Image and Reality of the Israel–Palestine Conflict

The Arabs will make peace only with a strong Israel.

Moshe Dayan, November 1970

The historian will find that Israel has never been the element to block peace moves.

Chaim Herzog, The War of Atonement¹

The standard depiction of the ‘peace process’ in the wake of the June 1967 war goes something like this: ‘There was a more intensive Israeli quest for peace after 1967 than in any other period’ of its history. Yet, ‘no peace offer’ from the Arab states ‘was in the offing,’ as ‘real diplomacy was evaded’. Fundamentally, the Israeli quest proved abortive because the Arabs only understood ‘the language of force’. Believing ‘it would be possible to destroy the state of Israel’ or, at a minimum, impose a solution ‘after a military success’, the Arabs launched an ‘unprovoked’ attack in October 1973. Faced with the ‘incredible military victory gained’ by Israel ‘on the battlefield’, however, Anwar Sadat reached the ‘revolutionary decision’ that there was ‘no hope of solving the Arab conflict with Israel’ through force of arms and that his ‘objectives should be sought by political, not military, means.’ The Egyptian leader accordingly ‘turned in a totally different direction: peace with Israel instead of war’. ‘For the first time the Arab world was presented by one of its leaders with a vision of the Middle East that did include the sovereign state of Israel.’ And once he ‘crossed the psychological barrier’ with the ‘dramatic appearance before the Knesset in November 1977’, Sadat’s ‘reward was immediate and dramatic’. Israel, which had always ‘intended’ to return ‘all of Sinai’ in exchange for Egyptian recognition of ‘the fact of its existence’, promptly agreed to withdraw. At long last Israel had arrived at ‘destination peace’.²

Simply put, my thesis is that the above image exactly reverses the reality: Egypt (and Jordan) desperately sought a negotiated settlement after the 1967 war. Israel, however, refused to budge from the conquered territories in exchange for peace. With all diplomatic options exhausted, Egypt went to war, displaying impressive – and unexpected – military prowess. Israel accordingly agreed after the war to the same diplomatic settlement Sadat had offered it before the war. In a word, it was Israel, not Egypt, that ultimately bowed to the language of force.

I will first sketch the diplomatic record of Israel and the Arab states (in particular Egypt, generally regarded as the main protagonist on the Arab side) until the eve of the October 1973 war. I will argue that Egypt, unlike Israel, fully embraced the international consensus for resolving the conflict. I will then explore why Israel accepted only in 1977 the peace settlement with Egypt already offered it in 1971. As suggested above, I will argue that the crucial factor was Egypt’s decisive show of force in the October war.

Diplomatic Overtures

In the wake of the June 1967 war, an international consensus gradually crystallized for resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict. On the Israeli side, it called for a full withdrawal from the Arab territories occupied in the course of the war. On the Arab side, it called not only for a negative peace in the form of a pledge of nonbelligerency but a positive peace in the form of an official treaty with Israel. In accordance with Resolution 242, which was adopted by the Security Council on 22 November 1967, the Swedish diplomat Gunnar Jarring was appointed by the United Nations to mediate a resolution of the conflict. A review of the diplomatic record suggests that as Israel moved further from the international consensus, the major Arab states moved closer to it.³

Israel’s first policy decision regarding the conquered territories was taken on 19 June 1967, when a divided Cabinet (11:10) proposed a settlement on the pre-June 1967 borders with Syria and Egypt (Israel keeping Gaza), but made no mention of Jordan and the West Bank. Several days earlier, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan declared in his ‘private capacity’ that Gaza would not be returned to Egypt or the West Bank to Jordan. Meeting with UN Secretary-General U Thant on 22 June, US representative Arthur Goldberg speculated that Israel had ‘no interest’ in Sinai (wrongly adding, however, Gaza), but would want to ‘retain’ Old Jerusalem and ‘the area of the West Bank of Jordan’. Note that Israel’s security concerns were presumably fresh in the mind of the Cabinet when it drafted, right after the June war, the proposal to withdraw from the Sinai and the Golan Heights. Yet as seen below, the Labor government adamantly maintained in subsequent years that Israel’s continued presence in the Sinai and the Golan was vital to its national security.⁴

Rabin reports that Israel hardened its 19 June position already in August in response to the ‘Arab intransigence’ displayed at Khartoum, with its famous ‘Three Noes’ to ‘peace’, ‘recognition’ and ‘negotiations’ with Israel. Yet the Khartoum summit resolutions were not issued until September. Indeed, the highly respected head of UN forces in the Middle East, Odd Bull, suggests that it was Israel’s openly avowed determination to annex the conquered territories that accounted for the rhetorical excesses at Khartoum. The official Israeli chronology effectively reverses – not for the last time, as we shall see – cause and effect. In the immediate aftermath of the June war, according to Bull, there was a ‘genuine wish’ by the Arabs to ‘find a solution to the Arab–Israeli conflict’. But, ‘by showing itself unyielding, Israel encouraged the Arabs to adopt a similar attitude’ at Khartoum.⁵

In February 1968, Israel announced a carefully qualified acceptance of 242. Notably silent on the crucial issue of withdrawal, it deemed the resolution not more than a ‘framework’ for ‘the promotion of agreement on the establishment of peace with secure and recognized boundaries’. Another formulation designated 242 as merely ‘a list of principles which can help the parties and guide them in their search for a solution because it lists the claims, the main claims, which both parties make against each other, but it has no life of its own’. Publicly and in ‘confidential’ negotiations with Jarring, Eban insisted that 242 did not require Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-June 1967 borders. Summarizing Israel’s peace overtures in 1968, the quasi-official Israeli publication Middle East Record underlined that they precluded ‘withdrawal to the 4 June lines, which were not considered … secure borders’. As Eban typically put it in June, ‘We need a better security map, a more spacious frontier, a lesser vulnerability.’ In concrete (but not officially acknowledged) terms, this meant annexation of ‘all, or a substantial part, of the Golan Heights’, and between one-quarter and one-third of the West Bank in accordance with the modalities of the Allon Plan. Regarding the crucial Egyptian sector, the Israeli Cabinet approved in October a secret resolution stating that Israel would not withdraw from Gaza or from Sharm-el-Shaykh, and that it would keep roughly one-third of Sinai connecting Sharm-el-Shaykh to Israel proper. A few months earlier Dayan had declared that ’I regard Sharm-el-Shaykh as an eternal base of the State of Israel. We must be there forever in a suitable place where we can prevent the entry of Egyptian forces from beyond Suez.’ Just as the Cabinet was covertly sanctioning an annexationist agenda, Eban announced a ‘nine-point’ peace proposal at the United Nations that was once again deliberately elusive on the matter of withdrawal: ‘It is possible to work out a boundary settlement compatible with the security of Israel and with the honour of the Arab States.’ Although acclaimed with considerable self-congratulation by Eban as the ‘most moderate possible formulation of Israel’s position’, commentators have been less impressed. U Thant observed that it ‘lacked the essential information about Israeli intentions without which the Arab Governments would not even consider any form of negotiations’ and that it was ‘not surprising’ that Egypt rejected it. Korn similarly dismisses it as ‘short on details’ and not ‘commit[ting] Israel to anything of significance that it had not already accepted’.⁶

To elicit where each of the main parties stood on the key provisions of 242, Jarring distributed in March 1969 a detailed questionnaire. Asked if Israel would ‘agree to withdraw its armed forces from territories occupied by it in the recent conflict?’, Foreign Minister Eban evasively responded: ‘When permanent, secure and recognized boundaries are agreed upon and established between Israel and each of the neighboring Arab states, the disposition of forces will be carried out in full accordance with the boundaries determined in the peace treaties.’ A few months later Eban pronounced that ‘there is no international authority for the proposal to restore the position and lines of 4 June 1967. … Israel will never agree to put herself again in that position of peril and vulnerability’. In a verbal elaboration of its August 1969 electoral platform – the so-called ‘Oral Torah’ – the Labor Party reiterated Israeli claims on large swaths of the conquered territories. Significantly, along the entire mainstream Israeli political spectrum – from Gahal (Menachem Begin, Ezer Weizman, Ariel Sharon) on the right through Labor to Mapam on the left – there was consensus that Sharm-el-Shaykh must be held. Gahal, which in its Likud incarnation would return Sharm-el-Shaykh along with the rest of Sinai to Egypt after the October war, for example, called in 1969 for Israel’s retention of ‘most of the occupied territories in Sinai’. Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk pointed to the title of a book published by Dayan in 1969, New Map, New Relations, as capturing the – contradictory – essence of Israel’s position: it wanted both conquered land and peace.⁷

Israel’s refusal to even consider a nonannexationist settlement was highlighted in early December 1969 when US Secretary of State William Rogers unveiled a plan – roughly approximating the international consensus – that called for an Israeli withdrawal from the conquered territory on the Egyptian front in exchange for Egypt’s signature on a binding peace agreement. The plan’s announcement, according to Brecher, ‘caused a sense of panic within the Israeli Government’. Summoned to an emergency session, the Cabinet issued an ‘unqualified rejection’ of it. Several days later, the United States put forth a similar initiative to settle the conflict between Israel and Jordan. In an ‘intensified atmosphere of crisis’, the Cabinet was called yet again into emergency session and stingingly condemned the new plan as ‘prejudic[ing] the chances of establishing peace’ and a ‘very grave danger’ to ‘Israel’s security and peace’. Prime Minister Golda Meir claimed that ‘any Israeli government that would adopt and implement’ the American proposals ‘would be betraying its country’. Ambassador Yitzak Rabin likewise savaged them as ‘an attempt on the very existence of Israel’. In his standard study of the period, Whetten lucidly points up the real source of Israel’s hostility to the US initiatives. Earlier that year Nasser had launched the so-called ‘war of attrition’ to compel Israel’s withdrawal from Sinai: ‘Israel was winning the war and thus had no incentive to alter its policy.’ In a word, the ‘language of force’ dictated policy.⁸

Responding in August 1970 to a new Rogers proposal to suspend hostilities with Egypt and resume peace negotiations under Jarring’s aegis, Israel for the first time in an official document acknowledged the ‘withdrawal’ principle, giving qualified approval to it. The gesture signalled no substantive departure in policy, however, Labor never having intended to retain all of the conquered territories. On the Egyptian front, Israel remained firm as Jarring prepared to launch a new initiative. Earlier that year Eban had underscored that ‘without a continued Israeli presence’ at Sharm-el-Shaykh, ‘a blockade, and consequently a war, would be inevitable’.⁹

On the eve of the meeting of Arab states at Khartoum in fall 1967, Egyptian President Nasser called for an early peace settlement with Israel and threatened to ‘go it alone’ if rebuffed at the summit. As noted above, the Arab leaders passed a resolution opposing ‘peace’ and ‘negotiations’ with and ‘recognition’ of Israel, and upheld ‘the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country’. Significantly, it also called for joint ‘political efforts at the international and diplomatic level’ to ‘ensure’ Israel’s withdrawal from the territories conquered in the June war. Middle East Record reports that, ‘within the framework’ of the ‘three noes’, a ‘number of concessions were mooted’ by the Arab states. Indeed, Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia formulated a peace plan at that time that called basically for a full Israeli withdrawal from the conquered territories in exchange for full demilitarization and other security guarantees in the evacuated areas, as well as an ‘end to the call for an Arab state of Palestine’. Egypt and Jordan agreed, but Israel did not, deeming it ‘one-sided’. Asked in October about recognition of Israel, Jordan’s King Hussein replied that ‘we are not against the existence of any nation. Israel is a nation, whether we like it or not’. An Egyptian government official similarly declared that ‘the right of Israel to exist is self-evident’. With Nasser’s concurrence, Hussein stated in November that, although ‘diplomatic recognition’ would not be granted, the Arab states were prepared, as part of a settlement, to ‘recognize Israel’s right to live in peace and security’. Jordan embraced UN Resolution 242 immediately after its promulgation, interpreting it to mean a full Israeli withdrawal in exchange for an end to the state of belligerency. More cautious at first, Egypt too soon announced its acceptance.¹⁰

‘Except when referring to the Khartoum resolutions’, Middle East Report summarizes for 1968, ‘Egyptian spokesmen spoke frequently of the desirability of a “peaceful solution”, but expressly rejected the possibility of concluding a peace treaty with Israel.’ Analyzing the diplomatic ‘deadlock’ in April 1968, Jarring observed that, in Egypt’s interpretation of 242, Israel’s complete withdrawal must precede implementation, and 242 did not call for ‘a peace-treaty, or for other contractual arrangements’. By August, Jarring was able to report that Egypt had conceded the former point, accepting a ‘package deal’: ‘withdrawal of Israeli troops no longer a precondition; no priority for the different provisions of the resolution’. On the latter point, however, Nasser proved not as flexible: ‘will not accept “peace-treaty” … is ready to issue a declaration of termination of state of belligerency, simultaneously with Israel, but not a joint declaration. … these declarations to be endorsed and guaranteed by the Security Council or by the four Great Powers’. Egypt also continued to insist on a comprehensive settlement with Israel, rejecting any separate deal: ‘peace … could only be achieved by Israeli withdrawal from all Arab territories’ (Egyptian Foreign Minister, Mahmoud Riad).¹¹

Responding to Jarring’s March 1969 questionnaire, Egypt (as well as Jordan) pledged nearly full acceptance of all the main provisions of 242 subject to a ‘withdrawal of Israel’s forces from all Arab territories occupied as a result of Israel’s aggression of 5 June 1967’: ‘termination of all claims or state of belligerency’, ‘the right of every State in the area to live in peace’, ‘respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area’, ‘freedom of navigation in international waterways’, etc. Asked its ‘conception of secure and recognized boundaries held by Israel’, Egypt’s technical response ambiguously read: ‘When the question of Palestine was brought before the United Nations in 1947, the General Assembly adopted its resolution 181 of 29 November 1947, for the partition of Palestine and defined Israel’s borders.’ Note, however, that Egypt had called for an Israeli withdrawal only from the territories conquered in the June war. And in lieu of a peace treaty, Egypt proposed a binding ‘instrument’ signed by Egypt and Israel that would be deposited with and endorsed by the Security Council.¹²

Throughout 1969, the Arab states took a series of initiatives basically conforming to the March reply. All were peremptorily dismissed by Israel. The most important of these was King Hussein’s ‘six-point’ settlement presented in a speech to the National Press Club in April. Publicly affirming all commitments made in the Jarring questionnaire, Hussein – with the ‘personal authority’ of Nasser – stated that ‘in return …, our sole demand upon Israel is the withdrawal of its armed forces from all territories occupied in the June 1967 war, and the implementation of all other provisions of the Security Council Resolution’. The ‘challenge’ of the plan, perorated Hussein, was that Israel can have either ‘peace or territory – but she can never have both’. But ‘on the next day’, reports U Thant, ‘the hopes inspired by this dramatic offer were dashed’. Deriding it as ‘nothing new’, Israel underlined that ‘it was unable to treat earnestly a demand of complete withdrawal’.¹³

Egypt’s first official reaction to the 1969 Rogers Plan calling for full withdrawal/full peace was ‘noncommittal’ (Quandt). Mainly concerned that the United States was proposing a bilateral deal (‘piecemeal settlement’), it withheld endorsement until the United States took a similar initiative on the other Arab fronts. By the time the United States presented an equivalent plan to Jordan in mid-December, however, Israel had already denounced the Rogers initiative in the strongest possible terms (see pp. 153–4 above). Egypt then effectively (if not explicitly) rejected the American proposal as well because, as the Egyptian foreign minister explained, ‘I saw no point in our accepting it, for it would mean further concessions within the framework of a settlement which we were doubtful the U.S. could get Israel to accept.’ (Hussein expressed satisfaction with the American initiative.) Egypt continued to suggest, however, that the US proposals ‘could serve as the basis for a solution in the Middle East, and are worth exploring further’, the Soviet Union reporting in mid-January 1970 that it had obtained Nasser’s agreement to them.¹⁴

In the final year of his life, Nasser – who, according to Eban, ‘refused’ to the bitter end ‘to give any thought to the prospect of restoring his territory by a diplomatic settlement with Israel’ – was still desperately pressing to break the diplomatic stalemate. In a February 1970 Le Monde interview, he speculated that ‘a durable peace is possible, not excluding economic and diplomatic relations’, if 242 were fully implemented: ‘Diplomatic relations are not possible immediately but no outstanding differences will remain so it will eventually come. Full normalization can only be attained in stages.’ Two months later, he suggested to the US assistant secretary of state for the Near East and South Asia, Joseph Sisco, that Egypt and Israel could jointly sign at the United Nations a document ending the state of war in accordance with the terms of 242. All that remained for Nasser’s successor (Anwar Sadat replaced Nasser after he died suddenly of a heart attack in September) was to make the final leap: a full – and, if need be, bilateral – treaty with Israel.¹⁵

The Jarring Initiative

In January 1971, Jarring prepared a comparison of the latest Israeli and Egyptian positions on 242. On the question of withdrawal, Israel held that military forces must be withdrawn ‘from territories lying beyond positions agreed to in the peace treaty’, and that the boundaries must be ‘secure, recognized, and agreed [to]’ (emphasis in original). On the question of a peace document, Egypt ‘did not comment’, Jarring filling in that ‘previously it expressed the view that all instruments of peace should be signed by the parties and addressed to the Security Council; the endorsement by the Security Council of those documents would constitute the final multilateral document’. To be sure, just as Jarring was compiling the memorandum, Foreign Minister Riad signalled Egypt’s willingness to ‘sign a peace treaty with Israel, provided that it included Israeli withdrawal from all the occupied territories’.¹⁶

At any rate, Jarring – coaxed by the United States to take a more aggressive approach – undertook on 8 February to break the diplomatic deadlock by making ‘clear my views on what I believe to be the necessary steps to be taken in order to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement in accordance with’ 242. He accordingly sought ‘from each side the parallel and simultaneous commitments which seem to be inevitable prerequisites of an eventual peace settlement between them’. From Egypt he requested a ‘commitment to enter into a peace agreement with Israel’. From Israel he requested a ‘commitment to withdraw its forces from occupied United Arab Republic [i.e. Egyptian] territory to the former international boundary between Egypt and the British Mandate of Palestine’.¹⁷

On 15 February, Egypt gave what was uniformly interpreted as an affirmative reply to Jarring’s aide-mémoire, explicitly stating its readiness to ‘enter into a peace agreement with Israel’. Noting that ‘at the beginning of February 1971, President Sadat … responded favorably to a plan for a peace settlement by Ambassador Jarring’, Israel’s distinguished UN representative, Gideon Rafael, characterized the Egyptian reply in his memoir as a ‘far-reaching development’: ‘For the first time, the government of an Arab state had publicly announced its readiness to sign a peace agreement with Israel in an official document.’¹⁸

Israel was taken off guard by Jarring’s initiative and even more so by Egypt’s affirmative reply. Told by Newsweek’s Arnaud de Borchgrave in early February that Sadat was prepared to make peace, Meir replied, ‘That will be the day.’ Furious at Jarring and U Thant – allegedly for overstepping 242’s mandate, but in reality for specifying a full withdrawal as the quid pro quo for a peace treaty – Israel nonetheless submitted at February’s end its reply. The fateful clause read: ‘Israel will not withdraw to the pre-June 1967 lines.’ Pointing to the ‘boundary issue’ as the ‘root cause’ of the conflict, an authoritative government statement issued in March was yet more emphatic on the matter of withdrawal: ‘As its condition for peace, Egypt would have Israel restore its past territorial vulnerability. This Israel will never do.’ And again: ‘Israel will never accept and will be even prepared to fight over if necessary … the issue of total withdrawal.’ And yet again: ‘Israel will not flinch in its insistence on the establishment of new and secure boundaries.’¹⁹

Israel’s refusal to join Egypt in acceptance of the international consensus killed any prospects for a diplomatic settlement. It also made war all but inevitable. In March 1971, U Thant issued an ‘appeal … to the Government of Israel to … respond favorably to Ambassador Jarring’s initiative’. In the introduction to his annual report for 1971, U Thant more extensively observed:

The United Arab Republic accepted the specific commitments requested of it, but so far Israel has not responded to the Special Representative’s request. Ambassador Jarring feels, and I agree with him, that, until there has been a change in Israel’s position on the question of withdrawal, it would serve little purpose to reactivate the talks. It is still my hope that Israel will find it possible before too long to make a response that will enable the search for a peaceful settlement under Ambassador Jarring’s auspices to continue.

U Thant further warned that ‘there can be little doubt that, if the present impasse in the search for a peaceful settlement persists, new fighting will break out sooner or later.’²⁰

With Israel’s flat rejection of the crucial commitment on withdrawal, Jarring decided against any new initiatives on the other Arab fronts. Jordan nonetheless avowed its readiness as well to formally end the state of war with Israel. In a mid-February memorandum to Jarring, Jordan proposed signing an ‘international instrument’ once Israel effected a ‘complete evacuation of occupied Arab territories’. In late February, Hussein volunteered in an interview with the London Observer that Jordan was ready to sign a peace treaty with Israel if there were a comprehensive Israeli withdrawal (the formula of ‘minor rectifications on a reciprocal basis’ applicable on the Jordanian frontier), and was also prepared to recognize Israel. Jordan’s view on signing a treaty with Israel, Hussein underlined, was ‘identical with that of the UAR’.²¹

Before turning to the aftermath of the Jarring initiative, it is instructive to examine how this episode – which, beyond its intrinsic interest, provides the pivotal context for the October war – has entered the official history of the ‘peace process’ via memoirs and academic scholarship. The first point to make is that it has just barely done so. Quandt’s now standard study of the peace process running to some 600 pages devotes all of two paragraphs to the Jarring initiative.²² Quandt at any rate has the merit of getting the basic facts generally correct. Meir observes in her memoir that, except for ‘talk about reopening the Suez Canal’, the ‘Arabs refused to meet us or deal with us in any way … in 1971 or 1972’. In a March 1971 interview with the London Times Meir had whistled a different tune as she acknowledged that ‘Anwar Sadat was the first Egyptian leader to say that he was prepared to make peace’. Possessing more derring-do than Meir, Dayan brazenly states in his memoir that Egypt’s reply to Jarring’s initiative was ‘that she was prepared to end the state of war but not to sign a treaty with Israel’. Back in February 1971, Dayan – declaring that he would prefer ‘Sharm-el-Shaykh without peace to peace without Sharm-el-Shaykh’ – had acknowledged that ‘if we return all the territories the Egyptians would be ready for peace’. And in March, he had cautioned that ‘there must be careful assessment of the situation because this is the first time that Arab leaders have openly talked about peace and lasting borders with Israel’. Turning to mainstream scholarship, Touval’s study (the ‘standard work on mediation in the Middle East’, according to Eban) discerns that the ‘obvious answer’ to the question of why the Jarring initiative failed is that ‘the parties’ – note the plural – ‘refused to make the necessary concessions’. Whetten illumines that ‘the response of both parties’ – note again the plural – ‘to Jarring’s initiative indicated the futility of using the good offices of the United Nations’. Similarly blaming the messenger for the message, Herzog waxes philosophical that ‘it is a sobering reflection on the relation of personalities to the creation of history to realize that a more able and decisive negotiator than Dr Jarring could well have achieved a breakthrough in 1971’. Israeli strategic analyst Shimon Shamir muses profoundly that the ‘precise significance’ of Sadat’s reply to Jarring is ‘debatable’ but was ‘probably more than a propaganda ploy’. Tillman’s important study devotes not a word to the Jarring initiative, instead reporting that, ‘in the wake of the psychological victory of the October War it become possible, as it had not been before, for responsible Arab leaders to contemplate peace with Israel’. In his monumental history of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Tessler tucks away a vague allusion to the initiative in an endnote.²³

The main brief in defense of Israel’s posture at the time of the Jarring initiative has been filed by Eban. At the General Assembly debate in December 1971, he spoke of the ‘widely diffused international legend which asserts that in February 1971 Egypt made a positive response to the aide-memoire of Ambassador Jarring while Israel made a negative response or none at all’. Neither this assertion nor the one that Israel’s response accounted for the diplomatic ‘deadlock’ were, according to Eban, ‘well founded’. In his more recent memoir, Eban similarly decries the ‘mythology’ that ‘there were chances of peace that were lost in 1971 as a result of Israeli obduracy’.²⁴

Eban’s central claim is that it was Egypt’s, not Israel’s, response that derailed the Jarring initiative. Thus he purports that the initiative ‘misfire[d]’ because Egypt was ‘not prepared to be satisfied with a peace engagement concerning Sinai alone … [and] insisted on an Israeli undertaking to withdraw from the Gaza strip and from all other “Arab territories” to the boundaries that existed on June 4, 1967’. Yet the decision that Sadat took in February 1971 effectively committed Egypt – whether for the better or for the worse is another matter – to a separate peace with Israel, as at Camp David. Committed as Egypt was in 1969 to a comprehensive settlement, it withheld approval of the Rogers Plan until a similar initiative was taken on the other Arab fronts. This time round, however, Egypt – looking out only for its own interests – immediately signed on. True, it pencilled in at the very bottom of its reply to Jarring after consenting to a peace treaty that the ‘United Arab Republic considers that the just and lasting peace cannot be realized without … the withdrawal of the Israeli armed forces from all the territories occupied since the 5th of June 1967’. But Sadat manifestly did not condition his acceptance of the Jarring initiative on such a comprehensive withdrawal. Thus in a minute comparison between the commitments requested and Egypt’s reply, Jarring noted only that ‘in relation to the withdrawal commitment sought from Israel, the United Arab Republic feels that it should apply to the Gaza Strip, as well as Sinai’. Indeed, no one doubted at the time that Sadat was prepared to treat, if need be, bilaterally with Israel, the London Observer, for example, reporting that Egypt’s ‘current objective was a signed peace treaty, not with “all states in the area”, but specifically with Israel’ and that ‘by making this treaty conditional on Israeli withdrawal from Sinai – and Sinai alone – Egypt had apparently agreed to seek its own peace with Israel, separately from other Arab states, if necessary’. Riad, who had for many years advocated the principle of a comprehensive settlement as foreign minister, effectively conceded in his memoir that it had been discarded with the Jarring initiative, the Egyptian position then being that ‘a durable peace necessitated that agreements should be concluded with all concerned Arab countries, although this did not mean they should all be signed on the same day’ (my emphasis). Similar airy phraseology calling for the eventual conclusion of agreements with all concerned Arab countries, incidentally, was written into the bilateral accords signed at Camp David in 1978, and the Egyptian-Israeli treaty of 1979.²⁵

Eban alleges several further limitations of Egypt’s February 1971 reply. I will consider the significant ones²⁶:

•‘Egypt insisted on a commitment from Israel for the achievement of a settlement of the refugee problem as a condition of the peace agreement.’ Indeed, Dayan conjured the specter in his memoir of a mass repatriation of refugees ‘undermining the very foundations of [Israel’s] existence’. Resolution 242 called for a ‘just settlement of the refugee problem’. Jarring accordingly held that the replies of Egypt and Israel to his aide-mémoire were ‘subject’ to the ‘eventual satisfactory’ resolution of the refugee question. In its response, Egypt called for a ‘just settlement of the refugee problem in accordance with United Nations resolutions’. The relevant UN resolution passed in December 1948 provided for the options of repatriation or compensation. As seen above, however, there was already a consensus that compensation was the only realistic option for the mass of Palestinian refugees. Indeed, Sadat explicitly stated at the time of the Jarring initiative that he considered ‘compensation and a referendum on the future of the Palestinians, without reference to repatriation to their former homes in Israel’ as a ‘reasonable way to solve the problem’ (my emphasis). One may further note that Jarring ‘relegated the Palestinian refugee problem to a subsidiary position on the peace agenda’ (Rafael), and Sadat mentioned the refugee question only ‘indirectly’ (Shamir) in his reply. Finally, the Camp David accords also enter a reservation in favor of ‘establish[ing] agreed procedures for a prompt, just and permanent implementation of the resolution of the refugee problem’ (‘Framework’).²⁷

•Egypt’s position on ‘freedom of navigation in the Suez Canal’ was that it ‘would be ensured “in accordance with the 1888 Constantinople Convention.” Now that Convention has been invoked by Egypt for 23 years, not as a justification for allowing Israeli ships and cargoes through the Canal, but as a pretext for obstructing their passage.’ Yet, Egypt had already consented to amend the Convention to accommodate all of Israel’s concerns. Even more to the point, the Egyptian–Israeli Treaty of 1979 also explicitly situates Israel’s ‘right of free passage through the Suez Canal … on the basis of the Constantinople Convention of 1888’ (Article V).²⁸

•Egypt insisted on ‘“the establishment of demilitarized zones astride the borders in equal distances”. … This reduces the proposal for demilitarized zones to sheer mockery. If massive demilitarization in the Sinai Peninsula is to be achieved – and without it how can a final peace between Egypt and Israel be envisaged? – Israel would have to undertake the total demilitarization of itself.’ Yet Egypt had already privately conceded that ‘more of the demilitarized zones along the reestablished 1967 borders would consist of Arab territory’. Indeed, Jarring speculated at the time that ‘it might be possible to demilitarize the whole of Sinai’. Eban alleges that the ‘most important’ reason the Jarring initiative ‘misfired’ was that Egypt ‘insisted on a military presence east of the Canal. Such a presence, however small, would have compromised the principle of demilitarization without which no Israeli government has ever agreed to evacuate areas of importance to security’. Amazingly, Eban seems unaware that Egypt consented to a full demilitarization of only about one quarter of the Sinai in the 1979 treaty with Israel (Article IV and Annex I).²⁹

Eban’s counterclaims are evidently devoid of substance. The one and only obstacle to a negotiated settlement in 1971 was Israel’s refusal to fully withdraw from the Sinai. Indeed, Eban himself privately admitted as much. In a mid-March meeting with U Thant devoted to the Egyptian reply, Eban stated:

There [are] some areas of obscurity, for example, concerning the freedom of navigation in the Canal and the UAR reference to Article X of the 1888 [Constantinople] Convention, or the rights of the Palestinians. But these [can] be cleared up quickly in direct negotiations. Of course, the crux of the matter [is] the question of withdrawal and boundaries. (emphasis added)

Leaving no room for doubt, Eban underscored: ‘Israel [will] not accept a solution based on Israeli withdrawal from Sharm-el-Shaykh.’³⁰

After Jarring

Official US policy through 1971 fully backed the Jarring initiative and put full responsibility for its derailment on Israel. Rabin recalled as ‘the most painful talk I ever had with Rogers’ a meeting at which the Secretary of State berated him because ‘Egypt’s attitude is positive, but Israel’s is negative’. At a March news conference, Rogers reiterated American policy as ‘the 1967 boundary should be the boundary between Israel and Egypt’. (In a report on the news conference, the New York Times pointed to Israel’s insistence on keeping Sharm-el-Shaykh and a corridor to it as ‘the central point of the present impasse’.) In April, Rogers informed Jarring that the United States was urging Israel ‘to come forward with a response to your February 8 aide-mémoire expressed in positive, negotiable terms. We have instructed Ambassador Barbour this week to make clear to Mrs Meir that we consider the next move is up to Israel.’ Expressing ‘support of the Jarring initiative’ in June, the Big Four powers – the United States, United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union – ‘welcomed the positive reply to this démarche of the UAR’, and ‘express[ed] the hope that Israel would give a similarly positive reply to this demarche’. U Thant laconically observes: ‘It was one of the rare occasions in my experience, however, that a formula that was agreed to by the four permanent members of the Security Council did not go through.’ UN representative George Bush reaffirmed in July that the United States ‘consider[ed] the reply of the UAR to Ambassador Jarring’s proposal to be positive’ and that it ‘hope[d] that Israel will make a similarly positive reply’.³¹

The United Nations issued similar appeals to Israel to respond positively to the Jarring initiative. All fell on deaf ears. When the UN Security Council moved from entreaty to condemnation in 1973, however, the US representative – now acting at Kissinger’s behest – exercised the veto, blocking action. Reaffirming ‘that the acquisition of territories by force is inadmissible and that, consequently, territories thus occupied must be restored’, the General Assembly in late 1971 passed a resolution that ‘notes with appreciation the positive reply given by Egypt’ to the Jarring aide-mémoire and ‘calls upon Israel’ to ‘respond favorably’ as well. U Thant observes that ‘one very important feature of the vote was that every European country – East and West – voted for the resolution’. A yet more forceful General Assembly resolution the next year that ‘deplores’ Israel’s failure to ‘respond favorably’ to Jarring’s ‘peace initiative’, and ‘invites Israel to declare publicly its adherence to the principle of non-annexation of territories through the use of force’ garnered even more affirmative votes. Meeting in special session in July 1973, the Security Council debated a new resolution on the Middle East conflict. The crucial paragraphs read as follows:

Strongly deplores Israel’s continuing occupation of the territories occupied as a result of the 1967 conflict, contrary to the principles of the Charter;

Expresses serious concern at Israel’s lack of co-operation with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General…

The British ambassador deemed the draft – note, incidentally, that it included the definite article before ‘territories’ – a ‘reasonable distillation of the view of the bulk of the members’. Thirteen votes were cast in favor, zero abstentions. The resolution did not pass, however. Beginning in 1971, Kissinger managed to sabotage Secretary of State Rogers’s initiatives and redefine US policy toward the Middle East. As seen below, Kissinger aligned himself completely with the Israeli position. The US delegate accordingly vetoed the Security Council resolution. The last hope of averting a war was dashed.³²

Flouting the international consensus, Israel moved to consolidate its hold on the conquered territories. In a 13 March 1971 interview with the London Times, Prime Minister Meir for the first time officially delineated the new boundaries that her government sought: Israel ‘must have’ Sharm-el-Shaykh and an overland connection to it, the border round Eilat ‘must be’ negotiated, Egypt ‘could not return’ to Gaza, the Golan Heights and a united Jerusalem must remain under Israeli control, and border adjustments on the West Bank would be necessary. Responding to Rogers’s March press conference, Meir stated that Israel would ‘definitely and categorically’ not withdraw from Sharm-el-Shaykh, Gaza and important parts of the West Bank. Addressing the World Zionist Congress in January 1972, Eban stressed that he ‘could not envisage any peace settlement without the permanent presence of Israeli forces in the Golan Heights and at Sharm-el-Shaykh’. (That month Eban also revealed that a ‘further obstacle has been added on the road to peace’: not Israel’s intransigence, but the ‘tyrant’ Quaddafi, with whom Egypt was confederating.) In February 1972, Dayan publicly stated that the new border with Egypt should run from Sharm-el-Shaykh ‘somewhere through Sinai to the Mediterranean’, while Meir told Time magazine that ‘Sharm-el-Shaykh is of absolutely no use to the Egyptians. … For us it is a lifeline’. In March Eban reportedly conditioned resumption of UN-sponsored talks on the cancellation of the Jarring initiative. Speaking on Israeli radio in April, Meir avowed that ‘Israel will never leave Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, Sharm-el-Shaykh or Gaza’. Interviewed by a Swedish journal in June, Eban stated that ‘Jarring adopted a position that Israel cannot accept. … Without control [of Sharm-el-Shaykh] a new war would start immediately’. Dayan declared in August that ‘on the Egyptian border … the key to security is the desert – the Sinai desert’. In March of the new year, Meir informed the National Press Club that the Golan Heights and Sharm-el-Shaykh were ‘non-negotiable’. Next month Meir opined that Egypt should recognize the importance of Sharm-el-Shaykh to Israel ‘just as we should recognize the vital importance of the Suez Canal to Egypt’. Come August, Israel’s Cabinet gave the stamp of approval to the Galili Plan. An ‘openly annexationist’ (Kapeliouk) blueprint, it envisaged the intensification of settlement building in the West Bank, a new city of 230,000 christened Yamit in northeast Sinai, a deep sea port in southern Gaza, a civilian-industrial settlement in the Golan Heights … ³³

Eban’s widely acclaimed memoir encapsulates the record just sampled as follows: ‘Between 1967 and 1973 the Arabs could have recovered all of Sinai, and the Golan, and most of the West Bank and Gaza without war by negotiating boundaries and security arrangements with Israel.’³⁴

With all avenues for a diplomatic settlement blocked, Sadat confronted essentially two options: unconditional surrender – or war. He chose the second.³⁵ Beginning in summer 1972, Egypt, along with Syria, began preparations for a conventional attack with the limited aim of recovering the Israeli-occupied territories. Indeed, Sadat (unbeknownst to Assad of Syria) intended no more than the seizure of a small beachhead on the East Bank of the Suez Canal in order to demonstrate that Egypt was still a power to reckon with.³⁶ Ironically, probably no war in history has been launched with as much advance publicity as the ‘surprise’ attack of October 1973. Sadat repeatedly warned that, if Israel remained obdurate, Egypt would have no recourse but to launch an attack. To cite one of literally scores of examples, in a 9 April 1973 Newsweek interview, Sadat declared: ‘The time has come for a shock. … Everything is now being mobilized in earnest for the resumption of the battle – which is now inevitable.’ The threats went unheeded, however, partly because one ‘deadline’ after another had passed without Sadat acting, but more so because Israel simply did not believe that Egypt had a war option. In this last calculation, Israel proved wrong – indeed in the war’s first days, it appeared fatally so.³⁷

In his account of the roots of the October war, Eban makes – albeit obliquely – a remarkable admission:

If Dayan had wanted to put through a program based on exchanging Sinai for peace, he could have done so from his position of strength in the Labor Party, which had already espoused that principle through the Eshkol government in June 1967. This would have prevented the Yom Kippur War.

Leaving aside the unjustifiably ad hominem nature of the attack (who among Israel’s leaders did not suffer from purblind triumphalism after the June victory?), Eban effectively concedes that Israel could have ‘exchang[ed] Sinai for peace’ before the October war. The singular obstacle to a diplomatic settlement – and cause of the October war – was Israel’s refusal to evacuate the Sinai. Yet, Eban’s admission begs another crucial question: Why did Israel ‘put through a program based on exchanging Sinai for peace’ after the October war at Camp David but not before it through Jarring’s offices? I want now to address this issue.³⁸

The Language of Force

Articulating the Israeli consensus, Rabin recalls in his memoir that ‘I certainly supported the government’s opposition to withdrawal from the whole of the Sinai and found no difficulty in arguing that a “peace” of this nature was a sure recipe for another war’. How, then, did ‘a sure recipe for another war’ metamorphose into a ‘sure recipe for a real peace’? On the rare occasions that this intriguing question is even suggested – it is never directly addressed since the Jarring initiative has been deposited in Orwell’s memory hole – the standard reply is the magic worked by Sadat’s journey to Jerusalem. As Rabin puts it in typically florid prose:

The idea of delivering the offer to the Israeli people in person, in Jerusalem, was a stroke of genius, and I don’t believe that without it there would have been much readiness on the part of the Israeli public to make so many concessions. … The psychological impact of Sadat’s visit was enormous. … [H]is appearance before the Knesset forced Israel’s government, as well as its citizens, to reassess what they had formerly considered to be their minimal demands for peace. Then Mr. Begin came out with his famous peace plan, in which the Israeli government agreed openly, for the first time, to the restoration of Egyptian sovereignty over every inch of Sinai.⁴⁰

Yet, there is one tiny flaw with the dramatic tale of Sadat’s ‘stroke of genius’. According to Avraham Tamir, who coordinated all of Israel’s strategic planning after the October war, Israel agreed to return Sinai before Sadat’s genial trip to Jerusalem. Referring to the secret talks between Dayan and an Egyptian representative in September 1977, Tamir reports: ‘Through this roundabout channel, the message was conveyed from Begin to Sadat that Egypt could expect to regain all of Sinai in exchange for peace. On 19 November, Sadat journeyed to Jerusalem on the historic visit that made world news.’ Indeed, even the ‘official’ version of these events strains credulity. Immediately after Sadat’s Knesset speech, Begin explicitly agreed at the one meeting between them to the ‘formal restoration of sovereignty over the Sinai peninsula to Egypt’. Yet, Begin surely did not find much comfort in Sadat’s speech. Over and over again the Egyptian president demanded not only the ‘end [of] the Israeli occupation of the Arab territories occupied in 1967’, but also the ‘achievement of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination, including their right to establish their own state’. These are the magical words that bridged the ‘psychological barrier’ and caused Israel to make a concession that it had withheld for fully a decade?⁴¹

There is, incidentally, an instructive lesson in Israel’s handling of the Sinai issue. Although formally agreeing to restore Egypt’s sovereignty, Israel haggled until the very end to retain parts of Sinai. Specifically, it sought to maintain control of the settlements, airfields and oil refineries that it had built. Yet Sharm-el-Shaykh – that ‘vital’ ‘lifeline’ that Israel ‘definitely and categorically’ would not evacuate – figured not at all in these intense, often bitter, negotiations. Indeed, Israel bargained to keep the settlements mainly for fear that dismantling them would set a bad precedent for the West Bank. It bargained to keep the airfields mainly to force the United States to foot the bill for building new ones within Israel proper. And it bargained to maintain the oil refineries mainly to force the United States to guarantee its future petroleum supplies. Israel’s one and only supposed ‘security’ interest in the Sinai – Sharm-el-Shaykh – was quietly abandoned without even a whimper. One may, I think, learn something from this episode about the substance – or lack thereof – of Israel’s avowed security concerns. Indeed, Israel’s control of Sharm-el-Shaykh proved ‘of no use’ (Schiff) during the October war. Predictably, Egypt simply blockaded the Bab el-Mandab Straits below Sharm-el-Shaykh to prevent Israeli ships from entering Eilat.⁴²

In any event, what made a diplomatic settlement possible in 1977 but not 1971 was the breakthrough, not of Sadat’s journey, but of Egyptian troops. In an important study, Israel: la fin des mythes, Amnon Kapeliouk points to a cluster of pervasive assumptions that underpinned Israeli security doctrine after 1967. Central among these was the belief that ‘war is not an Arab game’. In a word, Arabs could not fight. Typically, General Ezer Weizman sneered ‘War, that’s not for the Arabs’. General and Professor Yehoshafat Harkabi ‘diagnosed’ that Arabs were congenitally incapable of battle solidarity: ‘At the crucial moment of combat, an Arab soldier finds himself not supported by a tightly-knit unit but abandoned to his own devices. The combat unit disintegrates as each soldier looks out only for himself.’ Two months before the October war, Dayan lectured the Israeli army’s general staff that ‘the weakness of the Arabs arises from factors so deeply rooted that they cannot, in my view, be easily overcome: the moral, technical and educational backwardness of their soldiers’, and that ‘the balance of forces is so much in our favor that it neutralizes the Arab considerations and motives for the immediate renewal of hostilities’. General Uzi Narkiss proclaimed that ‘Israel’s principal enemy in the 1970s is the Soviet Union. The Arabs are merely secondary enemies who harass Israel in the area of relatively minor defence problems’. Eban derisively recalls the ‘official doctrine … that an Egyptian assault would be drowned in a sea of blood, that the Arabs had no military option’. He quotes from an article by Rabin in July 1973 that ‘reads like an anthology of all the misconceptions that were destined to explode a few weeks later’:

Our present defense lines give us a decisive advantage in the Arab–Israel balance of strength. There is no need to mobilize our forces whenever we hear Arab threats. … The Arabs have little capacity for coordinating their military and political action. … Israel’s military strength is sufficient to prevent the other side from gaining any military objective.

‘An atmosphere of “manifest destiny”, regarding the neighboring people as “lesser breeds without the law”’, Eban adds, ‘began to spread in the national discourse.’ Schiff casually mentions that the Israeli soldier’s ‘nickname’ for his opposite number in the Egyptian army was ‘monkey’. Indeed, it was precisely these arrogant, racist assumptions that enabled Egypt and Syria to achieve such a degree of surprise in October. ‘The Israelis’ over-confidence’, observes a military historian, ‘made them so certain that the Arabs would not dare attack, that they simply could not believe the abundant evidence that was inconsistent with their perceptions.’⁴³

Crucially, Kissinger – who effectively dictated US policy, and thereby held a veto over Israeli policy, in the Middle East – shared the belief that ‘war was not an Arab game’. In a conversation with Meir shortly after the war, Kissinger reportedly recalled:

Do you remember what we all thought before the war? – that we never had it better, and therefore there was no hurry? We and you were both convinced that the Arabs had no military option which required serious diplomatic action. Instead of doing something we joked about the shoes the Egyptians left behind in 1967.

Told by an Egyptian diplomat that ‘if there weren’t some agreement then there would be war’, Kissinger further rued, ‘in my heart I laughed and laughed. A war? Egypt? I regarded it as empty talk, a boast empty of content’.⁴⁴

Israeli society was dealt a devastating blow by the Arab attack. Tamir recalls it as the ‘most shattering experience in the history of Israel. … Within a few days the tide had turned, but the initial shock remained’. Schiff similarly observes that ‘the Day of Judgment War shook Israel from its foundations to the very summit. A deep lack of confidence suddenly replaced the exaggerated arrogance, and was most noticeable among leaders and senior officers’. Eban painfully recalls that in the first days of the war ‘it was plain that we were in military disarray’. Rating the early days ‘without a doubt … the worst defeat in the history of the Israeli army’, Dupuy reports that the ‘Israeli government was close to panic’. Indeed, Dayan uttered such ‘horrifying comments’ as ‘This is a war for the “Third Temple”, not for Sinai’. It was, according to Schiff, ‘the IDF’s first war in which doctors ha[d] to treat numerous shock cases’. Then there was the ‘moral crisis’ that ‘after years of fostering the tradition of not leaving wounded on the battlefield, the IDF now found itself having to abandon both wounded and fit in enemy territory’.⁴⁵

The balance-sheet at war’s end was a sobering one. Shlaim observes that the October war ‘radically changed the whole political and psychological balance of power to Israel’s disadvantage’. Indeed, according to Schiff, Israel’s most knowledgeable and influential military correspondent, Israel suffered from a ‘post-war trauma’ that it ‘had returned overnight to square one – where it all started. Despite all her past victories, Israel suddenly found herself again pondering dangers and realizing that defeat in large-scale local battles can endanger her existence’.⁴⁶

Worse still, the war had significantly enhanced the prospect of yet another round – with Israel’s victory at best uncertain. ‘The October 1973 war had fortified the Arabs’ self-confidence,’ Weizman underlined.

Above all, it had reduced the deterrent capacity of our armed forces. Previously, we could expect the Arabs to think twice before allowing their fingers to curl around the trigger; but in the Yom Kippur war the Arabs learned that, under certain conditions, they were capable of achieving some battlefield gains.

Weizman’s somber assessment was echoed by Schiff:

Clearly, the results of the … war will contribute to a ‘morale revolution’ in the Arab armies. … This is the first time in the history of the Arab–Israeli conflict that Arab armies have recorded any kind of military achievement. They will obviously be spurred on to additional investment and effort … to narrow the quality gap. … Despite her victories and growing military power, Israel cannot deter her enemies from attacking. … The Arabs broke the fear barrier. They weren’t victorious but, for the first time, they didn’t fail.

Schiff’s forecast about the outcome of the next war was equally ominous: ‘Exact prediction of the nature of a future war is impossible, but the general trends may be deduced. It will obviously be more difficult than its predecessor, more vicious and bloodier. The civilian rear will be hit, and Israel must assume that she will have immediately to fight on three fronts.’ And again, under the dire heading ‘Doubtful Supremacy’: ‘Israel’s military supremacy has been placed in doubt by the Day of Judgment war, and she cannot foresee the future to the degree that was possible in and after the Six Day War.’

Schiff centrally concluded that ‘in the new conditions, the importance of a political settlement obviously increases. Time isn’t on Israel’s side, and she must make greater efforts to achieve a true peace’. This is exactly what Israel moved to do – if only with the one country that had proven itself capable of speaking the ‘language of force’.⁴⁷

The United States predictably reached much the same conclusions as Israel. Quandt reports that the October war ‘challenged the prevailing attitude of policymakers toward the Arab world’. Israel’s ‘military power had not ensured stability’ and the Arabs ‘had apparently fought quite well’. The United States accordingly ‘for the first time … committed its top diplomatic resources to a sustained search for a settlement of the Arab–Israeli conflict’. ‘Politics’, Kissinger lectured the Egyptian journalist Mohamed Heikal in the war’s aftermath, ‘in our age is not a question of emotions, it is the facts of power.’ Put simply: to count, you must speak the ‘language of force’.⁴⁸

Addressing an international colloquium, Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur speculated with remarkable caution, ‘I really think – and I do not want to be too outspoken – I really think we have a good basis to assume that we can win a war; the question is how best to do it.’ Indeed, a consensus quickly crystallized ‘on how best to do it’: neutralize Egypt. The Arab battlefield successes in the October war were largely credited to the Egyptian account. Sadat’s ‘prestige was … enhanced’, Dupuy reports, ‘by the brilliant military success of the war, and by the fact that, despite later setbacks, the Egyptian armed forces ended the war intact with clearly one of the most powerful military machines in the world’. For the deputy Israeli commander on the Egyptian front, the war had made ‘one thing clear: the Egyptian army can be considered a good army, and there is no room for contempt’. Schiff reckons that the Egyptians had achieved ‘a kind of territorial draw’ with Israel. Yet, ‘on the Syrian front’, Schiff continues, ‘Israel undoubtedly won a major victory. … The Syrian Army wasn’t destroyed, but damaged and decimated’. Addressing the same colloquium as Gur, Rabin brusquely dismissed the threat posed by Syria: ‘Militarily, Syria alone is no problem whatsoever for Israel.’ Ditto the Palestinians: ‘Terrorism is not a threat to Israel’s existence. … I wish that the so-called PLO would be the only problem Israel would have to face – then Israel would have no problem.’ ‘Egypt’, Rabin stressed, ‘is the key country.’⁴⁹

The inexorable conclusion was that, for Israel to sustain its regional hegemony, Egypt – but Egypt alone – must be removed from the Arab front. At the colloquium, Rabin pointed to ‘relations between Egypt and Israel’ as the ‘key to the Arab–Israeli conflict’. Dayan quipped to Carter before Sadat’s journey that ‘the future is with Egypt. If you take one wheel off a car, it won’t drive. If Egypt is out of the conflict, there will be no more war’. The US analysis once again mirrored Israel’s. Carter observes in his memoir that ‘it was fairly obvious that the key to any future military threats against Israel was the Egyptians, who could provide the most formidable invading force and who had always been in the forefront of previous battles’. The logical inference, Quandt reports Carter reasoning, was that Israel must reach an accord with them: ‘Peace between Egypt and Israel would not make war impossible in the Middle East, but it would dramatically change its nature.’⁵⁰

Egypt’s basic formula for a settlement had not changed one whit since February 1971: ‘Sinai for peace.’ Ratification of the formula followed in short order at Camp David, Kissinger’s razzmatazz ‘shuttle diplomacy’ largely an irrelevant sideshow. The other Arab states were left out in the cold. For Quandt, ‘the disregard of Syria’s position seems hard to understand’. Eban similarly muses that ‘the refusal of other Arab leaders to follow Sadat’s journey and to reap similar fruits is one of the mysteries of the years that followed the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty’. The mystery is easily solved once one recalls that to pass Jerusalem’s gates Sadat had first to learn the keeper’s ‘language’. Jordan and Syria did not – at any rate, not sufficiently well to impress. So entry was barred.⁵¹

With Egypt neutralized at Camp David, Israel sought to consolidate its control of the West Bank and Gaza. The big club could now be wielded with relative impunity. Indeed, removing Egypt from the Arab front was the crucial precondition for the war plans now set in motion. In 1982, Israel moved to destroy the political nexus of the Palestinian national movement based in Lebanon. Some twenty thousand Lebanese and Palestinian souls perished between June and September – ample testimony that, so far as Israel was concerned, nothing had changed in the Middle East. The operative language was still force.⁵²