Carter emphasized that although the United States and Israel had mutual interests, America also had interests in the region extending beyond Israel. From Carter’s perspective the principal threat to Israel no longer came from Egypt or the other Arab states, but from Palestinian militants encouraged by the uprising in Iran. Carter worked on Begin for two agonizing days, climaxing on Saturday night, March 2, in a confrontation so sharp that Begin confided to Carter three days later that he could not sleep that night for fear of a total break with Washington. When Begin came for his last meeting on March 3, two more hours of negotiations proved fruitless.39
ANOTHER BIG GAMBLE FOR PEACE
Carter now decided that the only way forward was to take a gamble even more visible than any at Camp David and travel to Israel and Egypt himself to impress upon both leaders what they would be losing if they failed to agree to a peace treaty. By his own admission, making this decision was “the biggest argument I had with my advisers [and], it got kind of ugly.”40 Here was a president traveling halfway across the world, and failure would be far more politically damaging to him and embarrassing to our country, and he knew it. “I don’t know how to express it, but I was out on a limb literally, and figuratively, way out on a limb.”41
Mondale was almost apoplectic about the risks, and Vance and Brzezinski argued against the trip because it was being made in the context of the Iranian revolution and the fall of the Shah. They warned it could be seen as an act of desperation.42 The domestic political implications were so dire that Ham colorfully told me: “If we come back from the Middle East without a treaty, we can just have Air Force One land in Albany, Georgia [near Plains], and stay there for the rest of [Carter’s] term.43
The imminent confrontation had a cathartic effect on Begin as he pondered the consequences of a serious deterioration in relations. On March 5, only a few days after leaving Washington, Begin telephoned Carter to give him the welcome news that the Israeli cabinet had accepted the U.S. treaty proposals.44 It was now up to Sadat, who called Carter to warn that he was under great pressure to join an Arab summit and reintegrate Egypt into the Arab world. It is not an exaggeration that Carter personally salvaged the peace treaty.
As he emplaned for Cairo, Carter felt he had an ace in the hole in Sadat’s trust, and his commitment to accept any proposal made by Carter that would not undermine Egypt’s fundamental interests.45 As the president landed, Sadat had organized millions of Egyptians to cheer his train from Cairo to Alexandria, where he met Sadat. Together they drafted side letters about the Palestinians, clarified Egypt’s obligations to defend other Arab states, and committed Egypt to sell natural gas to Israel at preferential terms. Carter, mindful of Israel’s security needs, told Sadat there was no real need for Egypt to station any tanks in the Sinai or post troops only five kilometers from the Israeli border—but Sadat added helpfully, “Let’s make it twenty kilometers because I don’t want Prime Minister Begin to be disturbed.”46
On March 10, just after the end of the Sabbath, Carter landed at Ben-Gurion Airport to a red-carpet welcome but an uncertain outcome. Although Begin and his cabinet had already approved the treaty, he needed them to agree to the adjustments he had made to satisfy Sadat. Alone with Begin in his study after a private dinner, Carter was astounded and recounted that he had “rarely been so disgusted in my life” when Begin told him for the first time that he could not sign any agreement on his own but needed to have the full text submitted to the cabinet and then to permit a Knesset debate of eight to ten days on all the issues. Carter then asked Begin “if he actually wanted a peace treaty, because my impression was he did with apparent relish everything he could do to obstruct it.” At these harsh words, Begin “came right up and looked in my eyes about a foot away and said that he wanted peace as much as anything else in the world.”47 His biggest problem of course was the settlements. When Carter left near midnight, the prospects for success were as dark as the night.
At a working meeting the next day, the haggling continued, even down to the meaning of specific English words. Begin objected to “derogate,” at which point—in an almost surreal scene—dictionaries and thesauruses were supplied for the president of the United States, the prime minister of Israel, and all their aides to find different combinations of words.48 At the end of the afternoon the Israelis and the Americans remained deadlocked on all outstanding issues, and Carter realized he needed to outflank Begin with an unprecedented appeal to the Israeli cabinet. Begin for his part realized that a crisis was brewing in which Carter would make him the deal breaker. He asked for an adjournment to consult the Israeli cabinet’s seven-member Security Committee. For more than an hour, Carter and his delegation waited in the Cabinet Room, where the president incautiously made unflattering remarks about his host.49
When negotiations resumed Begin agreed to convene the full twenty-three-member cabinet to review Sadat’s latest modifications. But first the schedule called for a formal dinner at the Knesset, where everyone was on best behavior. The violinists Isaac Stern, a frequent performer at the Carter White House, and Pinchas Zukerman, entertained everyone, with a beautiful Chagall tapestry in the background. Then the U.S. delegation cooled its heels in the lobby of the King David Hotel while the Israeli cabinet met nonstop until 5:30 a.m. Monday. While they accepted parts of the latest U.S. draft, they would not accept all of it. Carter’s personal appeal swayed most ministers, but not Begin and Ariel Sharon.
Begin and Carter now were both exhausted. Carter felt that Begin was holding out on trivial issues and that he could not remain longer with so many other problems demanding presidential attention at home. Before leaving, he tried to reassure the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the full parliament that they could depend on Egypt. Addressing the Knesset, he witnessed the rough edge of Israeli politics and the intense opposition Begin faced within his own Likud Party—a withering contrast to the respectful attention Begin had received from a joint session of the U.S. Congress. As Begin was introducing Carter, Geulah Cohen, an outspoken, hard-line Likud member, climaxed a hectoring chorus by screaming that her own leader was selling out Israel. After several warnings from the Speaker, she was expelled from the chamber. Carter delivered an eloquent appeal for the preservation of the U.S.-Israel relationship. Ad-libbing a line and looking down at Begin from the rostrum, he said pointedly that national leaders “had not lived up to the aspirations of their peoples.”50 This did nothing to improve Begin’s disposition. When Begin spoke he was heckled by other members of his own party, without any prompting from the absent firebrand, Ms. Cohen.
But then Dayan and Weizman joined forces, just as they had in the closing hours at Camp David, to ensure that Carter would not leave empty-handed. After Weizman threatened to resign over Begin’s persistent brinksmanship, he and Dayan convened key members of the cabinet to devise new language on a guarantee for Israel’s oil supply and other loose ends. Israel and Egypt can be thankful that when Carter awoke from a brief nap, he decided to remain until Tuesday morning, when he heard the surprising news that Begin had told the press that they had made substantial progress. Carter called Begin to thank him for all his efforts and invite him and his wife, Aliza, to breakfast with him and Rosalynn in their presidential suite at the King David Hotel before he left. With Begin fully aware that Carter was going home in defeat, this final gesture of friendship worked like Carter’s autographed photos of Begin’s grandchildren at Camp David.
About 9:00 a.m. Tuesday, as most of the American delegation was already en route to the airport, and the Israeli airspace was cleared for Carter’s departure, Begin and his wife headed for the president’s suite. Carter asked for a few minutes for him and Rosalynn to prepare to receive their guests. Rafshoon and Ham were told to entertain them. They found Begin friendly and laughing. “I’ve always liked the King David Hotel,” he said. Unaware of Begin’s underground exploits, they agreed it was indeed a very nice place. “You know,” he continued, “I blew it up once, u
sing explosives in milk canisters.” Shocked, they stared at him. Begin added with a broad smile, enjoying the joke: “Don’t worry, I’m not going to do it again.”51
Breakfast proved more serious and indeed decisive. One hurdle was maintaining a secure supply of energy for Israel, which in those years had no oil and gas reserves and depended in part on the oil fields conquered in Sinai in 1967, which would be returned to Egypt under the treaty. As part of a Kissinger-led agreement in 1975 to withdraw from part of the Sinai and abandon one oil field, the United States promised to assist Israel for five years in securing its oil supply if it were shut out of buying oil on the world market.52 But now Israel would be making a major sacrifice by relinquishing another oil field; Sadat offered to sell crude oil to Israel at market rates, but what if hostilities between the two countries flared again? To make matters worse, a cataclysmic event shook the world: Islamic radicals deposed the Shah of Iran, who had quietly been supplying half of Israel’s oil, along with a quarter from Mexico, and the rest from the volatile spot market, in which oil is traded for immediate delivery at current prices. Now Israel demanded American assurances to help maintain a steady supply.
Recognizing their plight, Carter offered to guarantee oil supplies from the United States, which surprised Begin and figuratively helped grease the way to agreement. When Begin showed a bit more flexibility, Carter asked Dayan and Vance to join the breakfast and offered to extend the guarantee for fifteen years, more than the Israelis expected. Carter also told Begin he had Sadat’s agreement to pass Israeli ships through the Suez Canal immediately. Now Begin agreed to the treaty in principle.
Then the unimaginable happened to the leader of the free world and the prime minister of Israel. As Carter recalled, Begin “was still huffy. And we started down in the elevator. I didn’t know whether he had agreed or not. He was more flexible. [Then] the elevator got stuck. Nobody could get the door open. It was Begin and me and our two wives and two security agents. They finally got a big crowbar and tore the door off. The manager of the hotel got a ladder put up. So we all came down with probably a thousand news reporters with cameras. We came down in a very ignominious way with our butts coming down backwards off the ladder.”53
On the way to the airport Begin at last said he would accept Carter’s final proposals. Carter phoned Sadat to tell him he was bringing new language. When he arrived in Cairo to meet Sadat at the airport, approval was as swift as expected, and Carter confirmed to Begin that all were in agreement.
In fact Begin had never intended to send President Carter home empty-handed, or so Ambassador Lewis was later told by Begin’s confidants. The ambassador summed up Begin’s brilliant, if almost insufferable, bargaining style, on display both at Camp David and on this last fateful trip: “Begin was simply and purely bargaining; he was going through his usual, very tough, emotional, tenacious, legalistic, annoying bargaining tactics. Begin was a very tough and effective negotiator. He drove everybody crazy, but usually got 90 percent of his objectives. And that, after all, is the test.” Begin sent the treaty to the Knesset, which approved it after a spirited debate, despite the defection of some Likud colleagues.54
* * *
As head of an interagency group of State, Energy, and Treasury Department officials, I was handed the political hot potato of converting Carter’s energy pledge into concrete terms. It was not an auspicious moment to be seen guaranteeing Israel’s oil supply when four million barrels of Iranian oil had disappeared from the world market during the turmoil of the Iranian revolution, sending spot-market prices to unprecedented heights and creating gasoline shortages that forced cars to line up for hours at gas stations across America. Carter was already being blamed for that.
Not only was timing important because of Israel’s imminent withdrawal from the Sinai, but so was the price. Would the oil companies squeeze Israel in a crunch? I suggested that the president give a major speech on energy conservation and to permit the export of Alaska oil and swaps with other countries to balance our supplies. If we buried the guarantees to Israel in this major program, they would be less noticeable. Congress cut this avenue off, prohibiting the export of Alaskan oil to assure domestic supplies.
But at our request Congress authorized the president to export oil to Israel in an emergency. Still, Israel made it clear that they would not sign a treaty without more concrete assurances. The oil issue was not put to bed until the eve of the signing of the treaty. This came in two agreements through the Byzantine interagency process I led. A provision was added to the treaty allowing Israel to bid for Egyptian oil not needed for its domestic needs on the same basis as any other country.55 After endless meetings and foot dragging by the State Department, in a second agreement we also committed ourselves to supply part of Israel’s needs from our own stocks at the prevailing market price for a period of fifteen years, assuring Israel access to U.S. oil at market prices if Israel could not meet its needs from the international market—a pledge the United States had never made before (or since) to any other country. On the same day as the peace treaty was signed, Vance and Dayan also signed a Memorandum of Agreement on oil.
A more detailed oil agreement was consumated well after the treaty was signed, and only two weeks before Carter would face the voters in a bid for reelection. With his Jewish support lagging, I met with Israel’s energy minister, Yitzhak Modai, and the Israeli Embassy economic counselor, Dan Halperin. I urgently asked for the deal to be concluded before the election so the president could be seen publicly endorsing it. Then raw American politics intruded. Paul Hall, president of the Seafarers International Union, announced his opposition to sending any American oil to Israel, unless it was shipped in American tankers. Reluctantly I acquiesced. Once the agreement was duly signed, the Israelis pressed us to apply it quickly in order to cement a precedent. We resisted just as strongly to avoid a political outcry.56
But after all that effort, the agreement was never invoked by Israel, although it was extended several times and largely forgotten over the years. When it was last extended for another fifteen years in November 2014, the White House had to be reminded of its very existence by an inquiry from the Reuters news agency. Fittingly the renewal was arranged by my cousin Ron Minsk, the energy specialist in the Obama White House.57
ENDGAME
For the first time since their brief and strained encounters at Camp David, which seemed eons ago, Begin and Sadat met alone in the large Egyptian Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, which set a positive mood for the historic signing ceremony the next day.58 The president and the first lady watched the workers erect the platform on which he, Sadat, and Begin would sign the historic treaty. As a forklift carried a stack of lumber about 10 feet high, he turned and said, “Rosalynn, do you remember when we saved two weeks to buy a sheet of plywood; they’re going through it like tissue paper.”59
On March 26, 1979, a beautiful, cool day, Carter sat between Sadat and Begin on the front lawn of the White House and witnessed their two signatures on the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab country. The indelible picture of the three leaders clasping hands is one of the great images of American diplomacy. The only cloud on an otherwise cloudless day came in the form of a few protesters across from the White House in Lafayette Park chanting, “PLO, PLO, PLO!”—a harbinger of tougher days ahead.
A giant tent was pitched for a festive dinner with more than a thousand guests, including my wife, Fran, my parents, Sylvia and Leo, and me, and kosher food for observant Jews. It seemed that the entire political and Jewish world had converged on the back lawn of the White House. There was a pervasive sense of joy that the impossible had happened; people could hardly remain at their assigned tables and circulated to hug friends from years past, when peace between Israel and its strongest Arab enemy seemed unimaginable. After five wars with Egypt, the sense of history was palpable. All of my boyhood Jewish education came rushing back to me—Jacob’s son Joseph sold into captivity by his jealous brothers, only to become
adviser to the Egyptian pharaoh; and then, four hundred years later, Moses leading his people out of Egypt to the Promised Land.
But my most deeply personal link to the treaty was forged just two weeks later, when we hosted a unique and moving Passover seder at our home in suburban Washington, with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter as the special guests of our family—Fran, our young boys, my parents, Leo and Sylvia, and Fran’s sister and her husband, Naomi and Mel Schwartz. Wearing a Jewish head covering—a kippah (or yarmulke, as it was more commonly called then)—the president and his wife stayed for the entire reading of the traditional Passover Haggadah over dinner. He knew not only the story of the Jews’ trek to freedom but the seder service itself, which he had attended at the home of a Jewish relative. We needed only one modification for the visiting president. As I moved toward the front door for the ritual of opening it to admit the spirit of the prophet Elijah, a Secret Service officer grabbed me and warned that security prohibited me from doing so. I said it was a religious imperative, and I would open it only a crack, but he was adamant. I finally negotiated a compromise: I would be allowed to open the back door leading to a fenced-in patio. I joked that this would be the only time Elijah would enter through the back door, at which Carter laughed heartily.
* * *
If only the story could have ended on such a joyous note, the history of Jimmy Carter’s term in office would have been very different. But there are no Hollywood endings in the Middle East. While the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty remains intact as a major foundation of American policy in the region without one significant violation for more than thirty-five years, Israel and the Palestinians lost what could have been a historic opportunity to use Camp David and the treaty to settle their conflicting claims to the West Bank. Autonomy talks led by Ambassador Sol Linowitz, who negotiated the Panama Canal Treaty, sputtered and died with Carter’s defeat in the 1980 election.60 Each side remains locked in its own historical narrative, and their failure to settle their conflicting claims is the basis for the impasse that has bedeviled every American president since Jimmy Carter. Any hope of achieving Palestinian autonomy and loosening the grip of the Israeli occupation ended with Carter’s defeat by Ronald Reagan, who had no interest in the messy peace process.
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