President Carter

by Stuart E. Eizenstat

  While special kosher arrangements had been made in the dining hall for the Israeli delegation, Sadat brought his own chef and dined alone in his cabin; the Egyptian delegation never ate at the same table with the Israelis. Indeed, the senior Egyptian leaders forbade personal contact with the Israeli negotiators, although unofficial contacts eventually developed between individuals, especially Boutros-Ghali and Weizman.16 Living space was restricted, and the members of the delegations doubled up in cabins together. The Camp David kitchen was modified to allow for separate sections: one for Sadat’s chef to prepare meals in accordance with strict Islamic requirements, the other for kosher meals served to Begin and some of his staff, and one for the rest of the participants.

  When members of the Israeli delegation ate with Begin, they ate kosher along with him, but when the prime minister withdrew to his cabin, there were few requests for kosher food.17 The movie theater doubled as a chapel, mosque, and temple, but when not used for prayers it provided a welcome diversion from the tense negotiations—the projectionist later reported that fifty-eight movies were seen during the thirteen-day period.18

  * * *

  Many diplomatic conundrums, all with deeply emotional roots in history, would have to be resolved in that secluded presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains only a half-hour helicopter flight from the White House. The three very different leaders came with vastly different expectations. Sadat, with the erect bearing and charisma of the proud former general that he was, exuded warmth. His prime goal was to regain every inch of the Sinai, and to achieve enough for the Palestinians so he could not be accused in the Arab world of selling them out to protect Egypt. Sadat never went into details, which he left to his delegation—every one of whom was a lawyer except for him. Time and again the Egyptian delegates felt cut off from their leader, whom they found unpredictable and could not restrain. At one point in the negotiations Boutros-Ghali said: “We must offer al Raiss [the leader] our advice … but the final decision is his,” to which his foreign minister objected angrily: “But al Raiss is possessed!”19

  Sadat paid a heavy price for this: Having already lost one foreign minister over his decision to go to Jerusalem, at Camp David he would soon lose his second foreign minister and personal friend, Muhammad Kamel, with whom he was imprisoned during their fight for Egyptian independence from the British. Kamel resigned at Camp David because he felt that Sadat was conceding too much and gaining too little for the Palestinians. But one reason Camp David succeeded was that Sadat overruled all his advisers, almost none of whom believed in his mission, while Begin ultimately acquiesced in certain concessions that his delegation urged on him after Carter pressed for them.20

  Begin had the most modest expectations. Legalistic, ideological, and burdened by the pain of Jewish history, he neither wanted nor expected the comprehensive agreement that Carter sought. Although his closest associates were privately drafting an outline for Palestinian autonomy, he would never grant the Palestinians an independent state. Nevertheless he came away with the promise of peace with Israel’s strongest enemy in a treaty with Egypt, which for two generations remains the anchor of Western policy in the Middle East.

  By the time Carter arrived with Rosalynn aboard the presidential Marine One helicopter on Monday, September 4, he was already much closer to Sadat than Begin. His wife was friendly with Sadat’s, their children were acquainted, and they had already visited Carter at Camp David as a family. But there was another reason Carter had an easier time with Sadat: Al Raiss trusted Carter to an extraordinary degree, and placed ultimate faith in his friend Jimmy to look out for Egypt’s interests. Sadat told him at the outset that he would stand with Carter as long as the Sinai was returned and the Palestinians obtained a measure of autonomy. On anything else, he said: “Mr. President, you can just notify me, but I’m flexible on it.”21

  By contrast, when Begin arrived an hour or so after Sadat, he ducked substantive issues. Begin told Carter: “No, this is not the right place; we need to form an outline or framework of what we want to talk about, and that our ministers meet and work out the agreement.” Carter realized this would set the tone for the entire meeting. Carter’s view of Begin is striking: “Throughout Camp David there were about fifty people on all three sides [and] Begin was by far the most recalcitrant member of the Israeli delegation; Sadat was by far the most forthcoming.”22 How the meeting almost broke up in mutual animosity and how Jimmy Carter then personally broke the deadlock is the essential story of the success of Camp David.

  THE CARTER SHUTTLE

  Carter began the next day, Tuesday, September 5, by meeting alone with Sadat first, then separately with Begin. Characteristically flamboyant, Sadat said he wanted a complete settlement, asserted that he had his own comprehensive proposal “in my pocket,” and accused Begin of not seeking an agreement at all. Carter assured Sadat that he would not put forward any American proposals until the other two could explore their differences; the president was still expecting that he could bring them together by serving as an honest broker. With Begin, Carter was friendly, but both men were ill at ease. In this supposedly relaxed retreat, Begin focused on procedural formalities—the daily schedule, how to keep a record of the sessions, who would be attending them, how many advisers could attend, and so on. Carter found the encounter discouraging.23

  The next day Sadat told Carter that he was not surprised to learn that the initial discussions with Begin had been unproductive, because he said the Israeli leader was “bitter and inclined to look back in ancient history rather than deal with the present and the future.”24 He portrayed himself as a spokesman for all Arabs and warned that if he betrayed their trust, Egypt would be isolated and the Soviets would win back the Middle East. Sadat agreed that the three leaders should sign a framework for peace and suggested that their aides could draft a peace treaty in three months; but his own proposals clearly were a deal breaker. They amounted to a tired compilation of the more extreme Arab views blaming all previous wars on the Israelis and demanding reparations and a full Israeli withdrawal.

  With a sinking heart, Carter realized that it would be a long road and that he would be spending much of his time defending each of the two to the other.25 His one hope rested on Sadat moderating his demands, but Carter did not want to start out by doing so, lest he undermine Sadat’s bargaining position. This was the classic bargaining game of the Middle Eastern souk; so when the president met with Begin in the afternoon of the second day, he warned him not to overreact to Sadat’s proposals. The Egyptian then read them out word for word and said Begin should consult his advisers, who included the two military heroes, Dayan and Weizman. For a while after Sadat finished, no one spoke. Then Carter joked that if Begin “was ready to sign the document as presented, it would save us a lot of discussion and debate, and expedite a successful conclusion of Camp David.” As the room filled with laughter, Begin asked deadpan: “Would you suggest that I do so?” Carter said no.26 This turned out to be the last moment of high spirits for eleven more days.

  The day’s events also forced Carter to recognize that if he was going to be the midwife of a historic agreement, he would have to change his goals on Israeli settlements on the West Bank and Gaza, even though he firmly believed they were illegal and unjustified. On that second day he told the American delegation that he had lost hope of persuading Begin to dismantle them, and the most he could achieve was a freeze on new settlements. This would become one of the most contentious issues after Camp David, and indeed, for successive American administrations until now.

  Carter and Sadat realized that it would be increasingly difficult to solve the Palestinian problem if the settlements continued in the years ahead, and they were right. At that time there were perhaps 10,000 in the West Bank, several sponsored by religious groups. Today there are some 350,000 politically powerful settlers. But while Begin was prepared to slow down or even briefly freeze settlements to achieve an agreement, “he was determined not to yield an i
nch on the principle that Jews could live anywhere—New York, or their ancient homeland, or the conquered territory of the West Bank,” as Ambassador Lewis put it.27

  The next day, Day 3, Carter, Vance, and Brzezinski met with Begin, Dayan, and Weizman. Carter conceded that Sadat’s proposals were more rigid than he anticipated,28 insisting that they were merely a list of maximum demands that could be ignored. Shortly afterward Carter, Sadat, and Begin met alone in one of the cabins, the first and only day of substantive meetings between the two Middle East leaders. It quickly degraded into the kind of deeply principled argument that usually blocks serious negotiation.

  From an argument over who defeated whom in the 1973 war, the conversation turned to territory, whereupon Sadat shifted the discussion to UN Resolution 242 and its phrase citing the principle of the “inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by war.” Sadat told Begin: “You want land … settlements on my land.” He pounded the table: Land was not negotiable, especially in the Sinai and the Golan Heights. He offered to recognize the state of Israel, end the Arab boycott, and guarantee security: “Security, yes! Land, no!”29 Begin barely noticed it. For two more hours they wrangled bitterly over incendiary subjects ranging from the drug trade across the Sinai to unrest in Lebanon. Carter’s attempts to divert the discussion were futile; the relationship between the two was frayed almost to the breaking point.

  It was a depressing exercise, since it meant that all they had accomplished by the morning of the third day was simply to enumerate the issues that had brought them there. Carter realized he would have to meet separately with the Israelis, since the Egyptian delegation refused to have anything to do with them, even socially. When the president and his team met later with the Israelis, it helped him to understand Israeli attitudes. For example, he pressed Begin on whether Israel was willing to withdraw from the occupied territories in exchange for adequate security assurances. Dayan demanded details: “What does withdrawal mean? Troops, settlements? Will I be a foreigner on the West Bank? Will I have to get a visa to go to Jericho? With autonomy, can the Arabs there create a Palestinian state? Can they resettle the refugees from Lebanon to the West Bank? Who will protect us from Jordan? Who will be responsible for controlling terrorists?”30 Carter seized upon these questions, but once again Begin shifted back to a critique of Sadat’s initial hard-line proposal.

  When the three leaders reconvened in the afternoon, the strain and tension of the morning meeting had not abated, and they retraced the same rhetorical space. Sadat angrily declared that they had reached a stalemate. He stood up to leave. Carter, desperate, quickly outlined the areas of agreement and the consequences of failure. But Begin retorted that moving the settlers in the Sinai would bring down his government. As the two men moved toward the door, Carter implored them not to break off talks but to let him use his influence and apply his own analysis. They agreed, Sadat more reluctantly, and left without speaking to each other.

  That evening the Marines entertained the delegations with music and precision drills, but the atmosphere was strained and unhappy: word spread rapidly through Camp David that the talks had broken down.31 Sadat especially looked forlorn as the music swept over the crowd. Contemptuous of Begin as his negotiating partner, he later told the first lady: “I have given so much and that man acts as though I have done nothing.… I have given up all the past to start anew, but that man will not let go of the past.”32

  * * *

  Begin and Sadat did not meet again for negotiations until their final day at Camp David. Carter’s role was no longer that of a mere convener. For another ten days he was a negotiator in two separate and parallel talks. He adopted a technique that he had never expected to use, and was eventually crowned with success. He would draw up a proposal based on his understanding of each side’s position and present it to Sadat for approval, which usually came quickly or with a slight modification. Then he would haggle with the Israeli delegation for hours or even days over the same tortured points.33

  So, on the fourth day, Friday, September 8, Carter worked out a formulation that he hoped would move the negotiations ahead. When he met with Begin that afternoon, the Israeli prime minister complained that the Americans were not acting like mediators, especially in leaning toward Sadat’s demand for removing the Israeli settlements in the Sinai. Once again railing against Sadat’s proposal, he pulled out a dog-eared copy and declared: “I will never personally recommend that the settlements in the Sinai be dismantled!”

  Carter instantly spotted an opportunity in his phrasing: If not Begin, perhaps the Knesset could be persuaded to assume the responsibility. This would in fact become the basis for an agreement. By picking up this nuance, the president demonstrated his ability to move from a small and real-world detail to his larger vision of a settlement. When Begin again implored Carter not to put this in a formal proposal, the president refused because they could not avoid addressing the most contentious issues, “and this is the one on which the entire Camp David talks have foundered so far.’” Begin argued that any proposal stamped “Made in America” might well turn the entire Arab world against the United States. But Carter was willing to take that risk and warned that progress was impossible if it was left to direct negotiations between Israel and Egypt.34

  Following his new course of personally managing the negotiations, Carter declared that during the following day—the Jewish Sabbath—he would draw up his own comprehensive proposal. Reversing his course of giving Sadat first look, he would show it first to the combative and legalistic Begin so there would be no surprises, and then to Sadat, who preferred to look only at the big picture.35 The president then walked to Sadat’s cabin and presented the timetable for drawing up his own plan, warning that he could not afford to have it rejected by both sides. Convinced that Begin would do so no matter what he presented, he would show it to each side separately and then modify it in search of compromise.

  TRYING TO BREAK THE TENSION

  With the very nature of the talks changing, the traditional social lubricants of diplomacy also began to be applied to loosen the deadlock; few other options remained. On Friday evening the Carters joined Menachem and Aliza Begin for the first kosher Shabbat dinner ever held at Camp David. Such a gathering had great symbolic value: Throughout Israel and much of the Jewish world, extended families unite around the dinner table on Friday night for nourishment of body and spirit. At Camp David, the Navy’s Filipino stewards had been taught in the president’s cabin how to prepare kosher meals. Skullcaps (kippot), along with gefilte fish and challah, had been brought from Washington.36 Begin asked Meir Rosenne, the Foreign Ministry’s amiable but tough legal adviser, to render Shabbat songs in his beautiful baritone. When he finished, Mrs. Carter asked for a record of the songs, which he sent her. President Carter gave this accomplished but hard-line legal-draftsman-cum-cantor a playful backhanded compliment: “I prefer your singing to your writing.”37 They enjoyed the release from tension and returned to their cabin with their spirits somewhat buoyed.

  More gestures were to come from the American side to break the tension of the difficult thirteen days in what Begin called a “concentration camp deluxe.”38 Late one night Rosenne and Simcha Dinitz wanted some coffee. They spotted a woman in the distance at Holly Lodge and, thinking she was a waitress, asked for coffee. It turned out to be Rosalynn Carter, who graciously served them at 2:00 a.m.39

  All through Saturday, from daybreak to midnight, Carter and the American delegation went through several of what would eventually be twenty-three drafts of a proposal they hoped to sell initially to the Israelis and then to Sadat.40 Brzezinski broke away to mend fences with Begin by coming to his cabin for a chess match on the porch of Begin’s cabin. Both were of Polish origin, but Brzezinski was from a highly educated, urbane Polish diplomatic family, while Begin’s roots were in a poor Polish shtetl—“Poles apart,” quipped Begin’s adviser Yechiel Kadishai to me.41 They moved pieces in one aggressive game, then another. Word spread about the
engagement of the two very different but very sharp minds, and staffers from both sides gathered to watch. Accounts differ about who won the three-game match, or if there were two or three matches. Brzezinski remained diplomatic to the end: In his memoirs he maintains there were two matches, which ended in a one-one tie.42

  It would take more than chess to make progress, however. Exploratory discussions among officials began gearing up. Not everyone was ready. After Boutros-Ghali and Weizman had a long discussion about how to link Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai to withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, the Egyptian diplomat returned to his cabin and found his nervous boss asking him where he had been. He told Foreign Minister Kamel he had been debating with Weizman for the past hour and had succeeded in making some important points. Kamel rebuked him: “Did we not agree not to speak with these people?”43