by Scott McConnell on March 6, 2011
(see esp. Jeff Blankfort comment, below)
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, left, and US national security adviser Zbig Brzezinski play chess at Camp David, 1978.
In the midst of the Egyptian revolution, a concerned Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet that the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace was “the cornerstone of peace and stability, not only between the two countries, but in the entire Middle East as well” –a pronouncement that soon made its way to the front page of the New York Times. While the peoples of Lebanon, Iraq, Gaza and the West Bank might well wonder how much peace and stability they got from the deal, Camp David did indeed usher in a golden age for Israel, which was freed to pursue aggressive policies without having to worry about the Arab world’s largest military.
How did this happen? A strategically-dominant Israel was not a goal of Jimmy Carter and the other Americans who negotiated the Camp David accords. Washington had been frightened by the 1973 war and hurt by the subsequent Arab oil embargo; strategists worried that continued turmoil in the region would allow the Soviet Union to make trouble with the West’s energy supplies. For the previous decade, the Beltway consensus held that Israel should give up the territory it had seized in the 1967 war in return for a comprehensive peace with its neighbors and security guarantees. The Palestinian leadership had been moving steadily towards acceptance of the two-state solution. Washington had sought a resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem, amplified by the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, since Eisenhower’s time.
The Camp David Accords are thus a puzzle, because the results – which shaped the Middle East for a generation-- were so different from what its American sponsors intended. Unraveling the puzzle reveals the constraints on an American president in dealing with Israel. Indeed a principal lesson to be drawn from Power and Principle, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s memoir of his tenure as Carter’s national security adviser, and from his top Middle East aide William Quandt (in Peace Process) is that the Arabs should disabuse themselves of the idea that the United States will use its leverage over Israel to achieve a just peace.
The Camp David template governed the Mideast for thirty years. The Palestinians were stateless in 1979, and remain so. The Israel lobby displayed the muscle to define the limits of what an American president might plausibly achieve. This happened in an administration whose foreign policy principals believed that resolution of the Palestinian issue was an important strategic and moral interest, under a president who felt a warm personal connection to Anwar Sadat, which he did not feel towards Israel’s leaders.
One can see why intelligent people believed that the situation was more fluid. In Brzezinski’s account, central administration figures repeatedly broached the idea of breaking openly with Israel, and explaining to the American people their frustration with Israeli intransigence. And yet one senses this was never really a serious option. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin seemed to know this, as Netanyahu and his team do today. In the end, Begin played the administration perfectly — exploiting its yearning for a diplomatic “success,” maneuvering towards a separate peace that severed Egypt from the issue of Palestine, giving Israel a free hand to colonize the West Bank, annex the Golan Heights, and launch several wars against Lebanon.
No one can blame the consequences of Camp David on a lack of commitment on the part of Jimmy Carter and his foreign policy team. Secretary of State Cy Vance and Brzezinski differed over how to deal with the Soviet Union, but both believed a comprehensive Middle East settlement, which included a Palestinian homeland, was an American vital interest. Their staffs shared the conviction. The president was wholly on board. A devout Christian, Carter felt some emotional tie to Israel as “the land of the Bible” and was put off by the disdain some world leaders, such as French president Giscard D’Estaing, felt towards the Jewish state. But he felt strongly that Palestinians were victims of injustice.
Early in his presidency, in a 1977 March town meeting, Carter said, “there has to be a homeland provided for the Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years.” Brzezinski recognized instantly that the comment would set off a political storm and records that “Vance and I huddled on how best to handle this new development, but we received instructions. . . directly from Air Force One that no elaborations or clarifications were to be issued on the matter.” (Almost thirty years to the day after Carter’s evocation of Palestinian suffering, Barack Obama, in an Iowa campaign appearance, used the same verb to depict the Palestinian plight. Like Carter, he came under strident attack from Israel’s backers. While one could say that some things never change, there was one significant difference. Unlike Carter, Obama did subsequently “clarify” his remarks, claiming he meant that the Palestinians were suffering because of the failings of their leadership.)
Coming into office, the Carter adminstration’s plan was to prepare the ground for an international conference at Geneva, co-chaired by Washington and the Soviet Union. The administration knew that Israel would resist, but felt such objections could be overcome. Brzezinski records that he told Carter frequently that Israel would require “persuasion” adding “given the centrality of the U.S. pipeline to Israel’s survival, most Israelis instinctively would shrink back from overt defiance of the United States, provided they were convinced the United States means business.” (Italics in original).
But the window during such persuasion could be attempted was narrow. In a succinct summary of the Israel lobby’s strengths, Brzezinski observes, “The nature of American domestic politics was such that the President had the greatest leverage in his first year of office, less so in his second, and so forth. The more time he had for persuasion and for the subsequent progress toward peace to be manifest, the more opportunity he had to act. Friction with Israel made little sense in the third or fourth Presidential years, for such conflict would be adversely reflected in the mass media and in financial support for the Democratic Party.”
The administration’s chances of using the first year effectively grew slimmer when Israel’s Labor Party lost election to Menachem Begin’s Likud-led coalition in May 1977. Washington sensed a looming showdown with the hawkish Begin. Brzezinski pressed for more administration voices speak out on the Middle East, and an initially reluctant vice president Mondale gave a speech calling for Israeli withdrawal to the lines and preparation of a Palestinian “entity”. House leader Tip O’Neill told Brzezinski that “if the choice came down between the President and the pro-Israel lobby, the country would clearly choose the President—but only if the choice was clearly posed.” Senator Abraham Ribicoff, a Jewish liberal wary of Begin, passed word through Walter Mondale that Carter needed to stand firm. Cy Vance passed on gossip from veteran Washington insider Sol Linowitz that the Jewish community had reached the conclusion that “if they pressed hard enough, the President will yield.” This apparently was the outcome of a meeting Carter had with Jewish leaders, in which he professed his commitment to Israel, while outlining his plans to push Tel Aviv towards a peace settlement.
By August, Carter, according to Brzezinski’s diary notes, “indicated his increasing frustration with the Israeli position and his unwillingness to maintain a policy in which in effect we are financing their conquests and they simply deny us in an intransigent fashion and generally make a mockery of our advice and preferences. He was extremely tough-minded on this subject and he was echoed by Vance, who suggested that if the Israelis open up a single more settlement, . . .we should initiate talks with the PLO.”
It is one thing to display tough-mindedness in a meeting with people who essentially agree with you. Carter might have survived a showdown with prominent American Jews over Israeli intransigence -- we will never know. Certainly many American Jews considered Begin’s stance reckless. But it is hard to imagine any American president, especially a Democrat, with the stomach for such a showdown.
In November 1977 Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, in a dramatic gesture, sought to break the logjam by going to Jerusalem. In his speech to the Knesset, Sadat made it clear that in return for peace, Israel would need to make a full withdrawal, and allow the Palestinians to build a state on the West Bank and Gaza. Perhaps Sadat, whose primary concern was recovery of Egypt’s own territory, had already decided he would settle for a separate peace. to settle for less. In the wake of Sadat’s Jerusalem speech, Begin came to Washington and Carter pressed him on the Palestinian issue. Begin floated a concept of Palestinian “autonomy” -- a vague formula which Brzezinski, sensing that it might be pregnant with possibilities, sought to tease out. Autonomy, Brezezinski said, could mean anything from a “Basutoland under Israeli control” to a way station on the path to real statehood.
The spring of 1978 was taken up by a conflict over American arms sales to Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which Israel opposed. Brzezinski wrote, “during this period all of us were under severe attack from the Jewish lobby, and much time was consumed in meetings and explanations. These were rarely pleasant, even though the top Jewish leaders were more understanding of our need to develop ties with the more moderate Arab states.” Brzezinski complained sharply over dinner to Moshe Dayan about Israel’s efforts to block the arms sales, offering that the President would win a confrontation, and threatening to go public on Israel’s nuclear arsenal. In the end, the arms package, modified with more jets for Israel, did go through.
By the summer, whatever momentum had been generated by Sadat’s gesture had evaporated. The Carter team hoped to unveil a proposal bridging previous Egyptian and Israel positions, one that confirmed UN Resolution 242 (which called for Israel to withdraw form the conquered territory and the Arabs to make peace with Israel-- land for peace) got Israel out of the Sinai and advanced the Palestinians along a road to self-determination. “How are we prepared to deal with an Israeli rejection of our proposal?” Brzezinski asked Carter in a July memo. “Do we have the political strength to manage a prolonged strain in U.S.-Israeli relations? What kind of forces can we marshal and in what manner in order to prevail? These are the central questions, and they touch on both international and domestic sensitivities. Above all, you must decide whether at this stage you are prepared to see this matter through to the very end. . . if we go public and then do not prevail, our Middle East policy will be in shambles. . If we go 'public' we must prevail.”
Brzezinski’s questions were simply too much for the Carter administration—to answer them would require a kind of war gaming about how to neutralize an important part of the American establishment and vital part of the Democratic coalition. In any case, there no record that the administration ever explored them. Carter’s response was to suggest a summit meeting with Begin and Sadat, an historic gathering where Carter himself could overcome the deadlock. Going in, Brzezinski urged the administration to be prepared for failure, to make clear that “refusal to accept our proposals would jeopardize the U.S.-Israeli relationship.”
Invitations to Camp David were sent out in August 1978. The thirteen days in September were unusual by any standard of diplomacy: three leaders and their national security entourages isolated in a compound in the Maryland hills, with no press around. Carter worked like a man possessed, drafting original language for the document and engaging in nearly continuous meetings with Egyptian and Israeli officials in search of mutually acceptable formulations. For diversion, the Americans played a lot of tennis; Brzezinski played two games of chess with Menachem Begin.*
Israel approached the summit with a single goal. Even before Sadat’s peace gesture, Tel Aviv’s foreign ministry had been working on removing Egypt from the conflict by working out a separate peace. Such a deal was overwhelmingly in Israel’s interests—something Begin and government recognized even as they quibbled over every hilltop and settlement and timetable for implementing the withdrawal. But the haggling served a larger purpose, as Brzezinski aide William Quandt points out in his analysis of Camp David:
“Begin, more than any of the other negotiators, seemed to have a feel for the strategic use of time, taking the negotiations to the brink of collapse over secondary issues to avoid being pressed on key problems. Sadat, by contrast, simply refused to negotiate over those matters of deepest concern to him—Egyptian land and sovereignty—while leaving to his aides the unhappy task of trying to stand up to Begin on the Palestinian issue.. . Begin’s position was also strengthened by his willingness to accept failure in the talks. Both Sadat and Carter were more committed to a positive outcome, and Begin could credibly use the threat of walking out, as he did, to extract concessions.”
At one point late in the negotiations, Sadat, frustrated by Begin’s refusal to give any ground on the West Bank, packed his bags and prepared to leave. Carter rushed to the Sadat cabin to explain that his departure would mean the end of the American-Egyptian relationship—that the failure of negotiations would be put on Sadat. It was a revealing moment: despite the fact that Sadat’s positions were far closer to the White House’s own than Israel’s were, when push to came to shove, an American president could threaten Egypt, and did not hesitate to do so. The same was not true for Israel.
Negotiations on the West Bank and Gaza did not come to a head until near the end of the fortnight. Before then, the Israelis persisted in arguing that the war of 1967 gave Israel the right to change frontiers. Begin refused to accept the applicability of UN Resolution 242 to the West Bank. As the Israeli set out his vision of the West Bank, outlining all the controls, veto rights and privileges he would retain for Israel, Carter exploded “What you want to do is to make the West Bank part of Israel. “ Vance seconded the President. Brzezinski added “This is profoundly sad—you really want to retain political control, vetoes, military governor, broad definition of public order. We thought you were willing to grant genuine self-government.” Moshe Dayan, ever the diplomat, responded “Professor Brzezinski, we are not after political control. If it looks that way to you, we will look at it again.” A breakdown was averted. Carter went back to redrafting, focusing on the idea that the Israeli proposal for home rule would be worked into a five year transitional period. On the seventh day of the negotiations, the Israelis were still objecting to any drafting which highlighted the words “inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by war.” Dayan told Vance that the summit would end in failure, and Carter’s intransigence would be blamed.
But on September 16th, the eleventh day at Camp David hills, the key compromise, actually an American concession, emerged. According to Bill Quandt’s account, it was then that the American draft pertaining to Gaza and the West Bank was fundamentally changed. “The elements of 242, including withdrawal, which had previously been spelled out were deleted. The language was changed to make it clear that the negotiations, but not necessarily the results of the negotiations, would be based on the principles of 242. And the negotiations about the West Bank and Gaza were artfully obfuscated by creating two tracks, one involving peace-treaty negotiations between Israel and Jordan and the other involving talks between Israel and representatives of the Palestinians.” Quandt concluded, “It may take a lawyer to explain how, but Begin successfully protected his position that 242 did not apply to negotiations over the West Bank’s future, the Americans accepted the ambiguity, and Sadat may well have wondered what all the verbal gymnastics were about.”
To say the least, the ambiguity does not leap out from a simple reading of the Camp David Accords. The document does indeed make it seem that the West Bank negotiations are premised on 242, and set up a path towards Palestinian self-determination in some form. But unlike the more specific provisions over Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai, there is no explicit promise that the negotiations would actually lead anywhere. At least, Carter thought, he could help secure his preferred outcome by halting the West Bank settlement program which Begin had recently initiated. Carter, so he believed, elicited from Begin a promise to freeze the building of new settlements for the five-year duration of the Palestinian autonomy negotiations.
Carter promptly conveyed to Sadat the oral promise as he shuffled between the cabins of the two men. The Israelis promised him a letter the next day, affirming their promise. But the letter Israel delivered did no such thing. Instead it linked the settlement freeze to the duration of the Sinai negotiations, which were to be wrapped up in three months. Carter refused to accept the letter, and asked for another one. Quandt writes “alarm bells should have gone off, but so many other issues were on the agenda that day, especially a diversionary argument over Jerusalem which erupted in the afternoon, that both Carter and Vance continued to act if there had merely been a misunderstanding that would be cleared up as soon as Begin sent back a new draft.”
The Americans never did receive a letter confirming what Carter believed Begin had promised. But for the wider world, (except, significantly, the Arab world) Carter appeared to achieve what he wanted. As the summit ended, Brzezinski briefed the press. “There was an audible gasp when I announced the conditions of the Egyptian-Israeli agreement, particularly the point that the peace treaty would be signed in three months. The newspapermen could hardly believe it. The sense of excitement mounted steadily as the briefing went on I had trouble extricating myself. . . At ten thirty the President entered with Sadat and Begin, having landed a few minutes earlier by helicopter. There was thunderous applause as he announced the success. . . ”
Less than a week after this triumphant moment Carter and Brzezinski were worrying openly about what they had wrought. Begin immediately went on a media tour in the US, claiming Israel’s right to remain in the West Bank indefinitely and to continue building settlements. Brzezinski noted in his journal that Begin “is trying to create the impression that the only accord that really counts is the Israeli-Egyptian agreement. If he can get away with it, he will obtain a separate treaty and then the whole structure of peace in the Middle East will crumble.” But get away with it he did. Of course the peace did not crumble everywhere. Israel flourished. Begin and Ariel Sharon launched a bloody expedition into Lebanon in an effort to wipe out the PLO and Palestinian nationalism once and for all. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was reinforced by hundreds of thousands of colonizing settlers, and their accompanying road and checkpoint network. Muslim extremism, whose bitter fruit was tasted by America on 9/11, began to grow in the dank spaces of the Mubarak dictatorship, the only sort of Egyptian regime which could accept Camp David as guidepost of its regional strategy.
Less than two months after the Camp David framework was completed, (but before the final treaty was signed) Carter and foreign policy team were discussing the cable of ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis, which told of increasingly firm Israeli demands for money and of Israeli stubbornness on the West Bank. Brzezinski records that he raised the question “of whether we should in fact be pushing so hard for an Israeli-Egyptian treaty if it is our intention to resolve also the West Bank issue. Once such a treaty is signed we will have less leverage.” Carter interjected that the Israelis don’t want to yield on the West Bank and Dayan has seized the PR initiative in terms of interpreting the negotiations to the public. Brzezinski writes “When I said that I thought the Israelis wanted essentially a separate peace, then U.S. payments, and finally a free hand in the West Bank, the President said that my remarks were brutally frank and perhaps oversimplistically stated. When I sarcastically responded ‘Thank You’ he looked at me very soberly and said ‘Yes, but I agree with you.’ ”
But of course, once committed to Camp David, Carter had little choice but to push to see it through. Honesty about the U.S.-Israel relationship was kept behind closed doors. Once the accord was finally signed the following March, Israel did withdraw from the Sinai. Predictably enough, the Palestinian autonomy talks went nowhere. Begin appointed his interior minister Yosef Burg of the National Religious Party to conduct them. Burg believed Israel’s right to the West Bank was embedded in scripture. The building of settlements accelerated. Moshe Dayan, who might have held a more forthcoming view of what autonomy for the Palestinians should mean, resigned from the government in protest. By then the Israeli cabinet was in the settlers’ hands. In the midst of the 1980 election campaign, Carter of course did nothing.
To recall this history is to recognize that so long as the Israel lobby is more powerful than the justice lobby, the United States is constitutionally incapable of being an honest broker in the Middle East. This unpalatable fact has asserted itself repeatedly, with Carter, Brzezinski and Vance, with George H.W. Bush and James Baker, and with Presidents Clinton and Obama. If a trend can be observed, it is that the United States has become even less able to stand up to Israel with each passing decade. And yet, looked at from a different perspective, the situation seems as fluid and subject to human agency as ever. If Israel’s influence over the American state (witness Obama’s repeated capitulations to Netanyahu) now seems decisive, its hold over the American societal imagination is far more tenuous than when Jimmy Carter entered the White House. Knowledge of the crime inflicted upon the people of Palestine may have grown fiftyfold in the past thirty years. At some point , there will have to be a recalibration, as American government begins to reflect these changing values. The tumult in the Arab world in the past month is a reminder, if one is needed, that no injustice need last forever.
*The Brzezinski-Begin relationship touches on the historically complex relationship between Polish Jewry and Poland’s Catholic elites. On Begin’s first visit to the United States as prime minister, before a bank of TV cameras, he approached Brzezinski and presented him some documents, found in a Jerusalem archive, bearing on his father’s activity as a Polish diplomat in Germany in the 1930’s, when he was engaged in saving Jewish lives. Brzezinski was “deeply touched by this gesture of human sensitivity, especially since it came in the wake of some of the personal attacks on me and on my role in seeking to promote a peace settlement in the Middle East.” ***
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comments on the legality of Israeli actions, from commenter Hostage:
Quandt concluded, “It may take a lawyer to explain how, but Begin successfully protected his position that 242 did not apply to negotiations over the West Bank’s future
The Security Council is unconditionally bound by peremptory norms of customary international law and the UN Charter. Article 13 of the UN Charter tasks the General Assembly with promoting the progressive codification of international law. It adopted GA resolution 686 (VII), “Ways And Means For Making The Evidence Of Customary International Law More Readily Available” and mandated that a répertoire of the practice of UN organs be prepared under the supervision of the Secretariat of the United Nations.
The official ‘Repertoire of the Practice of the Security Council’ contains an analytical table of Security Council decisions (Chapter 8) for 1966-1968. It says that resolution 242 contains several “substantial measures that govern the final settlement” One is the UN Charter prohibition against the threat or use of force and here is another from the list starting on page 5:
“E. Provisions bearing on issues of substance including terms of settlement”
* “1. Enunciation or affirmation of principles governing settlement”
**”(a) Inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by war,
Situation in the Middle East(II): Decision of 22 November 1967 (resolution 242 (1967)) preamble” link to un.org
Here is how one lawyer summed it up: “This is not difficult – from Security Council resolution 242 (1967) through to Security Council resolution 1515 (2003), the key underlying requirements have remained the same – that Israel is entitled to exist, to be recognized, and to security, and that the Palestinian people are entitled to their territory, to exercise self-determination, and to have their own State.” — Opinion of Judge Rosalyn Cohen Higgins in the 2004 ICJ Wall Case link to icj-cij.org
The Oslo Accords aim to implement resolution 242: “Article I: Aim of negotiations: The aim of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations within the current Middle East peace process is, among other things, to establish a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority, the elected Council (the “Council”), for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, for a transitional period not exceeding five years, leading to a permanent settlement based on Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973). It is understood that the interim arrangements are an integral part of the whole peace process and that the negotiations on the permanent status will lead to the implementation of Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973). — Text of the 1993 Oslo Accords Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements link to news.bbc.co.uk
In the 2004 Wall case the Court concluded that Israel was illegally interfering with the exercise of the Palestinian (jus cogens) right of self-determination. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties provides in “Article 52 Coercion of a State by the threat or use of force: A treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force in violation of the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations. Article 53 Treaties conflicting with a peremptory norm of general international law (“jus cogens”) A treaty is void if, at the time of its conclusion, it conflicts with a peremptory norm of general international law.” link to untreaty.un.org
So, the notion that Begin or anyone else can create loopholes in the applicable international law by engaging in semantic shenanigans is utter nonsense.
. . .
The key is that Israel later said expansion of Israeli settlements was agreed to be halted by only a 3 month pause. Carter et al too took their eyes from the prize, blinded at the moment over the lesser issues, while Begin did not. The other important thing is that a US president could change the status quo by simply taking a stand against Israel’s agenda–in public, and, also in public, telling the American people why. That is apparently beyond the strength of any past, present, or future US President although it is in the best interest of all concerned here and over there. This can only mean one thing, especially in light of the Arab Street revolt. Israel will take the US down with itself in WW3. Americans are oblivious.
The other important thing is that a US president could change the status quo by simply taking a stand against Israel’s agenda
§204 “Recognition and Maintaining Diplomatic Relations: Law of the United States”, in “The Restatement of the Law (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States” explains that under the Constitution of the United States the President has exclusive authority to recognize or not to recognize a foreign state or government and to recognize foreign sovereignty over territory. It also explains that the Supreme Court long ago affirmed the binding power of those determinations on the other branches of the government. That is the reason the US Embassy is still located in Tel Aviv despite the so-called Jerusalem Embassy Act.
That means President Truman’s authority to recognize the establishment of the State of Israel within the boundaries of the UN resolution of 29 November 1947 can not be legally challenged. It also means that a sympathetic President could stand up for the Palestinians and the State of Palestine and that neither the Congress nor AIPAC could prevent it.
the ultra-zionist retort:
Whatever Carter did, there would not have been a satisfactory solution to the Palestinian issue, first and foremost because the US did not recognize the PLO. What leadership would have implemented any agreement on the side of the Palestinians? Since the US would not have demanded the right of return either, which Palestinian would have agreed to such an arrangement anyway?
But let’ say, a miracle would have happened in Camp David and in parallel to peace with Egypt something like the Oslo Accords would also have been negotiated. How would that have made the Palestinian situation better? Very likely events on the ground would have followed the same path.
The moment Sadat went to Jerusalem and committed himself to peace, he knew the Palestinian issue was just grandstanding on his part so as not to look a sellout to the Arab cause. Sadat was not especially fond of Arafat to say the least. Begin of course knew this and took full advantage.
Begin did not negotiate from a position of strength because of the lobby. He negotiated from a position of strength because he knew Sadat was eager to make a deal on the Sinai, he knew Carter wanted an achievement under his belt and probably just as important, Begin was an ideologue. Anyone that denies this about Begin does not understand him. Begin would rather die than give up the West Bank. Absolutely nothing that the US could have done would have caused him to change his mind. In the worst case scenario he would have simply resigned and gone to another election forcing Labor to campaign under the slogan of giving up to US pressure.
What a sad story. Begin and his successors have always had the measure of the West, the West never having the measure of them. We keep thinking that flexibility over the Palestinians would be in Israel’s interests as we conceive them. What I think we don’t understand that it is extremely difficult, perhaps utterly impossible, for someone whose interests are utterly tied up with Zionist beliefs to make an agreement which concedes to non-Jewish people exactly what Zionism says they cannot have or that God has forbidden, ie a place in Palestine by right rather than by privilege.
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Begin and Sadat killed soon after
“. In Brzezinski’s account, central administration figures repeatedly broached the idea of breaking openly with Israel, and explaining to the American people their frustration with Israeli intransigence. And yet one senses this was never really a serious option. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin seemed to know this, as Netanyahu and his team do today.”
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Begin was quite the terrorist.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Clear that Israeli’s have always wanted the West Bank and the illegal settlements continue to expand. The deal with Egypt and the Accord gave cover to the illegal expansion. I believe the only time an American President was willing to cut off aid to Israel if they continued to expand the illegal settlements was Bush 41.
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“Israel approached the summit with a single goal. Even before Sadat’s peace gesture, Tel Aviv’s foreign ministry had been working on removing Egypt from the conflict by working out a separate peace. Such a deal was overwhelmingly in Israel’s interests—something Begin and government recognized even as they quibbled over every hilltop and settlement and timetable for implementing the withdrawal. But the haggling served a larger purpose, as Brzezinski aide William Quandt points out in his analysis of Camp David:
“Begin, more than any of the other negotiators, seemed to have a feel for the strategic use of time, taking the negotiations to the brink of collapse over secondary issues to avoid being pressed on key problems. Sadat, by contrast, simply refused to negotiate over those matters of deepest concern to him—Egyptian land and sovereignty—while leaving to his aides the unhappy task of trying to stand up to Begin on the Palestinian issue.. . Begin’s position was also strengthened by his willingness to accept failure in the talks. Both Sadat and Carter were more committed to a positive outcome, and Begin could credibly use the threat of walking out, as he did, to extract concessions.”
AND THE MSM WOULD HAVE DUMPED THE FAILURE INTO SADAT AND CARTERS LAPS EVEN THOUGH BEGIN WAS NOT REALLY GOING TO DEAL
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“. The building of settlements accelerated. Moshe Dayan, who might have held a more forthcoming view of what autonomy for the Palestinians should mean, resigned from the government in protest. By then the Israeli cabinet was in the settlers’ hands. In the midst of the 1980 election campaign, Carter of course did nothing.”
Moshe Dayan resigned in “protest” of settlements.
Dayan is an interesting figure, even as a hawk. I was relying on Avi Shlaim’s “The Iron Wall” which says “Begin preferred Burg to Dayan, because Dayan wanted the autonomy talks to proceed and had some imaginative ideas on how to carry them forward. . . the last straw for Dayan was the government’s decision to expropriate private land on the West Bank to make room for new settlements by the religious settlements of Gush Emunim.. . .Disagreement with the official line on autonomy and the manner in which the negotiations were being conducted was given as the reason for the resignation.”
editor comments: Yoram Peri has something to say about the military's "original sin" in failing to repulse settlements in 1975:
A Question of Survival: Civil-Military Relations in Israel Avner Yaniv
The May 1989 issue of Politika, a Hebrew language monthly of some consequence, bore the title, “ . . .”Wither the Army?” It carried articles by 13 leading scholars, officers, and analysts whose common denominator was a concerned and often rather critical reappraisal of the state of Israel’s national security effort. Most ot the contributions dealt in one way or another with IDF doctrine, with critical changes in the emerging battlefield, with the still painful question of national intelligence estimates, and with the impact of the Palestinians uprising on Israel’s ability to deter an all-out Arab attack.
Only one article was devoted to the the issue of civil-miolitary relations in the circumstances of the late 1980s. Titled “Who Will Remove the Occupied Territories from the IDF,” the piece offered a gloomy and pained evaluation of the impact of the confrontation with civilians in the occupied territories on the morale and self-image of the IDF. So far, the author argued, the traditional harmony between the Minister of Defense on the one hand and the Chief of Staff and the General Staff on the other hand has survived intact. But, with the intensification of the political debate over the future of the occupied territories, the IDF is increasingly pushed by reckless politicians into a defensive mind-set. Accused by the extreme right of political partiality (because of its persistent opinion that the uprising cannot be quelled by military means and requires a political settlement based on some redress to the grievances of the Palestinians), the IDF High Command is increasingly entangled in a public debate. This, according to Yoram Peri, the author of the article, could undermine the IDF’s long-established instrumental role, turn it into an active actor in a most divisive political
From, Pacific Focus, Vol IV, No 2 (Fall 1989) 49-73 c 1989 by the Center for International Studies, Inha University
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1976-5118.1989.tb00071.x/abstract
As a former decent but not great tournament chess player, I’m very curious about the level. Zbig writes that when they first played, Begin claimed he hadn’t played since the NKVD interrupted him in order to arrest him in 194o. But then it turns out Mrs. Begin walked in the room while they were playing and said “Menachem just loves to play chess!”
AS USUAL, INFORMATIVE COMMENT FROM
Jeffrey Blankfort March 6, 2011
A superior and important recounting by Scott of the events that led to Camp David and, unfortunately, one that has been avoided by those who in their simplistic analysis, would have us believe Camp David went just the way Washington wanted. That requires, of course, the discounting of the power of Israel and its domestic lobby over US policy..
What should be added is that, before the treaty was actually signed, Israel, using the excuse of a PLO attack, invaded Lebanon, (the real first Israeli War on Lebanon which has been conveniently forgotten here but not there) which may have been as much a test to see what Egypt would do as to wipe out the Palestinians in Southern Lebanon. If Egypt would have responded in the defense of the Lebanese, that would have provided Begin with an excuse to cancel the agreement which he was not as eager to see completed as was Sadat as McConnell’s text indicates. Sadat’s failure to act or even break off the talks in solidarity with the Lebanese did not go unnoticed in the region and marked him as a traitor to the pan-Arab cause.
After Israel had occupied Southern Lebanon for three months, Carter warned Begin that if Israeli troops were not withdrawn Israel would face the suspension of US aid. In his book “The Blood of Abraham,” Carter describes what happened:
“As president, I considered this major invasion to be an over reaction to the PLO attack, a serious threat to peace in the region, and perhaps part of a design to establish a permanent Israeli presence in southern Lebanon. Also, such use of American weapons including cluster bombs violated the legal agreement between the United States and Israel, which specified that such armaments sold by us could be used only for defensive purposes against an attack on Israel.
“In spite of my expressions of concern and worldwide outcry, Begin seemed determined to keep his forces in Lebanon for an extended period and – in another direct violation of American law — to transfer American weapons, including artillery and armored vehicles, to the Lebanese militia commanded by Major Saad Haddad. These troops had been trained and supported by the Israelis, in order to seal off the southern portion of the country against Palestinian terrorists. In carrying out this assignment, they also prevented Lebanese regular troops and UN peacekeeping forces from entering the area.
“After consulting with Secretary Cyrus Vance and with key supporters of Israel in congress, I decided that we could not permit the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon to continue. In the event that Begin would not accede to our wishes, we prepared to notify Congress, as required by law, that US weapons were being used illegally in Lebanon, which would have automatically cut off all military aid to Israel. Also, I instructed the state department to prepare a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s action.
“The American consul general in Jerusalem was instructed to deliver a message to Prime Minister Begin that explained these plans and urged that he withdraw his forces. The report came back from Jerusalem that Begin read the message, stood quietly for a few moments, and then said, “Its over.”
In the end, the American Jewish community did not reward Carter for securing Camp David, which the Zionist establishment opposed because it did not want to see Israel give up the Sinai; it would not forgive him for suggesting that the whole Israel-Arab issue be settled at a peace conference in Geneva, and it did not forgive him for threatening Begin with a cut-off in aid. Consequently, in 1980, running against Reagan, he only received 48% of the Jewish vote, the lowest percentage since they started keeping such statistics.
That warning to Begin is yet another very important historical item that has been buried or ignored by those who downplay the influence of The Lobby and doggedly insist that Israel is supported because it is a US “strategic asset” when, if reality, it has lone been the other way around
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***see future item: Vatican's "Reflection on the Shoah" http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_16031998_shoah_en.html
also, find article describing Vatican's "bad antisemitism" and "good antisemitism." "Bad" = "Jews killed Christ." Church has abjured that meme; in remarks regarding his book on Jews & Capitalism, Abe Foxman answered a question about Catholic church's movement on "supercession" problem. Jewish people get all worked up that Catholic church has taken control of god/salvation, etc. Sometime in the last days of Feb 2011, Benedict did make some statement about Church's acknowledgement that Jews did NOT kill Jesus; I guess that called mollifying. sheesh. Now, can Jews admit that they are killing Palestinians, and stop doing so?
and a Jewish response and remonstrance to "Reflections:" Antisemitism, Christianity, and the Catholic Church: Origins, Consequences, and responses.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3244/is_2_47/ai_n29191611/pg_6/?tag=content;col1
There is nothing that can ever satisfy Jewish Israelis other than fulfillment of the declaration that is carved across the door of their synagogues: Shema Yisrael (or Sh'ma Yisrael or just Shema) (Hebrew: שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל; "Hear, [O] Israel") are the first two words of a section of the Torah (Hebrew Bible) that is a centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer services. The first verse encapsulates the monotheistic essence of Judaism: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one," found in Deuteronomy 6:4 The tenth and eleventh verses encapsulate the kleptocratic essence of Judaism:
10 And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land which He swore unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee--great and goodly cities, which thou didst not build,
יא וּבָתִּים מְלֵאִים כָּל-טוּב, אֲשֶׁר לֹא-מִלֵּאתָ, וּבֹרֹת חֲצוּבִים אֲשֶׁר לֹא-חָצַבְתָּ, כְּרָמִים וְזֵיתִים אֲשֶׁר לֹא-נָטָעְתָּ; וְאָכַלְתָּ, וְשָׂבָעְתָּ. 11 and houses full of all good things, which thou didst not fill, and cisterns hewn out, which thou didst not hew, vineyards and olive-trees, which thou didst not plant, and thou shalt eat and be satisfied--
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