconventional and unexpected actions.

Sadat was a man of extremes and shifts. At times he was simple, austere, and modest; at others complex, autocratic, and egotistical. Sometimes he would think clearly and logically, while at other times he might not be able to articulate a point of view. Sometimes he had an open mind on a subject and could absorb what he heard or read; at other times he might be indifferent, neither caring about nor hearing what was before him. Neither his character nor style were stationary or predictable. If he disagreed with something, then he might just puff on his pipe and grunt quietly Those who knew him might have assumed this meant assent, though most often it did not. If he had the mind to do something and was asked over and over about his capacity to manage it—such as representing Palestinian interests during the autonomy talks in 1979 and 1980—then he would simply say, “for sure.” Even if he could not do what he thought he could do, still he would claim he could, and at least his American interlocutors believed him. Sadat was never hesitant to take a bold initiative even if it did not conform with an accepted norm or philosophical mold. His procedural and substantive preferences were for those that suited his needs at any particular time; ideology was temporarily wedded to pragmatic requirements to meet his long-term objectives. Coming as he did after Nasser, he was, for many Arabs, Israelis, and Americans, a strange breed, a political oxymoron. While Nasser was embedded in almost absolutist ideology—pan-Arabism, anti-Israeli feeling, a deep pro-Soviet orientation, economic socialism, and profound advocacy for Palestinian rights—Sadat adjusted his philosophic commitments to satisfy his political objectives. Going down several paths simultaneously to accomplish a goal was easy for him. He did it all the time. Like his unlikely ascendency to the vice presidency in 1969 and his consolidation of power in 1971, doing things independently, impulsively, and unexpectedly were intrinsic to his nature. Changing the status quo suited his demeanor, personality, and political needs.

Simultaneously, he was a tactician and a strategist. His methods for managing Israel, his Arab peers, his economy, and the superpowers were usually in some form of continuous formulation. His methods were in endless transition; his vision and goals were not. He was secretive and inscrutable about sharing his thoughts, particularly about concepts and initiatives.⁵ To most advisers he did not give specific orders, but rather gave underlings a scope within which to operate. At times, he found his Foreign Ministry bureaucracy to be turgid, lacking a broad understanding of politics.⁶ He disliked paperwork and details, leaving them to his advisers. He tired of bureaucrats, because they were consensus builders who sought to satisfy several constituencies of objectives simultaneously. When he needed them, he selectively used them as vehicles for propagating or implementing policy, not for making policy. He seldom shared all information on a particular matter. He might float a portion of an idea to someone close to see what would evolve, then allow someone else to react to another segment of the same thought. In this way, he received several responses without any one person knowing all the details. Then he collated the responses, sometimes acting on them, sometimes not. He rarely brought advisers together to discuss or ratify a policy choice. Sadat’s meetings with foreign leaders were invariably one-on-one sessions in which his advisers and ministers were not included, thereby causing them inevitable embarrassment and inconvenience. For example, when Sadat and Kissinger met for the first time in November 1973, they talked privately, without advisers or note takers. In negotiating Sinai I, or the first Egyptian-Israeli disengagement agreement, in Aswan, Egypt, in January 1974, though his advisers were nearby, Sadat kept the negotiations with Kissinger to himself. He even admonished his foreign minister for intruding. His foreign minister from January to September 1978 was particularly vexed by being excluded from meetings in which foreign leaders discussed foreign policy issues. When Sadat met with Israeli Defense Minister Ezer Weizman at the end of March 1978, Weizman’s counterpart, General el-Gamasy, was absent from the discussions. At times his advisers, like his foreign ministers, were peeved if not downright jealous that they did not enjoy the closeness and trust Sadat had with Kissinger and later with Carter. That envy gnawed at their already skeptical feelings toward Washington, which was seen as blindly pro-Israeli. Since Sadat disliked the bureaucracy, he avoided its details. But he enjoyed the grand picture and was pleased to find in both Kissinger and Carter not only Americans he could trust but also, to his delight, exceptional minds and draftsmen willing to focus on the details.

Sadat was an actor who believed in grand and sometimes theatrical gestures. He expected others to be equally dramatic. He made the world his stage, kept friends and foes off balance, and used the media to shape public opinion. He was consumed by an eagerness to please and to be accepted by those in power and with authority. Wily and cagey, he played hide-and-seek and made diplomatic scheming his forte.⁷ All too often, Sadat played fast and loose with the truth; he was not averse to stretching the boundaries of veracity. He would change his rendition of a story depending largely on the listener. He withheld bits and pieces of the whole story to make a point or create an effect. The rendition he told of an event yesterday was often changed in its telling the following day. Embellishing a story was just as commonplace. Toward the end of the 1973 War, when he exaggerated that something catastrophic was about to happen to the Israeli-surrounded Third Army, Soviet military estimates discounted his overblown assessment. In his speeches, time and time again he overstated and embellished his central role in the 1952 revolution. Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko felt that Sadat, “had an extraordinary ability to distort facts and blatantly contradict himself [and] suffered from megalomania.”⁸ His manner thirsted for the daring and spectacular. His penchant for dropping political bombshells startled the Americans, shocked the Israelis, and disconcerted his own advisers. Sadat’s foreign minister in 1977–1978, Mohamed Ibrahim Kamel, recalled, “I was mainly concerned with…the improvised and impulsive actions of President Sadat which he undertook without prior notice, thus deviating from the political and tactical line we were pursuing.”⁹ In negotiations, “even on major issues, he would sometimes, to everyone’s surprise, give in because this could have a positive effect on the result or the adversary.”¹⁰ In appointing aides and ministers, he might ask them whether they wanted a job and then give them time to think about it; but before they responded affirmatively or not, or were even told of appointments, he would have their position announced on Cairo radio or in a press release.¹¹ In December 1977, he stunned his would-be new and profoundly anti-Israeli foreign minister by swearing him in in front of the first Israeli delegation to visit Cairo. In the Camp David negotiations, Sadat sometimes embarrassed or overruled his own trusted advisers in their presence in order to make a point with a foreign listener. He loved to do the contrary of what his advisers told him.¹² He frequently conceded a point in order to gain assurance of continued American support or to keep the negotiating process moving forward. Abruptly and without warning, he expelled Soviet advisers in July 1972. According to Omar Sirry, an Egyptian Foreign Ministry official, at the time, “It was typical of Sadat not to expect anything from the Americans in return for expelling the Soviet advisers.”¹³ As he went down the path of diplomacy, he became increasingly willing to sacrifice an asset in order to attain the goal. Eventually that meant giving up uniform Arab hostility to Israel and jettisoning the Palestinian cause, even if only temporarily, for Egyptian national interests. In sustaining Washington’s interest in him, Sadat often made necessary compromises with Israel, which his advisers found unnecessary or too forthcoming. In 1978, during the months prior to the signing of the Camp David Accords, White House and State Department officials were constantly afraid that Sadat would give up any real support for the Palestinians just to have the Israelis withdraw from Sinai.

As Sadat’s national security adviser noted, Sadat was a man “in a hurry”:¹⁴ impatient, wanting results, not wanting to be stymied or held back by the dillydallying of others. But Sadat also knew when to let an issue or policy simmer to a conclusion. His political will and courage kept the negotiating process moving forward. He kept his eye on the objective that diplomacy with the Americans meant the return of Sinai. Throughout his eleven years in office, Sadat retained control over this key policy area: relations with the United States and Israel, and dealings with Arab heads of state.

By outsiders, Sadat was seen as mercurial and unpredictable because he did not have a profound ideological base. His motives and actions were difficult to comprehend. These characteristics confounded his Arab contemporaries and Israelis alike. At home, Egyptian polit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. The Key Players in Arab-Israeli Diplomacy 1973–1978
• Chapter 2. The Arab-Israeli Conflict 1947–1973
• Chapter 3. The October 1973 War
• Chapter 4. From War to Diplomacy The Kilometer 101 Talks
• Chapter 5. The 1973 Geneva Middle East Peace Conference and the Buildup to Sinai I
• Chapter 6. The Syrian-Israeli Agreement, Sinai I and II, and Defining a Comprehensive Peace 1974–1977
• Chapter 7. Unintended Consequences The 1977 Road to Geneva Ends in Jerusalem
• Chapter 8. From Jerusalem to Oslo and Beyond 1978–1998
• Appendix
• Notes
• Works Cited and Suggested Reading
• Index