President Carter

by Stuart E. Eizenstat

  The Moshe Dayan I met in the Oval Office seemed to leap out of the pages of history as the legendary one-eyed hero of the Six-Day War. He was balding, small, and lean, with taut features and an enigmatic smile. His presence as foreign minister in Begin’s government was fortuitous for us because of his creativity and courage, but it was also unexpected. Dayan’s standing in Israel had gone into eclipse after he was taken by surprise as defense minister when the Arabs invaded in 1973. Forced to resign ignominiously along with Prime Minister Golda Meir, he returned to office in the government of Labor’s archenemy Menachem Begin to retrieve his reputation. This enraged his Labor Party colleagues, but Dayan was unconcerned since they had not defended him in his hour of peril. Begin, for his part, needed Dayan in his new, untested government as a symbol of credibility. Begin and Dayan were not strangers. Both had been brought out of the political wilderness by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol to serve in his unity government leading up to the 1967 Six-Day War—Dayan from Ben Gurion’s socialist Rafi party as Defense Minister, and Likud conservative Begin as Minister Without Portfolio.

  Just as Carter had misplayed his hand with Rabin in their first meeting, he failed to appreciate (until later at Camp David, when he skillfully used Dayan to help forge an agreement) that the Israeli hero, however loyal he might be to Begin at that moment, was far more flexible and highly secular, and was not an adherent of Begin’s ideology. For Dayan the principal value of the West Bank and Gaza lay in providing Israel strategic depth, not biblical redemption; they could be traded in part for security guarantees and strategic military outposts. Yet instead of cultivating him, Carter unwittingly left an initial unfavorable impression.

  Dayan was accompanied by Ephraim “Eppie” Evron, a skilled diplomat and director general of the Foreign Ministry (and Israeli ambassador to the U.S. later in Carter’s term), who particularly remembered the president’s “blue cold eyes.” He felt that Carter’s famous toothy “smile somehow was false, because the eyes didn’t smile.… He smiled often, but it seemed to be a very artificial smile.”91 Evron felt it was a missed opportunity, because he knew that as a condition of joining Begin’s government, Dayan had stipulated that when negotiations were under way, the government would take no unilateral action. “So he [Carter] had an ally there; instead of using him as an ally, as he should have done, he treated him in a manner which upset him and offended him very much,” said Evron.

  Indeed Dayan, who spoke Arabic as well as Hebrew and English, presented Carter with an opportunity to reach out to the Palestinians through his own experience with their leaders, and offered to meet with them and discuss anything the administration wanted to put on the Geneva agenda. Carter suggested asking if he would accept a referendum for the Palestinians to choose between remaining under Israeli control or forming an association with Jordan, which Dayan rejected as possibly leading to an independent Palestinian state. This may have also been a lost opportunity for Israel, since it would have separated the Palestinians still living in the territories from the exiled leaders of the PLO.

  During one of the most revealing meetings in which I participated with Carter, he made an evenhanded admission to the Syrians that would startle many Israeli supporters today. The president was trying to entice the Syrian foreign minister, Abdul Halim Khaddam, to agree to a unified Arab delegation at Geneva including the Palestinians—even, as he put it, “a member of the PLO, but not a well-known or famous person,” a clear condition that Yāsir Arafat could not be there. The Syrians wanted the PLO to represent all Palestinians, wherever they lived. Carter emphasized the importance of Syrian acceptance of a joint communiqué with the Soviet Union to convene the conference, and in a last, futile effort to gain Syrian approval, he said: “I am as interested in protecting the legitimate rights of the Palestinians, as Israel’s.”92

  Neither Carter nor Vance were able to obtain Begin’s advance agreement to the terms of the Geneva conference that were to be announced jointly by the United States and the Soviet Union, nor did they consult Israel about the details. Dayan realized what was happening, and he asked Meir Rosenne for a list of written commitments that previous American administrations had made to Israel. These were largely kept secret, lest their publication tip off the Arabs how closely American policy was tied to Israeli security. They included a letter from Nixon to Golda Meir on August 1, 1970, pledging that “I will not ask you to withdraw one soldier from any territory occupied by Israel since 1967 until there is total peace with all the Arab countries.” Another, from Kissinger to Golda Meir on December 20, 1973, just before the abortive first Geneva conference, assured Israel that no parties—read the PLO—would be invited without the approval of all the others. Finally, both the Nixon and Ford administrations had assured Israel of advance consultations before the United States made any major decisions affecting them. Certainly no such consultations had occurred in drafting the latest declaration on a Geneva conference.93

  When Dayan read the October 1 joint U.S.-USSR communiqué, according to Rosenne, he exploded: “I may have only one eye, but I am not blind!”94 Quandt had a different version: that when they showed the proposed announcement to Dayan he asked if they had to agree. “And we said, ‘No, this is a US-Soviet statement that would be used to invite parties. You just have to say whether you’re going to come or not.’ Dayan replied, ‘If we don’t have to agree to it, you do whatever you want.’”95

  More likely Dayan intentionally avoided a clear response so he could remain free to rally support against it. If his strategy was trapping the administration, it certainly worked, just as it had often worked on the battlefield. When the joint statement was issued on October 1 convening a conference under American and Soviet auspices, a firestorm immediately arose, orchestrated by Dayan. The American Jewish leadership went into open war against the president in ways rarely seen before or since. The reasons were equally obvious and should have been apparent to Carter and his foreign policy team. The casus belli was not just the lack of prior consultation with Israel but an elevation of the interests of the Palestinians into “legitimate rights”—a phrase no American administration had ever before endorsed.

  No one was more outraged than Dayan, who sensed that the superpowers were conspiring to sell out Israel and acknowledge a diplomatic role for the Palestinians. The explosion from American Jewish organizations was equally predictable. The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations fired off an angry telegram to Vance accusing him of “an abandonment of America’s historic commitment to the security and survival of Israel.”96 AIPAC put out a tough, detailed statement warning that “the U.S. is devaluing commitments to Israel” and organized a congressional letter-writing offensive.97

  I soon received calls from members of Congress expressing their dismay about the U.S.-Soviet communiqué, and a visit from clearly agitated Israeli ambassador Dinitz, who expressed his grave reservations to Ham, Bob Lipshutz, Mark Siegel, and me.98 To try to recoup, Carter met with Jewish congressmen on October 6. He defensively explained the rationale behind the joint communiqué with the Soviets as the only way to achieve peace, and tried to reassure them by stating that “I will commit suicide [emphasis added] before I abandon Israel.” He admitted that it would have “been better if I had briefed Congress in advance, and I will avoid the problem in the future.”99

  The only party that unequivocally supported the declaration was the PLO, which was pleased with the reference to the “legitimate rights of the Palestinian people”—who now would no longer be seen as just “refugees” and whose leaders felt they would inevitably be recognized as the sole representatives of the Palestinian people.

  * * *

  Political reverberations take time to make their way to the self-confident center of American power. Working inside the White House was like being in the calm at the center of a storm. The thick walls and windows, the Secret Service officers and guards, the setback from the streets behind wide north and south lawns—all create an eerie sense of seren
ity, quiet, and protection. But the White House is nevertheless where all the contending forces that are engaged in great issues at home and abroad come crashing in, intruding on the inner peace.

  Even inside the administration there were angry repercussions. Mark Siegel was driving home from the airport late at night and was so shocked by news of the Soviet-American communiqué that he almost swerved off the highway. He phoned Ham and started screaming at him: “‘Goddammit, I’m off in Minneapolis doing your work and at least you could have had the common decency to tell me this, so we could have prepared a strategy.’ Ham replied, ‘What are you talking about?’ And he didn’t know [either]. So Hamilton was very quiet, and when Hamilton gets very quiet, he’s very, very quiet.” The White House political staff had been left out.

  The silver lining was that from that point on, Ham began to attend the weekly Friday-morning foreign-policy breakfasts with the president and his national security team. But Siegel would not rest. Two days after the communiqué he sent Ham a memo warning that it had “driven Jimmy Carter’s stock in the American Jewish community substantially below any U.S. president since the creation of the state of Israel, and I’m including in that statement Eisenhower’s stock after he forced Israel to withdraw from Sinai in 1956.” He pointedly reminded Ham, who hardly needed it, of the number of states Carter won with strong Jewish support, and concluded ominously that the “talk in the American Jewish community is getting very ugly. The word ‘betrayal’ is being used more and more.”100

  The joint communiqué did not sit well with Sadat in Egypt either. After Mondale later traveled to the Middle East, he recalled that Sadat told him that “he [Sadat] kicked them [the Soviets] out and he wanted to keep them out of there.”101 It took time for Brzezinski to recognize how much he had underestimated the potential domestic impact. Not until years later did the strongest anti-Soviet hawk in the inner circles admit to it: “I did subsequently feel that I had erred in not consulting our domestic political advisers about its likely internal impact and in not objecting more strenuously to the very notion of a joint U.S.-Soviet public statement.”102 And the president did not easily understand it either. He summoned White House Counsel Bob Lipshutz and me, the two senior Jewish White House staff members, and asked us why mainstream Jewish leaders were speaking out against him after he had worked hard to reach out to them. I explained that the declaration had raised several concerns—ones I shared—bringing the Soviets back into the Middle East, handing Syria a virtual veto, and formulating the terms of Palestinian participation in a way that could be seen as a precursor to an independent Palestinian state on Israel’s border.103

  It was becoming increasingly obvious that Carter’s plan for a comprehensive, all-encompassing Middle East settlement, presided over by him and the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, was a grand idea that seemed merely grandiose. When Dinitz came to the White House later that day for an urgent meeting with Ham, Bob Lipshutz, Mark Siegel, and me, he foresaw the practical diplomatic possibilities more clearly than America’s own diplomats, Vance and Brzezinski included. With emotion building as he spoke, he said that the “best chance for peace is to sit down with the Egyptians, and we can be forthcoming with them. You will never get an agreement if all have to sign!” I wrote a marginal note that “trying to settle all will get nothing; we should be trying to cut a deal with Egypt.”104

  What happened next represented an embarrassing U-turn by the president. One of the world’s two superpowers bowed to unprecedented domestic pressure reflecting the views and interests of a small state that was dependent upon the United States for military, political, and diplomatic support. This reflects the unusual relationship that existed for decades and continues today between the world’s strongest democracy and one of its smallest, if sturdiest, dependent states, and we were about to get a painful demonstration of how that worked.

  When President Carter arrived by helicopter at the UN Plaza Hotel on October 4, he was ambushed at the helipad by Ed Koch, the combative mayor of New York, who had a huge Jewish constituency. Koch handed him a letter angrily protesting the joint declaration and the administration’s policies toward Israel; the mayor had already given a copy to the press. The president took a Pollyannaish view of what he insisted was a “friendly” encounter, but it certainly was not meant that way.105

  The real showdown followed when Dayan met with Carter, Vance, and Brzezinski in the president’s suite for an all-night negotiation. Quandt described how the Israelis took advantage of the situation: “Carter walks in and Dayan says, ‘I think you have a problem on your hands, Mr. President. And I can perhaps help you with it.’ And Carter says, ‘What do you mean?’ [Dayan] says, ‘Well, obviously many people are upset by the October 1 statement. Many of our friends are upset by it, but I think if we could reach a new U.S.-Israeli understanding, and if I were to go out from our meeting tonight and could say that the United States reaffirms all of its previous commitments and so forth and so on, and it doesn’t mean such and such and such—by this statement, [I think] that I could help you politically.’”106

  This was an amazing intrusion into domestic politics by a foreign minister, even from a friendly country. But it had clearly been based on Israel’s assiduous cultivation of American Jewish groups and Congress, and left no doubt how closely Middle East policy is intertwined with domestic politics. Carter nevertheless persisted in his plan and argued with Dayan until after midnight. He told Dayan that “of all the nations with whom we had negotiated on the Middle East, Israel was by far the most obstinate and difficult.”107 Dayan did not yield. It is difficult to imagine the foreign minister of any country being as blunt to the leader of its major benefactor, and the president bristled at this threat. He warned that a confrontation would be damaging to Israel and to the support of the American public for Israel, leaving Israel “isolated” and “would cause a cleavage that might be serious.”108 But Dayan held fast in his demand for a joint Israel-U.S. statement in which the president would pledge to adhere to all the agreements between the two countries.

  After further wrangling by Dayan with Vance and Brzezinski, Dinitz and Rosenne left at 3:00 a.m. for the office of the Israeli Mission to the United Nations and typed a statement. The president had told Dayan he should deliver it, but Dayan said no, it was a joint statement. Ham ruefully joked that if there was to be a joint agreement with Israel, he would change his name from Jordan to Judaea and Samaria!

  In the early morning hours of October 5, Jody issued a joint statement on behalf of Carter and Dayan, declaring that “Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 remain the agreed basis for the resumption of the Geneva peace conference and that all the understandings and agreements between them on this subject remain in force”—just as Dayan had demanded. The statement also committed Israel to attend a Geneva conference, but on its own terms.

  Dayan gained little standing from his boss when he returned home. Lewis recounted from his post in Jerusalem that Begin felt Dayan had not been tough enough; he wanted the U.S.-USSR agreement canceled entirely! Ultimately Begin acquiesced, as he often did later when negotiations seemed on the brink of collapse; Dayan would work out some arrangement on his own and convince Begin to accept it. However much political and diplomatic cover Dayan provided for Begin, his swashbuckling independence stoked Begin’s distrust and helped provoke Dayan’s resignation two years later.109

  But the fact remained that the president of the United States had reversed himself under intense pressure, hurting his credibility with both Israel and the Arab states; Carter had to tie himself into knots to reassure Jewish members of Congress in a White House meeting, even though he had nullified many of what they considered the most egregious aspects of the joint declaration with the Soviets. In the most dramatic statement I ever heard him make about Israel, he told them: “I will commit suicide before I would abandon Israel.”110

  Nevertheless we knew we were in deep political trouble. At a meeting with Brzezinski and me, Ham bemoaned an
“irreparable breach with the Jewish community,” and Brzezinski understood it looked like a “joint imposition” by the two superpowers.111 In another with Mondale and me, Ham was in despair at the process and the deteriorating relationship with the Jewish community, while Mondale blasted Brzezinski’s role.112

  Carter compounded his problems in late October when he wanted to follow the State Department’s advice to support an Egyptian resolution in the UN General Assembly condemning Israel’s settlement policy as an obstacle to peace.113 Ham objected to our support on the basis of domestic politics, and proposed that Carter simply issue a statement agreeing that Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank and Sinai was an illegal obstacle to peace, “but only one of many obstacles to peace.”

  Ham then sent Carter two more memos warning that if we voted for the resolution, it would touch off a political crisis with the Congress and further complicate the president’s prospects of a new Geneva conference.114 Carter sarcastically thanked him politely for his “option paper,” but Ham was not the only one to object. In an October 26 meeting with Vance and Zbig, his deputy David Aaron, Lipshutz, Ham, and I, supported by Mondale, jointly weighed in against this kind of public condemnation of Israel and proposed at least abstaining on the vote. I asked Vance what he expected to obtain from the Arabs for supporting the UN Resolution, and he replied, “that at least, we can say we’ve gone the last mile,” but admitted there was no assurance it would lead to greater support. I asked if the United States had ever voted against Israel at the UN, and was told the only time was during the Eisenhower administration over the 1956 Sinai invasion by Israel, Britain, and France. I left the meeting and called the president, who told me he wanted to “go along” with the resolution, but put out a “balanced statement.”115