Chapter 6
1. Daniel Dishon (ed.), Middle East Record (hereafter MER), 1969–70, Tel Aviv 1971–7, pp. 169–70. Chaim Herzog, The War of Atonement, Boston 1975, p. 290.
2. The quoted phrases are, respectively, from Abba Eban, An Autobiography, New York 1977, p. 453; Shimon Shamir, ‘Israeli Views of Egypt and the Peace Process’, in William Quandt (ed.), The Middle East, Washington 1988, pp. 187–8; Abba Eban, Personal Witness, New York 1992, pp. 471, 589, 590, 492; Amnon Kapeliouk, Israël: la fin des mythes, Paris 1975, pp. 198–200; Ezer Weizman, The Battle for Peace, New York 1981, p. 81; Herzog, p. 290; Avraham Tamir, A Soldier in Search of Peace, New York 1988, pp. 203, 59; Moshe Dayan, Breakthrough, New York 1981, p. 284; Lawrence Whetten, The Canal War, Cambridge 1974, p. 330; Moshe Dayan, Story of My Life, New York 1976, p. 609; Gideon Rafael, Destination Peace, New York 1981 (title). Ze’ev Schiff, in October Earthquake, Tel Aviv 1974, p. 76, encapsulates Israel’s strategic philosophy as ‘Arabs only understand and respect the language of force’; for many examples culled from Israel’s press and scholarship, cf. Kapeliouk’s highly critical study of Israeli state policy prior to the 1973 war, pp. 198–200.
3. Neither a full withdrawal nor a peace treaty was explicitly spelled out in Resolution 242, but both were clearly implied in the first preambular paragraph, which ‘emphasiz[ed] the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security’. For the consensus interpretation favoring full Israeli withdrawal, cf. Chap. 5, pp. 144f. above. According to U Thant (A View from the U.N., Garden City 1978, p. 336), the Soviet Union first accepted in mid-1970 the principle that the Arab states must sign a peace treaty in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal; cf. Dishon, MER, 1969–70, p. 64. When Israel objected to Jarring’s February 1971 proposal (see p. 157f. above) on the grounds that it set Israel’s full withdrawal from Egypt as a ‘precondition’, Jarring pointedly observed that ‘Israel had established its own precondition in talks with him, that peace should be established with Egypt by means of a binding contractual treaty. They had now had such an assurance and if they wished further progress they would have to pay for it by agreeing to withdrawal’ (‘Notes on a meeting with Sir Alec Douglas-Hume, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of the United Kingdom, 27 September 1971’, in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 1, Envelope 3, Q18 [UN Archives]). In addition to a peace treaty, Israel had also demanded ‘direct negotiations’ with the Arab states. (Dishon, MER, 1967, pp. 274–5; cf. also Eban’s gloss on the February 1971 Jarring initiative in Whetten, pp. 148, 174–5, that ‘peace was never achieved by indirect proceedings’ and only ‘direct talks can rescue the Jarring mission’.) This ‘precondition’, however, was rejected by U Thant as both not called for by 242 and also ‘unrealistic’ (Arab Report and Record [hereafter ARR], 1–15 September 1969). Indeed, as Eban (Personal Witness, p. 592) forcefully observes, ‘direct talks’ figured barely at all in the negotiations that finally culminated in the Israeli—Egyptian treaty signed at Camp David; cf. William Quandt, Camp David, Washington 1986, p. 257. For Egypt’s objection to ‘direct talks’ with Israel ‘not because we simply chose to ignore its existence, but rather because … all such negotiations would necessarily be conditioned by the pressure and intimidation of actual military occupation’, cf. Mahmoud Riad, The Struggle for Peace in the Middle East, New York 1981, p. 78. For Israel’s insistence on direct negotiations as ‘represent[ing] the defiant stand of a victor, not the pliable position of reconciliation its leadership often professed’, cf. Whetten, p. 303.
4. For the 19 June cabinet proposal, cf. Yitzak Rabin, The Rabin Memoirs, New York 1979, p. 135, Eban, Personal Witness, p. 437, and Shimon Shamir, ‘Nasser and Sadat, 1967–1973’, in Itamar Rabinowich and Haim Shaked (eds), From June to October, New Jersey 1978, p. 216, note 8 (extensively quoting the proposal). Eban, Personal Witness, p. 451, describes the 19 June Cabinet proposal as ‘non-annexationist’, although its silence on an eventual withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza was clearly not accidental, as Rabin (pp.160–1) rightly observes, noting that ‘never, in any of its decisions, has the Israeli government consented to withdraw from the West Bank’. (Gaza, incidentally, was referred to in the 19 June proposal as ‘within the territory of the State of Israel’.) Dishon, MER, 1967, p. 275. ‘Goldberg with U Thant, 22 June 1967’, in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 3, E8 (UN Archives). Later that year in private talks with U Thant, Eban disingenuously represented Israel as possibly yet more flexible, suggesting that it was prepared to withdraw not only from Sinai and the Golan (‘although in some places some frontier adjustment might be indicated’), but also perhaps – the formulation is highly ambiguous – from the West Bank as well, so long as all the evacuated areas were demilitarized (‘Notes of meeting held in the Secretary-General’s Office, 29 September 1967’, in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 3, E39 [UN Archives]). In yet another exchange of views at the United Nations, Eban was more firm that ‘Israel will seek … some territorial adjustments, particularly on the Syrian front and in Gaza’ (‘Notes of meeting held in the Secretary-General’s Office on 30 October 1967’, in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 3, E47 [UN Archives]).
5. Rabin, pp. 136, 159; cf. David Korn, Stalemate, Boulder 1992, p. 86, which also ascribes Israel’s hardened stance to Khartoum (also Eban, Personal Witness, p. 446). Odd Bull, War and Peace in the Middle East, London 1973, p. 126; cf. Jon Kimche, There Could Have Been Peace, New York 1973, p. 262, confirming Israel’s intransigence on the territorial issue ‘even before the Prime Minister had been enabled to read the verbatim text of the discussions … at Khartoum’ (also Mohamed Heikal, The Sphinx and the Commissar, London 1978, p. 191).
6. Dishon, MER, 1968, pp. 122, 242–52 (cf. p. 250 for the background to the Allon Plan, first circulated in July 1967). MER notes parenthetically that ‘Israeli leaders preferred to avoid the term “annexation” because of its historical connotations’ (p. 252). Only the pre-1948 population of Gaza was to be granted citizenship once it was annexed, the 1948 refugees slated for removal to El Arish and the non-annexed areas of the West Bank (p. 252). ARR, 1–15 October 1968. ‘Summary of Foreign Minister Eban’s Remarks to Ambassador Jarring, October 15, 1968’ (confidential), in DAG 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 3, N8 (UN Archives). Korn, pp. 72, 130, 68. Eban, Personal Witness, p. 473. Eban effectively concedes that the real purpose of the ‘moderate’ nine-point peace plan was to ‘encourage President Johnson to carry out promises that he had made … concerning the supply of Phantom aircraft’. Yehuda Lukacs (ed.), The Israeli—Palestinian Conflict: A Documentary Record, Cambridge 1992, p. 178. U Thant, p. 282. For the background to Israel’s acceptance of 242, cf. Rafael, ch. 21. Although Israel refused to officially specify the border changes it intended on the grounds that ‘these cannot be presented until negotiations with the Arab countries concerned have come into effect’, they were pretty much known by the main interlocutors; cf. Jarring’s memorandum of 22 April 1968, ‘P.M. on “Secure Boundaries’” (strictly confidential), in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 1, Envelope 3, N4 (UN Archives), but cf. also Jarring’s memorandum of 1 August 1968, ‘Provisions of the Resolution’ (secret), in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 1, Envelope 3, N7 (UN Archives), which wrongly speculates that Israel was perhaps not firmly wedded to remaining in Sinai. For the frustration of U Thant and Jarring with Israel’s refusal to explicitly state its position ‘on the substance, that is, what does Israel mean by “secure boundaries’”, cf. ‘Notes on Meeting held in the Secretary-General’s Office on 5 October 1968’, in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 3, F26 (UN Archives). For Jarring’s analysis of the Israeli position as juxtaposed to the Egyptian one, cf. ‘Report: Teheran, 22 April 1968’ (strictly confidential), in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 1, Envelope 3, N2 (UN Archives), and the above-cited ‘Provisions of the Resolution’. Jarring’s nonpartisan conclusion was that ‘with the firm attitudes taken by Israel and the UAR there seems to be no possibility for breaking the deadlock without their announcing substantial changes in their positions’. I return to the Egyptian position below.
7. Security Council Official Records, S/10070, Annex I. ARR, 1–15 June 1969. Michael Brecher, Decisions in Israel’s Foreign Policy, New Haven 1975, pp. 460, 462. Dishon, MER, 1969–70, p. 114. Korn, p. 141. Michael Brecher, Decisions in Crisis, Berkeley 1980, p. 70. Kapeliouk, p. 17.
8. New York Times, 10 December 1969 (Rogers Plan; for an earlier, slightly different, version, cf. William Quandt, Peace Process, Berkeley 1993, pp. 437–40). Brecher, Decisions in Israel’s Foreign Policy, pp. 481–6. Korn, p. 161. Rabin, p. 158. Rafael, pp. 210–11. Whetten, p. 88. For a detailed exposition of the Rogers Plan and the reaction to it, cf. MER, 1969–70, pp. 30–42, and Brecher, Decisions in Israel’s Foreign Policy, ch. 8. Eban (Autobiography, p. 464) excoriates the Rogers Plan as ‘one of the major errors of international diplomacy in the postwar era’. Eban, Personal Witness, p. 478, falsely claims that the plan called on Israel to make an ‘important concession’ (i.e. withdrawal) ‘before Egypt had accepted the obligation to make peace with Israel’. As noted, the terms were mutually conditional. Rogers remained committed to the same basic formula throughout his tenure; cf. the ‘Fundamental Principles’ (top secret) presented by him to Jarring in September 1970, calling for a ‘final and reciprocally binding accord’ to be ‘deposit[ed] with the UN’ in which ‘Israel would agree that the former international boundary between Egypt and the mandated territory of Palestine is not excluded as the secure and recognized boundary between Israel and the UAR’, in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 1, Envelope 3, Q17 (UN Archives). For Rogers’s support of Jarring’s comparable February 1971 initiative, see pp. 162f. above.
9. Brecher, Decisions in Israel’s Foreign Policy, pp. 487–500. Dishon, MER, 1969–70, p. 77. ARR, 15–28 February 1970. The new Rogers proposal called for an ‘Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in the 1967 conflict’, whereas the Cabinet’s carefully crafted acceptance spoke of ‘withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the 1967 conflict to secure, recognized and agreed boundaries to be determined in the peace agreements’ (my emphasis). The phrase ‘secured and recognized boundaries’ from 242 was often invoked by Israel to justify less than a full withdrawal. ‘Agreed boundaries to be determined in the peace agreements’, not in 242, was evidently included in Israel’s reply with the same intent.
10. ARR, 16–31 August 1967, 1–15 September 1967, 1–15 November 1967. Lukacs, pp. 454–5 (Khartoum resolutions). Dishon, MER, 1967, pp. 256–67, 272. Jordan and Egypt subsequently maintained that Khartoum enjoined a ‘peace treaty’, not ‘peace’, with Israel; cf. DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 3, E38 (UN Archives), and Dishon, MER, 1967, p. 269. DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 3, E38 (UN Archives) (Egypt-Jordan agreement to Tito plan). For proposals similar to the Tito plan mooted by Jordan and Egypt in 1967, cf. Dishon, MER, 1967, pp. 266–7.
11. Dishon, MER, 1968, pp. 205, 209. ‘Report: Teheran, 22 April 1968’ (strictly confidential), in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 1, Envelope 3, N2 (UN Archives). ‘From Ambassador Jarring, 1 August 1968, Provisions of the Resolution’ (secret), in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 1 (?), N7 (UN Archives). Riad, p. 90. Regarding Egypt’s views on other aspects of 242, Jarring reported that ‘recognition that the Gaza Strip is not UAR territory … no negative reaction to UN administration … but no question of ceding [it] to Israel’. This was pretty much Israel’s private view also as late as November 1968, Eban informing U Thant that his government considered Gaza to be in the Egyptian ‘sector’ but that Egypt ‘should not return to Gaza, which should be left to the people of Gaza’ (‘Notes on Meeting in the Secretary-General’s Office, 9 November 1968’, in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 3, F31 [UN Archives]); cf. also ‘Highlights of Ambassador Jarring’s Report, 2 March 1968’ (top secret), in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 3, F2 (UN Archives), where Jarring speculates that ‘Gaza will not be returned to the UAR by Israel. There is a possibility that the area will be placed under United Nations administration for some time’. Regarding the Egyptian position on the 1948 Palestinian refugees, Jarring reported that ‘general indications that the most important aspect of the refugee question would not be repatriation, but compensation and rehabilitation’. A late December Soviet peace plan called only for a ‘symbolic’ return of a small number, the rest to receive financial compensation (ARR, 1–15 January 1969); cf. ‘Highlights of Ambassador Jarring’s Report, 2 March 1968’ (top secret), in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 3, F2 (UN Archives), where Jarring reports that ‘Jordan will be prepared to absorb most of the refugees in its territory’. Jarring drew up in August 1968 a ‘Summary Statement of a Broad Estimate of Economic Costs of a Solution of the Arab Refugee Problem’ (strictly confidential), estimating that the ‘total net investment needed … US $1.5 to US $2 billions’, and that ‘the back of the refugee problem should be broken within five years’ (DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 1, Envelope 3) (UN Archives). Jordan responded more or less as Egypt to Jarring’s inquiries, adding that it would ‘accept boundary rectifications’ (the principle of ‘minor border adjustments … in a reciprocal way’ was publicly agreed to in January 1969 [ARR, 1–15 January 1969]). Egypt publicly embraced 242 in March 1968, and the ‘package deal’ in October (Dishon, MER, 1968, pp. 213–14, ARR, 1–15 October 1968).
12. S/10070, Annex I. Dishon, MER, 1969–70, p. 15, quotes the New York Times to the effect that ‘Israeli sources said the Arab answers to the questionnaire had taken an extreme position in referring to the 1947 partition lines as a basis for a settlement’. As seen above, this is at best a half-truth. Indeed, any ambiguity in the Arab position was removed in April 1969 with Hussein’s ‘six-point’ peace plan, referring only to the June 1967 borders; see below.
13. For Hussein plan, cf. ARR, 1–15 April 1969, and Dishon, MER, 1969–70, p. 15. Regarding Hussein’s proposal, U Thant (pp. 320–1) reports that ‘Israel for the first time was offered an explicit public pledge of free navigation through the Suez Canal’ (emphasis in original). For a ‘five-point’ Nasser initiative – ‘declaration of non-belligerence’, ‘respect for the territorial integrity of all countries in the Middle East, including Israel, in recognized and secure borders’, etc. – immediately condemned by Eban as a ‘plan to liquidate Israel’, cf. Newsweek, 10 February 1969, and ARR, 1–14 February 1969.
14. Quandt, Peace Process, pp. 81–3. Riad, pp. 110–11, 114. U Thant, p. 329. Egypt unofficially denounced the Rogers Plan from the outset as an unprincipled separate deal (ARR, 1–15 November, 16–30 November, 1–15 December 1969, and Mohamed Heikal, The Road to Ramadan, New York 1975, p. 91). For Egypt’s subsequent statements on the Rogers plan, cf. ARR, 1–14 February 1970, and Korn, pp. 163–4.
15. Eban, Personal Witness, p. 484. Le Monde, 19 February 1970. Korn, pp. 240–1.
16. ‘Comparison of the Papers of Israel and the United Arab Republic’, in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 1, Envelope 3, Q2 (UN Archives). ARR, 16–31 January 1971.
17. William Quandt, Decade of Decisions, Berkeley 1977, p. 134; Quandt, Peace Process, p. 121. For a detailed account of the Jarring mission, cf. ‘Report by the Secretary-General on the Activities of the Special Representative to the Middle East, 4 January 1971’ (S/10070), and the updated ‘Report of the Secretary-General under Security Council resolution 331, 18 May 1973’ (S/10929). For the early phases of the Jarring mission, cf. also Dishon, MER, 1968, pp. 119–32. For the Jarring aide-memoire submitted to Egypt and Israel, and their respective replies, cf. ‘Report of the Secretary-General on the activities of the Special Representative to the Middle East, 30 November 1971’ (A/8541 – S/10403).
18. Rafael, pp. 231, 256. The American minister in Cairo, David Bergus, was reportedly ‘elated’, commenting that ‘here are the magic words’ (Riad, p. 188).
19. Kapeliouk, p. 282, note 77. Policy Background: The Components of a Secure Peace, 10 March 1971, Embassy of Israel, Washington, DC (mimeo.) (UN Archives). Asked to comment on the sincerity of Egyptian peace overtures, Meir told an Israeli newspaper in late January: ‘There is no sign which allows us to believe that the Egyptians take the Jarring negotiations seriously.’ In an early February interview, Meir suggested that the test of Egypt’s sincerity would be its willingness to sign a peace treaty (ARR, 16–31 January 1971, 1–14 February 1971). For background to Israel’s reply to Jarring on the question of withdrawal, cf. Rafael, pp. 256–7. Decrying that Jarring had ‘proposed certain territorial arrangements’, Israel’s UN representative, Yosef Tekoah, informed U Thant at an early February meeting that ‘Israel regretted the submission of the aide-méemoire’ and that ‘it was impossible to proceed with the Jarring negotiations in such a manner’ (‘Notes on Meeting between Secretary-General and Mr. Yosef Tekoah, Permanent Representative of Israel to United Nations, 11 February 1971’, in Middle East, 1970 [sic], H12 [UN Archives]). Deeming the call for withdrawal ‘arbitrarily determin[ed]’, the official March statement harshly declared that
the authority of the UN Secretary General is defined by the United Nations Charter. It does not include the right to determine Israel’s future boundary. It is not the UN Secretary General who will have to live with Egypt once these boundaries, whatever they are, are delineated.
The document also desperately sought to downplay the significance of Egypt’s gesture, alleging that its ‘acceptance of an invitation to “enter into a peace agreement with Israel”’ was a ‘tactical ploy’ to ‘drive a wedge between Israel and the United States’, as well as a ‘semantic’ one that presented ‘the term “peace agreement” as though it were an unprecedented concession’, and that ‘but for the expression of willingness to enter into a peace agreement, … Egypt’s position has not changed one iota from its traditional posture’. For Israel’s opposition to the Jarring initiative on account of its call for full withdrawal, cf. also ‘Notes on a Meeting with the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Israel, held in the Secretary-General’s Office on Friday, 1 October 1971’, in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 1, Envelope 3, Q18 and Q19 (UN Archives).
20. ‘Further Report by the Secretary-General on the Activities of the Special Representative to the Middle East, 5 March 1971’, para. 15 (S/10070/Add. 2). ‘Introduction to the Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, September 1971’, in General Assembly Records: Twenty-Sixth Session, Supplement No. 1A (A/8401/Add. 1), paras 219, 221; cf. para. 223: ‘Ambassador Jarring has clearly defined the minimum conditions that are required to move the peace talks ahead and, until those conditions are met, it is hard to see what else he can do to further his efforts.’ In his memoir, U Thant similarly recalled:
It was clear from the two replies that the U.A.R., for the first time in twenty-three years, officially committed itself to enter into a peace agreement with Israel, while Israel explicitly stated that it would not withdraw to the pre-June 1967 lines. Thus, Mr. Jarring was faced with a difficult dilemma. He had asked the two governments to make parallel and simultaneous commitments. The U.A.R. said that it would, Israel said that it would not. (Thant, p. 347)
21. ‘Implementation of Security Council Resolution 242 (1967) of 22 November 1967 For the Establishment of a Just and Lasting Peace in the Middle East, 11 February 1971’, in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 1, Envelope 3, Q4 (UN Archives). ARR, 15–28 February 1971. For Jordan’s consent to a peace treaty with Israel, cf. also the United Kingdom’s intervention at the Security Council, 11 June 1973, where it is noted regarding Egypt’s reply to Jarring’s aide-mémoire that ‘Jordan too has given an analogous undertaking’ (S/PV.1721). Jordan repeatedly expressed its acceptance of ‘minor and reciprocal border rectifications with Israel’; cf. ARR, 16–30 April 1971, and note 11 above. Jarring reported in March 1971 that Syria too had accepted the principle of ‘minor rectifications’ (and apparently the stationing of a UN force in the Golan) (DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 1, Envelope 3, Q9 [UN Archives]). Yet, former president Carter writes in his memoir that Sadat’s agreement at Camp David to ‘some minimal deviation from the 1967 borders’ was ‘an important concession and, so far as I knew, unprecedented for an Arab leader’ (Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith, New York 1982, p. 283). Throughout 1972 and early 1973, Hussein made yet further concessions to reach an accord with Israel. Retreating from the demand for ‘total recognition’ of Jordan’s rights to Jerusalem, Hussein proposed in March 1972 that Jerusalem become the ‘capital of Israel and the capital of the Palestinian portion of Jordan. There is no reason why they cannot exist together’ (ARR, 16–31 March 1972). Kissinger reports in his memoir that Jordan had directly offered Israel a peace treaty, border changes, as well as Israeli military outposts, even settlements, along the Jordan River (Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, Boston 1982, pp. 219–20; cf. ARR, 16–31 March 1972, for indirect confirmation). Kapeliouk observes that Jordan’s ‘moderate policy’ on the eve of the October war had ‘no impact’: ‘Hussein proclaimed a desire for a separate peace with Israel, even at the cost of certain border modifications, but these proposals were completely rejected by Israel.’ The government’s duplicity was condemned in media commentary, the Labor Party weekly, Ot, editorializing that ‘we demand of Hussein an unconditional surrender’, and Haaretz that ‘Israeli pretensions with regard to Hussein are hypocritical’ (Kapeliouk, p. 64). Indeed, by March 1972, even Syria had announced its acceptance – albeit less compellingly – of 242 ‘when it is interpreted as providing for the withdrawal of the enemy from Arab territory occupied in 1967, and as a confirmation, assertion and realisation of the rights of the Palestinians’ (ARR, 1–15 March, 1972; for details, cf. Khouri, ‘United Nations Peace Efforts’, in Malcolm Kerr [ed.], The Elusive Peace, Albany 1975, p. 79; Rabinowich, ‘Continuity and Change in the Ba’th Regime in Syria’, in Rabinowich and Shaked, p. 44). More generally, cf. Ambassador Yost’s article in Life magazine, 9 April 1971, under the prophetic title ‘Last Chance for Peace in the Mideast’, reporting that Egypt and Jordan ‘have in fact been ready for a year and a half to enter into a ‘binding peace containing firm reciprocal commitments’.
22. Quandt, Peace Process, p. 122. Indeed, for all that has been written on the ‘peace process’, apparently no previous researcher has ever even consulted the extensive file on the Jarring mission in the UN Archives.
23. Golda Meir, My Life, New York 1975, p. 398. The Times (London), 13 March 1971. Dayan, Story of My Life, pp. 453–4. ARR, 15–28 February 1971. Kimche, p. 305. Saadia Touval, The Peace Brokers, Princeton 1982, p. 137; cf. pp. 160, 163, where the failure of the Jarring initiative is attributed, not to Israel, but to ‘the incompatibility of the parties’ positions and the firmness with which they held them’, and also ‘the structure of the conflict, which had come to overlap in part with the East—West struggle’. Eban, Personal Witness, p. 557. Herzog, p. 19. Whetten, p. 175; cf. p. 310, where the Arabs are taken to task for failing before the October war to ‘demonstrate[ ] … the will to make peace’. Shamir, ‘Nasser and Sadat, 1967–1973’, in Rabinowich and Shaked, pp. 195–6. Seth P. Tillman, The United States in the Middle East, Bloomington 1982, pp. 22–3 (emphasis added). Mark Tessler, A History of the Israeli—Palestinian Conflict, Bloomington 1994, p. 817, n. 30. More generally, cf. Carter, p. 276, which reports that before Camp David ‘none of the Arab states was willing officially to acknowledge Israel’s status as a nation or even its right to exist’.
24. United Nations General Assembly, Twenty-Sixth Session, Official Records, 1971 Plenary Meetings, 2000th Meeting, 6 December 1971, para. 89; cf. para. 99: ‘how monstrous it is for the international atmosphere to be filled with the myth that Egypt had replied more affirmatively to Dr. Jarring’s aide-memoire than had Israel’. Eban, Personal Witness, p. 499. Eban’s 1992 assessment of the Jarring initiative appears under the chapter heading ‘Could There Have Been Peace?’ The only significant addition (apart from updating) to his 1977 memoir, the chapter is plainly a response to Kimche’s study, There Could Have Been Peace, which had concluded that the February proposal ‘opened [the door] sufficiently for a switch from political warfare to serious probing questions and discussions between Egypt and Israel with Dr. Jarring acting as go-between. But that was not how the matter was seen in Jerusalem’. Underlining the Labor government’s reply that it ‘will not withdraw’, Kimche further observed that ‘the Israelis seemed to be scaling up their demands as the Egyptians were inclined to scale theirs down’ (pp. 300–2). Scrupulously silent in the first memoir on Egypt’s consent to sign a peace treaty with Israel, Eban ascribed responsibility for the February initiative’s failure to the Arabs (‘While they were clear about what Israel should do about withdrawal, the Arab governments were not specific about what they would do in the direction of peace. … The Jarring Mission thus came to a permanent end’) and Jarring himself (‘Dr. Jarring’s mission had been paralyzed since his February 1971 memorandum, in which he had endorsed Egypt’s territorial claims – and thereby lost Israel’s confidence’) (Autobiography, pp. 471, 486). In his more recent memoir, Eban puts the blame on the ‘U.N.’s unique fantasy world’ as well as Israel’s principal interlocutors – ‘If there was an embryo of peace in the 1971 exchanges, Jarring and the United States are mainly responsible for the miscarriage’ (Personal Witness, pp. 501, 502).
25. ‘Comparison Between the Commitments Requested in Ambassador Jarring’s Aide-Mémoire of 8 February 1971 and the United Arab Republic Aide-Mémoire of 15 February 1971’, in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 1, Envelope 3, Q6 (United Nations Archive). ARR, 15–28 February 1971. Riad, p. 214; cf. p. 189 for a more evasive formulation regarding the separate peace. The opening paragraph of the ‘Framework for Peace in the Middle East Agreed at Camp David’ states that the signatories invite ‘other parties to the Arab—Israeli conflict to adhere to it’, and the first main section (‘Framework’) begins that ‘this framework as appropriate is intended … to constitute a basis for peace not only between Egypt and Israel, but also between Israel and each of its neighbors which is prepared to negotiate peace with Israel on this basis’. The preamble to the Egyptian—Israeli peace treaty reads that the ‘framework as appropriate is intended to constitute a basis for peace not only between Egypt and Israel but also between Israel and each of its other Arab neighbors which is prepared to negotiate peace with it on this basis’, and that the ‘Treaty of Peace between Egypt and Israel is an important step in the search for comprehensive peace in the area and for the attainment of the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict in all its aspects’. Eban, Personal Witness, pp. 502–3; cf. Eban’s intervention in the United Nations General Assembly, 26th Session, Official Records, 1971 Plenum Meetings, 2000th Meeting, 6 December 1971, para. 98. Rabin ‘concede[s]’ that Egypt’s willingness to ‘enter into a peace agreement with Israel’ was a ‘milestone’, but then qualifies that the ‘entire document bore Sadat’s evasive imprint’ as it also called for an Israeli withdrawal ‘on all the other fronts as well’. Less categorical than Eban, Rabin leaves open whether ‘there was a conditional link between the two sections of the answer or not’ – as if Israel could not have put Sadat to the test if there were any genuine doubts on this score. Rabin further maintains that the real breakthrough (‘political coup’) of Sadat’s 1977 Knesset speech was that he was ‘prepared to make peace with [Israel] without waiting for the other Arab states to agree. … [I]t was clear, without his spelling it out, that if the other Arabs rejected his terms for peace, Sadat would go it alone’ (pp. 192–3, 323). Note that in the Knesset speech, Sadat repeatedly ‘insisted’ that he did not ‘come here for a separate agreement between Egypt and Israel’, that Israel must effect a ‘complete withdrawal from the Arab territories occupied in 1967 … including Arab Jerusalem’, etc. Yet then it was ‘clear’ that Sadat ‘would go it alone’, but in 1971 it was not … Cf. also Dayan, Story of My Life, pp. 453–4, which reports Egypt’s reply to Jarring as Israel must ‘withdraw not only from Egyptian territory but also from the Gaza Strip and the rest of the Arab lands, retiring to the pre-war borders’, and the authoritative Israeli government statement, Policy Background: The Components of a Secure Peace, 1971, Embassy of Israel, Washington, DC (mimeo.) (UN Archives), which reports it as ‘Israel is required to carry out a total withdrawal from Sinai and the Gaza Strip, indeed from all the territories on every front’. Touval’s ‘standard work on mediation in the Middle East’ (Eban) somewhat overstates that Egypt’s ‘readiness to conclude a peace agreement was conditional upon Israel committing itself to withdraw not only from Sinai but also from the Gaza strip (which Jarring had not requested)’ – compare Jarring’s more tentative formulation of Egypt’s view regarding Gaza cited above – but does not pretend that Egypt was demanding a full withdrawal on all fronts (Touval, pp. 157–8). Not technically Egyptian territory, Gaza was excluded from Jarring’s aide-mémoire. (Gaza had been placed under Egyptian administration in the 1949 armistice agreement pending the conclusion of a peace settlement.) The omission, however, was apparently without prejudice to Gaza as an Arab territory occupied by Israel that should eventually be de-occupied (cf. Egypt’s intervention in S/PV.1721, 11 June 1973, and the Secretary-General’s reply in S/PV.1725, 14 June 1973). Eban demurs that Jarring’s view that ‘Gaza should be restored to Arab rule and not left in Israeli hands’ gave ‘full endorsement’ to the ‘Arab territorial claims’ (Eban, Personal Witness, p. 500). Yet Eban himself had earlier upheld the identical position; cf. note 11 above. One may further note that Eban interprets the Camp David Accords as meaning that Gaza was an ‘area of indeterminate status unconnected to the sovereign territory of Israel’, and that Israel had ‘virtually signed’ Gaza ‘away’ (Eban, Personal Witness, p. 600). The 1979 Egyptian—Israel treaty states simply that the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai would be ‘without prejudice to the issue of the status of the Gaza Strip’.
26. I leave to one side Eban’s more vacuous ‘arguments’ – e.g. ‘The fact that Israel would seek some territorial revision was well known’, and ‘Sadat could have hoped that in vigorous negotiation he could get Israel’ to offer ‘all of Sinai for peace’ (Personal Witness, p. 501). There was not only no basis in 1971 for the latter claim but it also flatly contradicts the former one. Meir similarly purports that throughout her tenure Israel held only that ‘all of Sinai’ would not be returned ‘at once’ to the Egyptians (p. 371). Cf. also Whetten, p. 330, claiming that Israel sought to ‘negotiate away for six years’ and ‘intended to return’ the Sinai.
27. United Nations General Assembly, Twenty-Sixth Session, Official Records, 1971 Plenum Meetings, 2000th Meeting, 6 December 1971, para. 90; cf. Eban, Personal Witness, p. 503. Dayan, Breakthrough, pp. 453–4, 610–11. Cf. also Policy Background: The Components of a Secure Peace, 10 March 1971, Embassy of Israel, Washington, DC (mimeo.) (UN Archives), which similarly purports that the Egyptian reply called on Israel to ‘renounce its sovereign rights on the refugee issue and give entry to a mass Arab influx’. Newsweek, 22 February 1971. ARR, 15–28 February 1971. For the consensus view on the refugee question, cf. note 11 above. Rafael, p. 257. Shamir, ‘Nasser and Sadat, 1967–1973’, in Rabinowich and Shaked, p. 195.
28. United Nations General Assembly, Twenty-Sixth Session, Official Records, 1971 Plenum Meetings, 2000th Meeting, 6 December 1971, para. 91; cf. Eban, Personal Witness, p. 502, and Eban’s intervention in the United Nations General Assembly, Twenty-Sixth Session, Official Records, 1971 Plenary Meetings, 2015th Meeting, 13 December 1971, para. 56 (also Meir’s interview in Newsweek, 1 March 1971). Whetten, p. 144, reports that in January 1970 Egypt agreed to ‘sign a declaration limiting its application of Article 10 of the Constantinople Convention, which had granted it authority to restrict passage of the Canal if there was a danger of war’. Eban similarly alleged that, regarding the Straits of Tiran, Egypt ‘replied with an offer of “freedom of navigation … in accordance with the principles of international law.” The last eight words are identical with those invariably invoked by Egypt to deny the international rights of navigation in the waterway’. Yet Sadat was prepared to ensure Israel’s free passage even by permitting an international force to be stationed at Sharm-el-Shaykh – ‘It could be any international force. It doesn’t matter to me’ – directly subject to, and removable only by a unanimous vote of, the Security Council. Indeed, such a provision was ultimately incorporated in the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli treaty (Article IV and Annex I). United Nations General Assembly, Twenty-Sixth Session, Official Records, 1971 Plenum Meetings, 2000th Meeting, 6 December 1971, para. 92; cf. Eban, Personal Witness, p. 502, and Eban’s intervention in the United Nations General Assembly, Twenty-Sixth Session, Official Records, 1971 Plenary Meetings, 2015th Meeting, 13 December 1971, para. 56. Newsweek, 22 February 1971. In the Newsweek interview, Sadat reiterated several times over that he would ‘guarantee’ Israel ‘freedom of navigation in the canal and the strait’. Cf. also Sadat’s interview in Newsweek, 9 April 1973:
We will agree to anything for Sharm and guarantee freedom of [Israeli] navigation [but not] Israeli occupation. We will turn it over to the international community under any formula they think desirable – the Big Four of the Security Council, including China, with their troops, or neutral forces under their guarantee.
29. United Nations General Assembly, Twenty-Sixth Session, Official Records, 1971 Plenum Meetings, 2000th Meeting, 6 December 1971, para. 95. Eban, Personal Witness, pp. 502–3. ‘Notes on a Meeting with Sir Alec Douglas-Hume, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of the U.K., 27 September 1971’, in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 3, Envelope 3, Q18 (UN Archives). Eban also objected to Egypt’s call for a UN peace-keeping force to be stationed adjacent to the international border, since ‘no proposal of the kind suggested by Egypt is contained in Ambassador Jarring’s aide-memoire’ (para. 96). Yet, precisely these provisions were incorporated into the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli treaty (Article IV and Annex I).
30. ‘Notes on a Meeting between Secretary-General and Mr. Abba Eban, 18 March 1971’, in Middle East, 1971,J70 (UN Archives). In a mid-March confidential letter to the foreign minister of the Netherlands, Eban pointed singularly to the issue of ‘an agreed and secure boundary’ as separating Egypt and Israel (‘Letter from [sic] the Foreign Minister of the Netherlands, 14 March 1971’ [top secret], in DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 3, J68 [United Nations Archive]). Rafael reports that, in its consideration of the Jarring initiative, Israel was ‘hard-pressed’ by the ‘objectionable territorial conditions’. He nonetheless credits Israel’s negotiating posture at the time as ‘contain[ing] all the elements of the future peace settlement between Israel and Egypt’ (Rafael, pp. 256, 253).
31. Rabin, p. 194. ARR, 16–31 March 1971. New York Times, 17 March 1971. ‘Notes on the Big Four Meeting on the Middle East on 24 June 1971’, in Middle East, 1971, J100 (UN Archives). Thant, pp. 348, 349. DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 1, Envelope 3, Q11 (UN Archives). DAG – 1/5.2.2.1.2, Box 1, Envelope 3, Q17 (UN Archives). On the Big Four and the Jarring initiative, cf. also Egypt’s intervention at the 11 June 1973 meeting of the Security Council (S/PV.1721), and the Secretary-General’s reply at the 14 June 1973 meeting (S/PV.1725). For Rogers’s reportedly chilly reception in Israel when he confirmed that ‘America was not prepared to modify its proposal for a near-total withdrawal’, cf. ARR, 16–31 May 1971.
32. United Nations Yearbook, 1971, 1972, 1973. U Thant, pp. 352–3. United Nations Security Council, S/PV.1734. ARR, 16–31 July 1971. Quandt, Decade of Decisions, p. 128; Quandt, Peace Process, p. 116. For the best account of the UN record throughout the 1967–73 period, and background to the July 1973 Security Council resolution, cf. Khouri, ‘United Nations Peace Efforts’, in Kerr. Whetten, pp. 201–2, dismisses the UN condemnations as ‘clearly … extraneous and distracting’ – unlike, say, during the Gulf crisis. Quandt (Peace Process, p. 143) reckons Egypt’s efforts to galvanize the UN machinery to achieve a settlement in accordance with the international consensus short of war as an attempt to ‘forc[e] the United States into an anti-Arab posture’.
33. Times (London), 13 March 1971 (for the flap caused by Meir’s Times interview within Israel, cf. ARR, 16–31 March 1971). New York Times, 17 March 1971. (Sympathetic to Israel’s position, the Times nonetheless editorialized again on 8 October 1971 that its refusal to withdraw from Sharm-el-Shaykh was ‘the real sticking point’ in the diplomatic impasse.) Kimche, p. 304. Whetten, pp. 150–2. ARR, 1–15 January 1972, 16–31 January 1972, 1–15 February 1972, 1–15 March 1972, 1–15 April 1972, 1–15 June 1972, 1–15 April 1973, 1–15 March 1973. Kapeliouk, p. 44. Lukacs, pp. 184–7 (Galili Plan). Geoffrey Aronson, Creating Facts, Washington 1977, pp. 33–4. Sadat apparently took special umbrage at the Yamit project. Heikal quotes him to the effect that ‘Every word spoken about Yamit is a knife pointing at me personally and at my self-respect’ (p. 205; cf. pp. 22, 24; cf. also Kapeliouk, p. 63, citing Sadat, ‘Yamit, that signified war, at least for Egypt’).
34. Eban, Personal Witness, p. 492; cf. p. 491 – ‘Most of us had reached the conclusion [by August 1970] that Sinai, under Israeli occupation, was not a security asset, but a strangling millstone around our neck.’ In a subsequent passage, Eban more accurately reports that ‘on June 19, 1967, and in the ensuing weeks the Arab governments had before them Israeli offers to restore Sinai, the Golan Heights, and most of the West Bank territory to Arab rule’ (p. 493, my emphasis).
35. Whetten, p. 326, concludes that ‘a resumption of hostilities after six years of fruitless attempts to start negotiations … was the harsh price the Israelis had to pay’ for ‘their demand for essentially an unconditional surrender’. Cf. Eban, Personal Witness, p. 528 – ‘The idea of driving Egypt to a polarized option between accepting the status quo or negotiating on Israel’s terms had proved baseless. There had been a third option – that of military assault’. Cf. also Korn, p. 274 – ‘Only after [negotiations with’ Israel] had unmistakably failed did Sadat abandon diplomacy and turn toward war’. In June 1973, Nahum Goldmann, the maverick president of the World Jewish Congress, warned that the status quo would not endure forever:
I do not agree with the Israeli leaders who believe that eventually everyone will just accept things as they are. This is not realistic. Sadat has taken a rather daring initiative. Despite opposition, he has declared himself ready to recognize Israel. If he gets no results, the army will have to launch a war. (Kapeliouk, p. 49)
36. Given the limited aim of liberating occupied territories and the exhaustion of all diplomatic options, not one government in the world – the United States included – charged Egypt and Syria with aggression in the October war (Eban, Personal Witness, p. 541; Quandt, Peace Process, p. 152; and ‘Kissinger Meets Haikal’ [interview], Journal of Palestine Studies, Winter 1994, p. 213, where Kissinger is quoted to the effect that ‘You may have noticed that we have not given much attention to the question: Who fired the first shot?’).
37. On the circumscribed nature of the October attack, cf. Hassan el-Badri et al., The Ramadan War, New York 1978, pp. 16–19; Trevor Dupuy, Elusive Victory, New York 1978, p. 387; Eban, Personal Witness, p. 589; Shamir, ‘Nasser and Sadat’, in Rabinowich and Shaked, p. 199; Saad el-Shazly, The Crossing of the Suez, San Francisco 1980, pp. 25f.; Tamir, pp. 195–6; Whetten, pp. 233–4, 283, 329–30. On the conflict between Egyptian and Syrian war aims, cf. Patrick Seale, Asad, Berkeley 1988, pp. 194–7. On Israel’s failure to heed Sadat’s threats, cf. Brecher, Decisions in Crisis, p. 53. Incidentally, Eban (Personal Witness, p. 529) reports that Arab leaders were unaware that the attack day fell on Yom Kippur, and that for Israel the choice was actually fortunate since reserves could be more easily mobilized when everyone was either at home or in synagogue (cf. Schiff, p. 12).
38. Eban, Personal Witness, p. 588. As against Eban’s singling out of Dayan, Evron reports that ‘the whole Israeli political position from 1970 on was based on the assumption that the status quo created after 1967 was stable’ (‘Two Periods in the Arab—Israeli Strategic Relations’, in Rabinowich and Shaked, p. 111). Kapeliouk (p. 45) observes that ‘one had to live in Israel in the last year before the Yom Kippur war to know the atmosphere of euphoria, assurance and success that Israel’s leaders created among the people. Just to suggest a true peace initiative meant to be immediately branded a utopian, a dreamer’.
39. Rabin, p. 327; cf. Dayan, Breakthrough, p. 180. Eban, Personal Witness, pp. 588, 601–2. Shamir, ‘Israeli Views of Egypt and the Peace Process’, in Quandt, The Middle East, p. 202 (for details on the ‘cold peace’ between Israel and Egypt, cf. pp. 200f.). Quandt, Camp David, pp. 254–5.
40. Rabin, pp. 198, 324. Cf. Eban, Personal Witness, p. 502, where it is purported that ‘the absence of any celebratory or dramatic accompaniment to the Sadat proposal’ in 1971 accounted for its failure.
41. Tamir, pp. 17, 22, 27; but cf. p. 61, where even Tamir cannot resist repeating the fairy-tale that ‘until he came to Jerusalem to launch his peace initiative, Sadat had appeared to us as an uncompromising enemy with whom we had no chance of reaching peace during our generation’. Tamir also relevantly notes that the electoral platform on which Likud came to power in May 1977 already called for the ‘return of the whole of Sinai to Egypt, on certain conditions’ (pp. 16–17). For Tamir’s key role in Israel’s strategic planning after the October war, cf. pp. 222f.; for confirmation, cf. Weizman, pp. 149–50, describing Tamir as ‘one of the architects of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty’. For the crucial Israeli concessions before Sadat’s trip, cf. also Martin Indyk, To the Ends of the Earth, Cambridge 1984, pp. 35, 37; Quandt, Peace Process, p. 268; and Seale, p. 303. No doubt because it meshes so poorly with the supposed miracle worked by Sadat’s trip, the Sinai concession made at the secret preliminary talks with Egypt is absent from Dayan’s otherwise detailed account of the proceedings. Rather, the pretense is maintained that Sadat went ‘to Jerusalem unaccompanied by any preconditions’ (Breakthrough, p. 77). Lukacs, pp. 136–46 (Sadat’s Knesset speech).
42. On Israel’s effort to keep the settlements, airfields and oil refineries, and the motives behind this effort, cf. Carter, pp. 333–4, 382; Dayan, Breakthrough, pp. 93–4, 180, 214, 232, 277–80; Quandt, Peace Process, p. 279; Adel Safty, From Camp David to the Gulf War, Montreal 1992, pp. 68–70 (arguing that Begin used the Sinai settlements mainly as a bargaining chip to extract concessions from Sadat on the Palestinians and Syria); Weizman, pp. 90, 98, 139, 144 (Weizman purports to have believed all along that Sharm-el-Shaykh was a ‘beauty spot’ of ‘no more than political importance’). Schiff, p. 166; cf. Weizman, p. 615.
43. Kapeliouk, ch. 6. Avi Shlaim, ‘Failure in National Intelligence Estimates’, World Politics, April 1976, p. 362. Eban, Personal Witness, pp. 517–19. Schiff, p. 58. Dupuy, p. 410.
44. Matti Golan, The Secret Conversations of Henry Kissinger, New York 1976, pp. 144–5.
45. Tamir, p. 190. Schiff, pp. 92, 172, 299. Eban, Personal Witness, p. 531. Dupuy, pp. 433, 566. Dupuy calculates Israel’s losses as, with respect to population, more than thirty times as great as the United States’ in World War II. His judicious comprehensive assessment is that
if war is the employment of military force in support of political objectives, there can be no doubt that in strategic and political terms the Arab states – and particularly Egypt – won the war, even though the military outcome was a stalemate permitting both sides to claim military victory. (p. 603)
46. Shlaim, p. 349. Schiff, p. 311; cf. p. 299:
Questions that had been perpetually pushed off at a tangent, resurfaced. Will we always live by our swords? Can we withstand more wars, when the quantity gap is ever widening to the Arab benefit? Israel returned overnight to stage one – the State’s existence was again threatened.
47. Weizman, p. 197. Schiff, pp. 314, 318. Cf. Tamir, p. 58. Not every Israeli was sobered up by the October war, however. Acclaiming Israel’s ‘incredible military victory’, military historian and former Israeli president Chaim Herzog contemplated that the only ‘danger’ was that the Arabs ‘will not draw the correct lessons and conclusions from the war, carried away as they are in a euphoria of victory which is imaginary’. This insight may be usefully coupled with the one that Arabs ‘never excelled in attack, because this type of warfare calls for an ability to think quickly’ (pp. 285, 190, 273).
48. Quandt, Peace Process, pp. 147, 177–9. ‘Kissinger Meets Haikal’ (interview), Journal of Palestine Studies, Winter 1994, p. 214. Cf. Kissinger’s explanation, as reported by Heikal, for why the United States moved only in the war’s aftermath to implement 242: ‘Kissinger said that, quite frankly, the reason was the complete military superiority of Israel. The weak, he said, don’t negotiate. The Arabs had been weak; now they were strong. The Arabs had achieved more than anyone, including themselves, had believed possible’ (p. 233).
49. Dupuy, p. 602. Schiff, pp. 233, 310–11. Louis Williams (ed.), Military Aspects of the Israeli-Arab Conflict, Jerusalem 1975, pp. 199, 212, 216, 217.
50. Williams, p. 221. Quandt, Peace Process, pp. 268, 315. Carter, p. 275. Cf. Seale, p. 256. Cf. also Quandt, Camp David, p. 330: ‘For most Israelis …, the idea of separating Egypt from the other Arabs was a long-held objective. Without Egypt as a belligerent, Israel could manage to cope with threats from other Arab states.’
51. Quandt, The Middle East, p. 8. Eban, Personal Witness, p. 591. Indyk (p. 38) purports that Israel opted for a separate peace with Egypt to free negotiations from the ‘demands of the more intractable states’ – for example, Jordan which, unlike Egypt, had agreed to significant territorial concessions (cf. note 21 above).
52. For Camp David freeing up Israel’s hand to consolidate control of the West Bank and Gaza, cf. Eban, Personal Witness, pp. 587, 595, 597; Quandt, Camp David, pp. 256, 323, note 3; Shamir, ‘Israeli Views of Egypt and the Peace Process’, in Quandt, The Middle East, p. 193; Weizman, pp. 190–1. For the direct causal link between the neutralization of Egypt at Camp David and the Lebanon invasion, cf. Eban, Personal Witness, pp. 597, 602; Quandt, Camp David, p. 321 (for a more equivocal view, Quandt, The Middle East, p. 10); Shamir, ‘Israeli Views of Egypt and the Peace Process’, in Quandt, The Middle East, p. 190; Tamir, pp. 56, 126. For the crushing of Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation as the aim of the Lebanon war, cf. Tamir, pp. 93, 116, 117, 122; Shamir, ‘Israeli Views of Egypt and the Peace Process’, in Quandt, The Middle East, p. 207.
Chapter 7
1. Edward Said, Peace and its Discontents (New York: 1996); Meron Benvenisti, Intimate Enemies (New York: 1995). This chapter is a slightly edited version of an article that appeared under the title ‘Whither the “Peace Process”?’ in the July—August 1996 issue of New Left Review.
2. Said, Peace and its Discontents, pp. 147, 12.
3. Benvenisti, Intimate Enemies, p. 218.
4. Israeli–Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip (Washington, DC: 28 September 1995).
5. Article XXXI.
6. Said, Peace and its Discontents, p. 11.
7. Ibid., p. 63.
8. Ibid., pp. 27–8.
9. Article XXXI.
10. Said, Peace and its Discontents, p. xxix.
11. Article XI.
12. Conceived soon after the June 1967 war, the Allon Plan projected Israel’s incorporation of roughly half the West Bank, the remaining areas of ‘dense Arab settlement’ bisected and consigned to some kind of self-rule.
13. Annex III, Appendix I, Article 40; Schedule 8, ‘Joint Water Committee’.
14. Per capita water allotment for an Israeli is thus four times that of a Palestinian; cf. Davar (25 October 1993).
15. Annex III, Appendix I, Article 40.
16. Noam Chomsky, World Orders Old and New (New York: 1994), p. 210.
17. Said, Peace and its Discontents, p. 103; see also pp. xxviii–xxix, 9, 18, 66, 154.
18. Article XX.
19. Said, Peace and its Discontents, pp. xxxii, 103.
20. Article 10.
21. Article XVII.
22. Annex IV, Article I, paras. 2, 7a.
23. Article XVIII, paras. 4–6.
24. Annex III, Article 29.
25. Article XXXI.
26. Articles X, XII.
27. Annex I, Article V; cf. Annex I, Article XI, para. 3b for application of this provision even to ‘territory under the security responsibility of the Council.’
28. Article XV, Annex I, Article II.
29. Annex I, Article XI, para. 4d; cf. Annex I, Article V, para. 3b2.
30. Annex I, Article IX; cf. Annex V, Article VII.
31. Said, Peace and its Discontents, p. 53.
32. Annex I, Article VIII, Annex I, Appendix V, Section F.
33. Annex III, Appendix I, Article 28.
34. Article XI.
35. Annex III, Appendix I, Articles 16, 22.
36. Said, Peace and its Discontents, p. xxv.
37. Ibid., p. xxiii.
38. Ibid., pp. 7–8, 73, 82–3, 120, 180–1.
39. No one knows better than Said that the impetus behind Israel’s 1982 Lebanon invasion was not PLO ‘folly’ but rather its ‘peace offensive’ (Israeli strategic analyst, Avner Yaniv); for sources, cf. p. 272 n.52 in this volume, and Norman G. Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of Palestine (Minneapolis, MI: 1996), p. 45 and sources cited. For the more complex issue of the Palestinians’ stance during the Gulf crisis, see Rise and Fall, chap. 4 and Epilogue.
40. Said, Peace and its Discontents, p. 127.
41. For details, cf. Chap. 6 in this volume.
42. Said, Peace and its Discontents, pp. 35–7.
43. Said, Peace and its Discontents, pp. 70, 147. Benvenisti, Intimate Enemies, p. 232. Indeed, the Bantustan precedent is plainly uppermost in the minds of all the signatories to as well as dissenters from the Oslo agreement; see Graham Usher, Palestine in Crisis (London: 1995), pp. 8, 10, 85n6.
44. Said, Peace and its Discontents, p. 95; emphasis in the original.
45. Ibid., p. 155.
46. Verwoerd hoped that political separation would, in his words, provide a ‘basis for the Western members … to prevent action against South Africa in the UN’ (Gerhard Mare and Georgina Hamilton, An Appetite for Power (Bloomington, IN: 1987), p. 29).
47. Roger Southall, South Africa’s Transkei (New York: 1983), p. 149. Forming a lobby and aligning with the opposition political party, the white settlers resisted government plans. Ultimately, however, most returned to South Africa.
48. Jeffrey Butler, Robert I. Rotberg and John Adams, The Black Homelands of South Africa (Berkeley: 1971), p. 31.
49. Christopher R. Hill, Bantustans (Oxford: 1964), p. 59.
50. Ibid., p. 57.
51. Newell M. Stultz, Transkei’s Half-Loaf (New Haven: 1979), pp. 93, 96.
52. Said, Peace and its Discontents, p. 153. See also Usher, Palestine in Crisis, pp. 38–40 and Chomsky, World Orders, p. 254.
53. As in Transkei, the real purpose of the January 1996 election in the West Bank and Gaza was for the subject population to ‘democratically’ ratify the annulment of its basic rights and to ‘democratically’ install a Quisling leadership. In neither case was the derisory settlement subject to a public referendum. Rather, the electoral victory of, respectively, Matanzima and Arafat was ‘interpreted’ as acclamation of it. Thus, a vote for Arafat purportedly signaled support for Oslo. The actual facts suggest otherwise. For an analysis of the Transkei election, the modalities of which exactly prefigured the 1996 Palestinian election, see Southall, South Africa’s Transkei, pp. 120ff. For the Palestinian election, see Norman G. Finkelstein, ‘Arafat Victory Doesn’t Equal Real Reconciliation’, Christian Science Monitor (31 January 1996).
54. Trumpeting the abolition of apartheid within Transkei, the Matanzima regime claimed to have done more for black freedom in South Africa than any of the more militant liberation movements: ‘The Transkei has … liberated 18,000 square miles … from the grips of apartheid – the pass laws, job-reservation, apartheid at our post offices and segregation at the numerous beaches along our … coast’ (Southall, South Africa’s Transkei, p. 254). Arafat’s Palestinian Authority contrived a similar defense against its principled critics.
55. Said, Peace and its Discontents, p. 172; cf. p. 157.
56. Although perhaps sincere, such fulminations also served Matanzima as ‘proof’ that he was not a South African stooge. For that same reason, South Africa quietly abided them.
57. Mare and Hamilton, Appetite for Power, pp. 3, 35–9; cf. p. 82: ‘We have created a springboard from which we can go forth to conquer in ever widening circles. We have created for our Black South Africa a liberated zone from whence we can mount our strategies and attacks on apartheid which are vital to the country as a whole.’ See also Butler et al., Black Homelands, p. 35, quoting Buthelezi on ‘self-rule’: ‘It may be a contribution to the unraveling of the problem, insofar, as, if we attain full independence, our hand will be strengthened.’ Echoing Buthelezi’s rationale, Arafat told a crowd in Gaza upon his return: ‘I know many of you think Oslo is a bad agreement. It is a bad agreement. But it’s the best agreement we can get in the worst situation.’ And his deputy maintained that Oslo ‘will not automatically lead to national independence, but the political space it opens up enables us to set off an irreversible dynamic towards independence through the new national mechanisms we set in place’ (Usher, Palestine in Crisis, pp. 1, 9–10; cf. Said, Peace and its Discontents, p. 8).
58. Even Bophuthatswana, the one Bantustan initially protective of individual rights, ended up as a police state.
59. Said, Peace and its Discontents, pp. 173–4.
60. Stultz, Transkei’s Half-Loaf, pp. 133–4; emphasis in the original.
61. Benvenisti, Intimate Enemies, p. 222.
62. A case can plainly be made that the two-state settlement allotting the indigenous Palestinian population 20 per cent of Mandatory Palestine and the Jewish settlers who displaced them 80 per cent is also far from equitable. Arguably, however, this proposal is a pragmatic application of justice, that is, an application of Max Weber’s formula, ‘Given the existing conflict, how can one solve it with the least internal and external damage for all concerned?’ (H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: 1975), p. 9). Granting Palestinians independence in the derisory areas of ‘self-rule’ sketched in Oslo II cannot, I think, be plausibly justified by any standard of justice.
63. Hill, Bantustans, pp. 5, 41. It is an open question whether the apartheid regime ever actually envisaged a total separation. ‘The dominant Republican Afrikaner attitude to race relations’, T.R.H. Davenport observes, ‘held in tension the conflicting notions of territorial separation (as an insurance against numerical swamping) and domination (baasskap) to ensure control over labour’ (South Africa, A Modern History (Toronto: 1991), p. 518). At any rate, one cannot but be struck by the identity of socioeconomic visions between the masterminds of apartheid and the Oslo accord. Verwoerd projected ‘one national economy [with] the opportunity of separate government, the opportunity of living separately’, while Shimon Peres calls for a ‘political divorce and an economic marriage’ (Mare and Hamilton, Appetite for Power, p. 30; Usher, Palestine in Crisis, p. 35).
64. Nearly 10 per cent of the South African budget was earmarked for the Bantustans. ‘Rather surprisingly’, reported the authors of one standard study, ‘the rapid growth of spending on the homelands … has not been challenged by white public opinion or politicians’ (Butler et al., Black Homelands, p. 143).
65. Benvenisti, Intimate Enemies, p. 221.
66. Said, Peace and its Discontents, pp. 3, 20, 119, 125. To be sure, Said reports (p. 174) that he too endorsed the two-state settlement with great reservations, although apparently not because of doubts about its viability.
67. Ibid., pp. 163–4.
1. Oxford: 2002 (hereafter: SDW).
2. Gary J. Bass, ‘Days That Shook the World’, in New York Times (16 June 2002), Richard Bernstein, ‘Short Conflict, Far-Reaching Consequences’, in New York Times (17 July 2002), Edward Rothstein, ‘Six Days of Confusion That Rearranged World Polities’, in New York Times (6 July 2002). Howard Fineman, ‘Bush Studied ’67 Preemptive Strike’, in Newsweek (9 October 2002), at www.msnbc.com/news. The back cover of the hardbound edition is studded with advance acclaim from partisan figures such as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and New Republic publisher Martin Peretz, but also from respected authorities such as historian Wm. Roger Louis and former US ambassador Richard B. Parker.
3. A fellow of the Shalem Center, a conservative research institute in Jerusalem, Oren has in recent months praised Prime Minister Sharon’s ‘restraint’, urged the US to ‘allow Israel to finish rooting out the terrorist infrastructure in the territories’, and opined that the ‘good part’ of President Bush is ‘when he is Manichean – when he’s saying that there are good guys and bad guys and you’re with us or against us’ (‘For Sharon, a Lesson from 1967’, Jerusalem Report (3 June 2002), ‘Don’t Hold Israel Back’, in Wall Street Journal (9 April 2002), Suzy Hansen, ‘Six Days that Shook the World’ (interview) at www.salon.com/books/int/2002/06/12/oren).
4. Oren mistakenly states in the Salon interview that the UN archive ‘works under the 30-year rule’ of declassification; in fact it operates under the 20—year rule and its documentation on the June war has already been consulted by prior researchers; cf. Chap. 5 in this volume.
5. An interesting ancillary question Oren never explores is the split between the White House and the State Department on the pre-emptive strike (apparently President Johnson approved, Secretary of State Dean Rusk didn’t). The volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States series on this period is scheduled for publication in early 2004. The volumes covering the periods preceding and succeeding the months May-November 1967 have already been published. The sensitivity of the materials covered in these months has presumably held up publication.
6. Checking Oren’s evidence also poses a challenge: an endnote incorporating tens of references frequently corresponds to many paragraphs of text incorporating tens of quotes, making it nearly impossible to match reference against quote.
7. For the Qibya massacre, see Benny Morris, Israel’s Border Wars (Oxford: 1993), pp. 244ff. (Morris dismisses Sharon’s account as ‘pure invention’: p. 246 n. 86); for the Israeli firebombing in Egypt, see David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch (London: 1977), pp. 166–8. Oren plainly knows the actual content of this ‘vandalizing’ since three sentences later he refers to Egypt’s refusal to ‘pardon the arsonists’.
8. For background on the DZs and further documentation, see Muhammad Muslih, The Golan (Washington, DC: 1999), chaps. 1–2. Oren seeks at one point to discredit Bull on the grounds that he was ‘ill-disposed toward Israel’. He quotes from Bull’s memoir that, when Israel summoned him on 5 June to warn Jordan not to attack or else Israel would react in kind, Bull responded: ‘This was a threat, pure and simple, and it is not the normal practice of the UN to pass on threats from one government to another.’ Bull does appear grossly derelict from Oren’s snippet, but the very next sentence of his memoir – omitted by Oren – reads: ‘But this message seemed so important that we quickly sent it … and King Hussein received the message before 10:30 the same morning’ (SDW: p. 184; Odd Bull, War and Peace in the Middle East (London: 1976), p. 113).
9. ‘Interviews on the Golan Heights and on Jewish Settlements in Hebron, 22 November 1976 and 1 January 1977’, reprinted in Journal of Palestine Studies (Autumn 1997), p. 145 (the interviews originally appeared in Yediot Ahronot).
10. Martin van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive (New York: 1998), p. 172.
11. For the record, the cited work actually states ‘between 23 February 1966 and 15 May 1967’, and the figures emanated not from Syria but ‘Israeli sources’ (Moshe Ma’oz, Syria and Israel (Oxford: 1995), p. 89; Yacov Bar Siman-Tov, Linkage Politics in the Middle East (Boulder: 1983), pp. 151–2).
12. In addition to its alleged pro-Egyptian bias, UNEF – according to Oren – inspired ‘little faith’ regarding its ‘ability to prevent Egypt-Israeli hostilities’, and was viewed ‘with skepticism’ by ‘Western states disaffected by the UN’s increasingly pro-Soviet stance’ (SDW: p. 67). To support these disparaging claims, Oren directs the reader specifically to Brian Urquhart’s memoir, A Life in Peace and War (New York: 1978). Yet, on the cited pages Urquhart says nothing of the sort. For example, recalling the establishment of UNEF after Israel withdrew from the Sinai in 1957, Urquhart writes: ‘The Israelis withdrew with a bad grace, destroying roads and railway communications and leaving uncharted minefields in their wake, all of which caused considerable grief and trouble to UNEF. They started a vitriolic campaign about Hammarskjold’s and UNEF’s alleged partiality to Egypt. Israel also refused to allow UNEF to be stationed on the Israeli side of the line, a grave weakness for a peacekeeping force. The Israeli attitude to UNEF changed a few months later when they realized that the force, in its impartial way, had achieved peace on what had formerly been their most violent and bloody frontier’ (p. 136).
13. Oren dubs U Thant ‘one of the greatest obstacles to UNEF’s survival’ and quotes the Israeli Foreign Ministry to the effect that ‘it is still unclear what diplomatic consideration or defect of character brought him to make this disastrous move’ (SDW: pp. 71, 75). Yet U Thant’s detailed factual accounting (seconded by his UN colleagues) makes plain that he had no alternative (see p. 249 n. 10 in this volume for references). Although judging by the documentary record a man of remarkable integrity and decency, U Thant comes off very badly in Oren’s book – ‘emotionless and moon-faced … rather simple-minded’ (citing an anonymous source), ‘anti-American and, perforce, pro-Soviet’ and exhibiting ‘the psychology of the Asian … a built-in reaction against the white man’ (citing American officials), as well as in thrall to his horoscope – presumably because, like Odd Bull, he preserved on the Israel-Arab conflict an independent cast of mind (SDW: pp. 71–2, 75). Both U Thant and Odd Bull later speculated that if Israel had agreed to station UNEF on its side, the June war might have been averted.
14. Israel’s apologists have always strained to reconcile its opposition to stationing UNEF on the Israeli side of the border with the claim that Israel did all it could to avert war. Israel’s UN ambassador, Gideon Rafael, subsequently maintained that on the Egyptian side of the border UNEF served ‘as a neutral factor or restraint and a kind of, I would say, shock absorber between the two countries’ but on the Israeli side would have served ‘no purpose whatsoever’ (Richard B. Parker, The Six-Day War (Gainesville, FL: 1996), pp. 105–6; for Abba Eban’s equally contrived rationale, see p. 128 in this volume).
15. An integral part of the 1949 armistice agreement, EIMAC was disbanded by Israel after its 1956 Sinai invasion ‘unilaterally’ and ‘in clear defiance of U.N. resolutions’ (U Thant) (for details, see pp. 127–8 in this volume). Oren incorrectly refers to EIMAC as the ‘Mutual Armistice Commission’.
16. It also bears notice that the US officially hedged its support of Israel’s right of passage with the conditional phrase ‘In the absence of some overriding decision to the contrary, as by the International Court of Justice’, and that President Eisenhower explicitly stated after the Sinai invasion that Egypt’s ‘exercising [of] belligerent rights in relation to Israeli shipping’ in the Straits ‘constitute[d] no justification for the armed invasion of Egypt by Israel’. (For background and. documentation, see pp. 137–9 in this volume, and John Norton Moore (ed.), The Arab—Israeli Conflict, Vol. III: Documents (Princeton: 1994), section IV, esp. pp. 639, 661 (‘passage’, ‘absence of’), 663 (‘recurrence’), 655 (Israeli policy), 649 (Eisenhower); see also Parker, The Six-Day War, pp. 295–6.)
17. Basing himself on the wholly unreliable memoir of Israel’s UN representative, Gideon Rafael, and the anecdotal recollections twenty-five years later of U Thant’s aide, Brian Urquhart, Oren suggests that Egypt suddenly reneged on the terms of the moratorium at the end of May, and accordingly the proposal was not submitted to Eshkol (SDW: p. 126). Yet U Thant’s meticulous account running through early June of these negotiations reports Rafael’s explicit rejection speaking for the Israeli government and makes no mention at all of an Egyptian volte-face on the moratorium’s terms (on the contrary, he was still citing Nasser’s support on 1 June), while Urquhart’s own memoir closely follows. U Thant (see p. 129 and sources cited on p. 250 n. 16 in this volume, for U Thant’s account and Urquhart’s memoir, as well as supplementary UN documentation and Rafael’s unreliability; and Parker, The Six-Day War: pp. 94–5, for Urquhart’s anecdotal recollection).
18. For historians who credit Operation Dawn (usually dated 25–27 May) but attach slight significance to it, see p. 254 n. 37 in this volume, and Avraham Sela, The Decline of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Albany: 1998), p. 90; for an historian who altogether doubts its existence, see Benny Morris’s review of Oren’s book in Jerusalem Report (21 August 2002). Even assuming an Egyptian attack was planned and leaving aside that the alleged plan was aborted well before 5 June, it couldn’t have influenced the Israeli decision to preemptively strike unless officials knew about it. Although circumstantial indications suggest that they might have known, it remains that both at the time and in his later memoirs Abba Eban emphatically dismissed all talk of a planned Egyptian attack as ‘hypochondriac frivolities’ and a ‘cheap trick’ designed to justify an Israeli attack, and neither British and US nor, for that matter, Israeli intelligence could detect in late May any evidence of an imminent Egyptian attack (for Eban’s dismissal and the lack of any intelligence confirmation, see pp. 134, 254 n. 37 in this volume, and SDW: pp. 102–3, 1078, 110, 114–15, 122).
19. Whereas historians crediting Operation Dawn argue on the basis of the Egyptian memoirs that it was ‘Amer’s secret brainchild and that Nasser almost immediately cancelled the plan upon learning of it, Oren manages to prove otherwise through tortured reasoning and by playing fast and loose with the already problematic evidence: e.g., he reports an alleged statement by ‘Amer complaining that the plan had been leaked abroad but omits Nasser’s alleged reaction suggesting he knew nothing of it: ‘Why is ‘Amer upset? Does he think that we shall start the war?’ (SDW: p. 120; Parker, Six-Day War, p. 45).
20. Samir A. Mutawi, Jordan in the 1967 War (Cambridge: 1987), pp. 100–1.
21. Sela, Decline of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: p. 91; for Begin and further supporting documentation, see pp. 134–5 in this volume. The UNEF commander quoted by Oren on Egypt’s imminent attack, Indar Jit Rikhye, reports elsewhere in his memoir that Egyptian troops were in fact ambiguously positioned and he concludes that ‘the Egyptian armed forces had eventually accepted the final decision of Nasser not to attack’ (see p. 134 in this volume). In preparing this Appendix, I came across an error in Chap. 5 in this volume. I suggested that on the eve of Israel’s pre-emptive attack Mossad chief Meir Amit denied Nasser’s readiness for war (p. 134 in this volume). The statement I quote, however, was made before Nasser announced his intention to close the Straits of Tiran, and Amit might have subsequently changed his mind.
22. For Peled and Weizman, as well as further documentation on Israel’s steadily improving and Egypt’s steadily deteriorating military situation, and the certainty of an Israeli victory, see pp. 135–6 in this volume.
23. Van Creveld, Sword and the Olive, pp. 172, 176–7. To enhance the Arab threat, Oren gestures menacingly to Jordan’s ‘twenty-four Hawker Hunter’ aircraft and ‘eleven brigades – 56,000 men, 270 modern tanks, Centurions and Pattons’ (SDW: p. 137). In fact military historians recall that the Jordanian army was a ‘kind of showpiece’ serving primarily as a ‘palace guard’ while the Jordanian air force was ‘not a threat at all’; for details, see pp. 135–6 in this volume.
24. For Benny Morris and the Palestinian refugees, see Chap. 3 in this volume.
25. At first Israel feigned that Egypt also initiated armed hostilities – further evidence of how feeble its pretext for preemptive war was.
26. Van Creveld, Sword and the Olive, p. 188. Creveld similarly reports that Syria ‘scarcely lifted a finger while their allies were being pulverized’ and that ‘any talk of a [Syrian] offensive was absurd, given that by the evening of June 6 most of their air force had been destroyed by the IAF’ (p. 191).
27. Michael Brecher, Decisions in Crisis (Berkeley: 1980), p. 100 (see p. 143 in this volume).
28. For the West Bank and Sinai, see p. 143 in this volume, and sources cited (the page numbers for Donald Neff, Warriors at Suez (New York: 1981), should be 332 and 416, and for Morris, Israel’s Border Wars, should include 179), and van Creveld, Sword and the Olive, pp. 105, 151.
29. For the remarkable congruencies between the build-ups to the respective wars, see p. 142 in this volume.
30. ‘Interviews on the Golan Heights and on Jewish Settlements in Hebron, 22 November 1976 and 1 January 1977’, reprinted in Journal of Palestine Studies (Autumn 1997), p. 145.
31. For background, see esp. James M. Ennes, Jr., Assault on the Liberty (New York: 1986), and John Borne, The USS Liberty: Dissenting History vs. Official History (New York University, PhD thesis: 1993), and for recently declassified supporting documentation, see James Bamford, Body of Secrets (New York: 2002), Chap. 7. Apart from Eugene Rostow, under secretary of state in the Johnson administration, just about every official and intelligence agency on the American side eventually concluded that the Israeli assault was intentional. A well-known apologist for Israel, Rostow lectured to an academic conference on the June war that ‘the prolonged Arab war against the Jewish political presence in the Middle East … goes back to 1922, with the announcement of the Balfour Declaration’. As every beginner knows – but Rostow apparently doesn’t – it was issued in 1917. (For Rostow’s claim that the Liberty was a ‘pure accident’, and the Balfour Declaration, see Parker, The Six-Day War. pp. 176–7, 110; for US ‘military and intelligence agencies … unanimous in finding’ that the Israeli attack on the Liberty was ‘deliberate and unprovoked’, see Raymond Garthoff, A Journey through the Cold War (Washington, DC: 2001) p. 214.)
32. See, e.g, Gabby Bron, ‘Egyptian POWs Ordered to Dig Graves, Then Shot by Israeli Army’ in Yediot Ahronot (17 August 1995), Michael Bar-Zohar, ‘The Reactions of Journalists to the Army’s Murders of POWs’, in Maariv (17 August 1995), ‘Israel Reportedly Killed POWs in ’67 War’, in Washington Post (17 August 1995), Barton Gelman, ‘Debate Tainting Image of Purity Wrenches Israelis’, in Washington Post (19 August 1995), Serge Schmemann, ‘After a General Tells of Killing POWs in 1956, Israelis Argue Over Ethics of War’, in New York Times (21 August 1995), Youssef M. Ibrahim, ‘Egypt Says Israelis Killed POWs in ‘67 War’, in New York Times (21 September 1995).
33. Shlomo Gazit, The Stick and the Carrot (Tel Aviv: 1985), p. 59. Gazit is former head of Military Intelligence.
34. According to B’Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), 356 Palestinians as against 251 Israelis were killed through 1998 (www.btselem.org/STAT/table.htm). Amnesty International, Five Years After the Oslo Agreement (September 1998). On a lesser note, Oren reports that Ben-Gurion ‘cautioned against the demographic dangers of annexation’ from right after the June war until his death in 1973 (SDW: p. 314). True enough, but this did not at all mean he favored returning the conquered territories. In a 19 June 1967 declaration, he called for Israel’s retention of Gaza and an ‘autonomous’ status for the West Bank. Although in the very early 1970s he supported keeping only Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and possibly Gaza, by the end of 1972 he maintained more generally that because the Arabs were ‘not ready to make peace, we are not committed to giving them back [all the territories]. We cannot take it upon ourselves to retain all we have conquered, but there are territories where this (i.e., keeping them) is possible’ (Mordechai Gazit, Israeli Diplomacy and the Quest for Peace (London: 2002), pp. 150–1). In fact, Egypt and Jordan were already committed to a full peace treaty with Israel in exchange for full withdrawal by early 1971, but Israel refused (see Chap. 6 in this volume).