President Carter

by Stuart E. Eizenstat

  It did not take long for the Israelis to challenge Brzezinski’s views. Shlomo Avineri, former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Israel’s preeminent political scientist, sharply criticized the Brzezinski thesis in a letter to Foreign Policy.18 He argued that no Arab government had been willing to recognize Israel’s legitimacy and no Palestinian had been willing to accept a state only on the West Bank. This was the very point that the American Jewish leadership and the Israeli government would make to Carter.

  Before Vance left on his maiden trip, the Israeli ambassador, Simcha Dinitz, came to see me. A skilled diplomat who understood how Washington worked, he had been chief of staff to Prime Minister Golda Meir, and used every method including leaks to the press to protect Israel’s position, bolstered by a quick wit and a steady flow of stories and jokes. He lamented that the new administration was creating a “poor impression” with several early decisions—reversing the Ford administration’s decision to sell Israel high-power concussion bombs and blocking the sale of twenty-five Israeli Kfir fighter jets with their American-made engines to Ecuador’s dictatorship. Dinitz exclaimed that he had “never seen an agreement made by one administration reneged upon by another.” He was backed up by Al Schwirmer, president of Israel’s largest aircraft company, who told me that America’s allies in Latin America would turn to the Soviet Union for arms.19

  When I passed all the back-channel complaints along to Brzezinski, he tried to reassure me that the decisions were not aimed at Israel but were part of the president’s new human rights policy of denying arms to Latin American dictators, and placing a ceiling on U.S. arms transfers worldwide. Our leverage with Israel rested in the American components—electronics and engines—in these arms, but our policy clashed with Israel’s commercial interests. Still, the Kfir decision was a needless poke in Israel’s eye at a time when we were seeking Israel’s cooperation to relaunch the Middle East peace process.

  Leaving these decisions to foreign-policy specialists was a mistake; I weighed in, and I had at least some initial success. Ham was with me on this; his political antennae were especially sensitive to the risk of alienating the American Jewish community. Israel’s supporters made the relaxation of our arms sale policy a litmus test of support for Israel. With the support of Ham, Mondale, and Senator Humphrey, I successfully urged the president and Brzezinski to make an exception to allow Israel more flexibility to export its high-tech arms, containing U.S. components. While we could not offer the privileged position enjoyed by America’s NATO allies and Japan, Carter revised the ceiling upward somewhat to help meet Israel’s defense needs. These were rearguard actions to prevent American policy from shifting even more strongly against Israel.

  When Vance returned from his swing through the Middle East late in February, it was evident that he had received little help from the Arabs in easing the way for the PLO; no Arab government would front for Arafat in public. But he brought even worse news from Tel Aviv. Vance declared that the “Israelis are the major obstacle” to a conference because they would feel outnumbered and preferred to deal with their Arab enemies one at a time, instead of facing them together at a Geneva conference. Moreover, they opposed an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and insisted on an undivided Jerusalem. Both Carter and Brzezinski believed it was up to the United States to define the terms of any solution—as if one could be imposed. In the margin of my yellow pad I wrote: “Hard times ahead for Israel.”20

  RABIN’S DISASTROUS VISIT

  The first Middle East leader to arrive in Washington after Carter’s inauguration was Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of Israel. I had been told by Dinitz, the Israeli ambassador who (with Carter’s approval) would become my regular diplomatic interlocutor, that Rabin would be comfortable with either a working dinner or a more formal state dinner. But either way, he wanted a dignified reception on the White House lawn so he could “express greetings on behalf of the Israeli people [and the] special warmth of the relationship, which he wished to keep.”21

  Rabin had every reason to expect such a welcome, and Carter granted it. When Rabin was Israel’s ambassador in Washington, he traveled to Atlanta to present Carter with a handsome history of his victorious campaign in the Six-Day War, and invited him to Israel as an official guest. Jimmy and Rosalynn later crisscrossed the lands of the Bible, visiting Jewish as well as Christian holy sites, and immersing themselves as Jesus had done in the Jordan—which, to their surprise, was more a creek than a river.

  But Rabin’s visit turned out to be a disaster, particularly for the visiting prime minister. Carter had expected him to be warm and flexible, but he was neither. He was facing an unexpectedly tough battle in the forthcoming election from the rising Likud opposition led by Menachem Begin, Rabin’s personal and political enemy since the founding of the state of Israel, when Begin had been the commander of the underground terrorist group Irgun Zvai Leumi, which fought the British authorities in Palestine.

  Rabin served at first under British command during World War II while a member of the Palmach, shock troops of the prestate army formed by David Ben-Gurion’s Labor Zionists. His courage and military capabilities were never in doubt, but the Yitzhak Rabin who came to Washington was in many ways an unlikely political leader. He had a receding hairline even at an early age, and his hair had turned white. He was a heavy smoker, tough and laconic. When he tried to smile, it almost seemed to hurt. He was thoroughly secular and would have been a good, if tough, peace partner for Carter, because he was devoid of religious or nationalist sentiment about the West Bank and saw it only as land providing strategic depth for Israel’s defense.

  A leader of the left-leaning Labor Party, Rabin barely concealed his support for Nixon’s reelection, which did not endear him to the heavily Democratic American Jewish establishment. But it did repay Nixon for his military and diplomatic defense of Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which led to Golda Meir’s resignation the next year. When Rabin was selected by the ruling Labor Party as prime minister in 1974, he was the first native-born Israeli to lead the nation. The Hebrew word for such a person is sabra—“prickly pear” in English—the fruit of a tough, spiny cactus plant that is soft and delicious inside: a good description of Rabin that would have served the administration well if the foreign-policy team had thought about it at the time.

  Ironically, but for a glitch in normally split-second U.S. military timing, there would have been no need for the elections that constrained Rabin during his visit. Just a couple of months previously, four F-15 Phantom jet fighters were delivered from the United States, usually a cause for rejoicing as the first visible sign of America replacing de Gaulle’s France as Israel’s principal supplier of advanced weaponry. But they landed just after sundown on Friday and were given an official welcome at the start of the Jewish Sabbath, when all government functions are supposed to shut down. Rather than treat this as a minor mistake, the ultra-orthodox Agudat Israel Party filed a motion of no confidence. Labor’s Orthodox coalition partner, the National Religious Party, dared not allow itself to be outflanked and was forced to abstain in the Knesset vote, bringing down the Rabin government and forcing new elections. No one imagined that the winner would be Begin, a perennial loser. Of such quirks is history made.

  Rabin had to be much more guarded during the run-up to the Israeli elections than he would have been afterward. But Carter was impatient to start his Middle East diplomacy and, as usual for him when political factors came into play, he found it hard to understand why peacemaking should have to wait for an election. The president pushed hard to obtain Rabin’s support for a Geneva peace conference—a poisonous idea to the Israelis because it would have brought the Soviets back into the Middle East through an international conference in which they would face a phalanx of enmity from the Arab states. He also sought Rabin’s views on how to include the PLO.

  At a White House dinner, Speaker Tip O’Neill, a legendary political magician, was primed by Carter to ask Ra
bin why Israel could not negotiate with the PLO—just as the United States had talked with the Vietcong, the French with their Algerian rebels, and above all for this Boston Irishman, the British with the Catholic underground movement in Northern Ireland, all to end their countries’ wars. Rabin replied that all those groups recognized the countries with whom they agreed to talk, but the PLO did not recognize Israel and was publicly committed to destroy it.22

  If Rabin was disappointed in Carter, the feeling was mutual. Rabin was his usual gruff self, avoiding pleasantries and small talk. To help establish a personal rapport, President Carter planned to leave the White House dinner early for a private meeting between just the two of them.23 He told us he set it up just at the time his daughter Amy was going to sleep in the family living quarters, and he would ask Rabin to join him in saying good night to her. After that, in a rare gesture to a foreign leader, he would show the prime minister the Lincoln Bedroom. When the president made the suggestion, Rabin abruptly said no, an almost personal rejection that put Carter off his stride. He nevertheless persisted, escorting Rabin up to the personal residence and trying to pursue a dialogue. Did Rabin have any suggestions about what Carter might propose in forthcoming meetings with the Arab leaders? And especially Anwar el-Sadat, the leader of the Arab world’s most populous nation, to which the others would look for leadership if the peace process started anew? Rabin did not respond at all.24 Carter finally concluded that he simply did not trust the U.S. government any more than Israel’s Arab enemies.25 By the end of Rabin’s visit, Carter was angry, and Vance observed that “the two appeared to grate on each other’s nerves.”26

  The fact was that many of their differences were deep. While Carter based his strategy on a grand bargain among all the parties, Rabin regarded such a comprehensive settlement as impossible. He had come to Washington with the idea of first concluding a peace agreement with Egypt. “Once we’ll finish with one Arab country we’ll go to another,” he said. Next would be Jordan, and through the Jordanians, and not the PLO, Israel would negotiate the future of the Palestinians and the borders of their territory. Rabin’s principal argument against Carter’s and Brzezinski’s plan to wrap it all into one package was that when attempted, such a negotiation had never succeeded—and the Arabs did not want it any more than the Israelis. At that private session upstairs with Carter in the White House, Rabin recalled to me: “I tried to convince him why any attempt to try to tackle the whole problem in its entirety, will be wrong, because … one Arab leader will look over the shoulder of what another will do, and it will not work.… I can’t say that I convinced him.”27

  PALESTINIAN HOMELAND

  It was on the Palestinian dilemma that the public gap between them was deepest, and Carter blithely stumbled into it on Rabin’s last day in Washington. Appearing at a town hall meeting in Clinton, Massachusetts, the night of March 16, 1977, with Rabin still in the United States, Carter was asked about the Middle East by a clergyman in the audience. He replied that he was trying to persuade the Arabs to recognize Israel’s right to exist and negotiate permanent borders. But then he dropped a totally unscripted blockbuster: “There has to be a homeland provided for the Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years.”28 He in effect outlined the rough shape of that homeland by declaring that there should be “only minor adjustments” to Israel’s 1967 borders in any peace agreement. All of this—especially the word “homeland”—was delivered without any advance warning to Rabin or his officials, or for that matter to U.S. officials.

  I accompanied the president to that meeting, which was held in an open-air amphitheater. The president was on the stage, and I sat to the side, on the stairs leading up to the stage, taking notes. When I heard him utter these explosive words, I nearly fell off my perch. I mentioned this to the president afterward, but he was unfazed.

  Five days before the Israel election he tried to make amends at a press conference with these words: “It’s absolutely crucial that no one in our country or around the world doubt that our number-one commitment in the Middle East is to protect the right of Israel to exist, to exist permanently, and to exist in peace. It’s a special relationship.… And obviously part of that is to make sure that Israelis have adequate means to protect themselves.… I’m proud of it—and it will be permanent as long as I’m in office.”29

  But it was the president’s use of the term “Palestinian homeland” that enraged Rabin, who was fighting for his political life and felt badly undercut. American Jewish leaders angrily descended upon Carter.30 They and the Israelis already believed that the new administration was tilting away from Israel. The Likud opposition used Labor’s bumpy relationship with the new American administration in its campaign. Rabin came to believe that this was truly a new American stance and that it led to Labor’s subsequent defeat in the Israeli election to Begin and the Likud. Carter, for his part, felt he was not making a political statement at all but simply expressing human feelings for the conditions of the Palestinians living under foreign occupation.

  The whole episode drove home to Carter’s political warriors that the Middle East was a domestic political issue as much as a matter of foreign policy, and that someone on the domestic political staff should deal with it as such. With Carter’s approval, Ham expanded the duties of Mark Siegel, a deputy presidential assistant with a doctorate in political science, as White House liaison to the Jewish community. Siegel originally declined the offer lest he find himself caught between his strong feelings toward Israel and the need to defend administration policy if it diverged from Israel’s interests. His loyalty to both would soon be tested.31

  Carter’s statements were actually not all that far from what Rabin really was ready to consider, albeit with variations that he would have had the freedom to advance if he had won the election. At one point in the Washington talks, he was asked how he envisaged Israel’s relationship with Jordan, the West Bank, and the Palestinians. He replied like the blunt soldier he was: “Our interest in the West Bank is to ensure that no Arab military can cross the Jordan River without our knowing it and being in a position to stop it. To do that we need some outposts on the high ground of the West Bank to make it possible to see anything that comes to threaten us. That’s all we need. It has nothing to do with sovereignty. But I can’t say that now [before the elections].”

  Rabin said this in front of the NSC’s Quandt, who remembered thinking the next day that Rabin had thought through his long-term goals and was prepared to fulfill them.32 If Rabin had been reelected and stood by his position, Carter would have been vindicated and Israel’s own occupation of the West Bank might have been far less complex to negotiate. Rabin had no interest in expanding civilian settlements, although the Labor Party created some in strategic locations in the West Bank after the 1967 war. In 1977 there were only 15,000 Israeli settlers; at the time of this writing there are some 350,000, and growing.

  But wading into the Middle East minefield without fully appreciating Israel’s sensitivities left Carter open to making statements lacking the nuance that comes from familiarity with the shorthand vocabulary that is part of any long-running dispute. Israel and the United States supported the policy of land for peace that was the basis for UN Resolution 242, but that document contains many deliberate ambiguities. While the resolution called for “secure and recognized borders,” what really makes a border secure in a region with a long history of conflict is not just whether it is recognized by diplomats but whether it can be defended by soldiers.

  To a military man like Rabin as well as the million-plus Israeli voters who had served in Israel’s citizen army and did annual reserve duty for many years after their initial service, a secure border is one that is also “defensible.” It is defined in part by geography—high ground, rivers, access for supplies, and by a military presence. Such things would of necessity have required adjustments to the pre-1967 borders as part of peace negotiations.

  After Rabin’s talks with Carter and his st
aff, Rabin correctly concluded that they were in fundamental agreement on the sense of UN Resolution 242, if not all the details. He did his best to reassure members of Congress, Jewish leaders in America, and most important, Israeli voters reading about him back home, that he had Carter’s support on many key issues. But it did not take long for the question of borders to make its way back to the White House via the press. Reporters wanted to know if Carter had endorsed the concept of defensible borders for Israel. No, said Press Secretary Jody Powell, trundling out the traditional party line: “We support secure and recognized borders as called for in UN Resolution 242.” Rabin did not hide his dismay.

  Carter’s unscripted statement and the public misunderstandings that resulted were typical of his first year in office. Foreign policy is rarely best conducted by announcing major shifts in policy through a public megaphone without forewarning, not even to close advisers. And it complicates diplomacy even more when your negotiating partner is caught by surprise. There are certainly times when surprise is necessary, especially in military matters, but in general, leaders and senior legislators abhor surprise, because it makes them look uninformed and left out of important policy decisions.