Dr. Boaz Vanetik is a History lecturer at the Achva Academic College (Israel). His recent book (co-author Zaki Shalom) is The Yom Kippur War: The War That Could Have Been Prevented (Hebrew 2012).

Zaki Shalom is a member of the research staff at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies and at Ashkelon Academic College. He is the author of Israel’s Nuclear Option: Behind the Scenes Diplomacy between Dimona and Washington (Sussex Academic Press and Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, 2005), and Ben-Gurions Political Struggles, 1963-1967: A Lion in Winter (Routledge, 2006). In 2007 he was awarded the Prime Ministers prestigious David Ben-Gurion Memorial Prize for his book Fire in His Bones, which relates Ben-Gurions activities following his resignation as prime minister and until his death.

The Nixon Administration and the Middle East Peace Process, 1969–1973

From the Rogers Plan to the Outbreak of the Yom Kippur War

By Boaz Vanetik, Zaki Shalom, Guy Solomon

Sussex Academic Press

Copyright © 2013 Boaz Vanetik and Zaki Shalom
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84519-577-9

Contents

Introduction,
Part One Twilight of the Nasser Regime, 1967-1970,
1 The Middle East Arena Following the Six Day War,
2 The Johnson Administration’s Attempts to Promote a Settlement between Israel and Egypt in 1968,
3 The “Two-Power Talks” (US-USSR): March-September 1969,
4 The First Rogers Plan, October-December 1969,
5 The Rogers Initiative for a Ceasefire in the Suez Canal – June 1970, Part 1,
6 The Rogers Initiative for a Ceasefire in the Suez Canal – June 1970, Part 2,
7 The Crisis in Jordan (September 1970) and its Implications,
Part Two “The Stalemate Policy”, 1971-1972,
8 Sadat Replaces Nasser – Cairo and Washington Begin Moving Closer,
9 Attempts to Arrange an Interim Agreement in the Suez Canal: February 1971,
10 Ongoing Efforts to Reach an Interim Israeli-Egyptian Agreement,
11 The Unofficial Death of the Rogers Plan,
Part Three Run up to the Yom Kippur War, Autumn 1972-October 1973,
12 Reinforcing the Status Quo in the Region,
13 Complacency in the Shadow of Continued Diplomatic Stalemate,
Summary and Conclusions,
Abbreviations Used in this Book,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,

CHAPTER 1

The Middle East Arena Following the Six Day War

The consequences of the Six Day War led to far reaching geopolitical changes in the Middle East and in the standing of the two superpowers in this arena: the US and the USSR. Following the war, the Arab world, particularly Egypt, began a long, slow process of waking up from the illusion that they could defeat Israel on the battle field, let alone destroy it. The impact of the Six Day War went farther than the mere resounding military and political defeat for Egypt; the defeat was an intolerable humiliation; it severely damaged Egypt’s self-image. According to historian Fouad Ajami, the defeat “[…] added a new wound to a deeply scarred civilization; it threw new constrains in the face of a society whose history has been a frustrating struggle to push back – or to ignore and avoid – what seems to be eternal constrains […] it threw out questions that the revolutionary order had confidently declared to be obviously settled.”

Besides the thousands of dead and wounded, the severe blow to the army and the destruction of the Egyptian air force, was also an admission of the failure of the leader of the Arab world: Nasser. The Egyptian president was the first to realize this. On this ground, most likely, he felt compelled to announce his resignation from office on 9 June 1967. He withdrew his resignation, soon enough, ostensibly due to the appeals of the masses. The shattering defeat took a heavy toll on other Egyptian leaders; Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, Deputy Supreme Commander of the Army, who also served as Nasser’s Vice President – whose impact on the Egyptian military had been crucial – was forced to resign his post, placed under house arrest and then committed suicide. Other top Egyptian leaders, such as War Minister Shams Badran, were arrested and put on trial.

Aside from hurting the personal standing of President Nasser and Egypt’s position as leader of the Arab world, Israel’s capture of the Sinai carried with it a heavy economic toll. The closing of the Suez Canal and the loss of the Sinai oil fields severely harmed Egypt’s foreign currency revenues and increased its economic dependency on foreign entities, primarily the Arab oil exporting countries. The harsh economic conditions threatened the stability of the Nasser regime, which sought any means to regain the territory it had lost to Israel.

The Egyptian president assessed that in order for Egypt to reclaim the territories it had lost in the war he would need to act on two axes simultaneously: the one – rebuilding the Egyptian army with Soviet assistance; the other – the diplomatic stage: to convince the American government to compel Israel to withdrawal from the territories. Nasser judged that Israel was entirely dependent on the US, and that therefore only the Americans could secure its withdrawal. Against this background it is possible to understand Egypt’s efforts to foster a dialogue with the US, despite the severing of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Egypt cut off its diplomatic relations with the US during the Six Day War and accused Washington that American pilots had participated in the Israeli air force attack on Egypt. Other Arab states followed Egypt’s lead in breaking off relations with the US – Syria, Iraq, Algeria, Mauritania, Sudan and Yemen.

Following the Six Day War, Nasser remained extremely skeptical of the US and its intentions in the Middle East, and leveled frequent accusations of its unconditional, one-sided support for Israel. Since diplomatic relations had been severed, the post-war contacts between the US and Egypt were conducted via contacts between Donald Bergus, who was entrusted with overseeing American interests in Cairo, and between the heads of the Egyptian government.

Security Council Debates: November 1967

As soon as the fighting in the Middle East had ended, in June 1967, the UN began efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, or at least to prevent its escalation. In November 1967, two draft proposals were submitted to the UN Security Council, aimed at reaching a resolution that would settle the conflict in the region. One of these was put forth by the Indian government, and was closer to the positions of the Arabs and the USSR, while the second was an American proposal that was more favorable to Israel. Both proposals spoke of establishing peace, maintaining the territorial integrity of all Middle Eastern countries, maintaining freedom of navigation through international waterways, resolving the refugee problem, and of sending a special envoy to the region to act on behalf of the UN Secretary General. The main difference between the proposals was that the Indian one called for Israel “to withdraw from all occupied territories”, while the American proposal called for Israel to “withdraw from occupied territories”.

In Israel the UN discussions were considered as highly important. In light of their potentially momentous consequences, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol involved himself in the matter, and requested that he and his government be kept abreast of all the developments in the UN. The diplomatic campaign was conducted therefore on two main stages – New York and Jerusalem. Most of the work was done by the Israeli delegation to the UN, led by Abba Eban. They met in New York with the delegations of Security Council member states and worked to advance Israeli demands, especially amongst the American delegation. Eshkol and Eban exchanged frequent cables between them, where Eban would report on the results of the delegation’s activities, and Eshkol would correspondingly express his opinions on the positions of the cabinet, which would gather as the need arose.

On 4 November 1967 American Ambassador to the UN, Arthur Goldberg, showed Abba Eban the American proposal even before submitting it to the Security Council, and Eban reported back to Eshkol that very same day. The prime minister rejected the American proposal, especially the section that called for the UN Secretary General to send an envoy on his behalf who would facilitate the sides reaching a peace agreement. Eshkol viewed this article as an explicit deviation from the principle of direct negotiations between the parties, on which he was adamantly insistent, and wrote to Eban: “It is not possible to agree to a draft that deviates from our demand for direct negotiations.” Additionally, Eshkol expressed his concern that the American proposal would mean that Israel would need to return to the 4 June borders without a peace agreement, and announced his intention to gather the cabinet for an urgent meeting to discuss these “ominous developments.”

The cabinet did indeed meet that evening and decided that Eban should inform President Johnson that the Israeli government could not accept the American proposal and would not be able to cooperate on the basis of such a proposal in the future. The reason for this was that the proposed resolution did not contain an explicit demand for direct negotiations between Israel and the Arab states and did not include binding requirements for peace treaties between the sides. Eshkol’s cable and the cabinet’s decision were met that same night with angry cables from Eban. He maintained that Eshkol and his ministers were wrong in their interpretation of the American proposal, that it was the best Israel could hope for under the present conditions, and that it carried with it neither a return to the 4 June 1967 borders or a disregard for the need for direct negotiations between the parties. Eban described Eshkol’s suggestion to challenge the Americans as “horrendous”, and stated that it could cause severe harm to the efforts to derail the Indian proposal. Eban demanded that the responsibility for waging the campaign be left to the UN delegation under him, and disputed the cabinet’s ability to provide solutions to the problem of the lack of coordination between Israel and the US.

This cable illustrates Prime Minister Eshkol’s declining position. Already in the “waiting period”, the three weeks that preceded the Six Day War, the prime minister came in for harsh criticism from the military leadership for his hesitancy. In a meeting with the army general staff he came under pointed personal criticism. Moshe Dayan’s appointment as Defense Minister on 1 June 1967 marked a further erosion of Eshkol’s authority. Dayan quickly took over all the responsibilities for handling the territories and accrued for himself a great degree of power and authority. Now the foreign minister was seeking to cut into Eshkol’s foreign relations privileges, while issuing a serious rebuke of his judgment in an area that was, by right, within the prime minister’s jurisdiction.

Drafting Security Council Resolution 242

Since it seemed as though the Security Council discussions were headed for deadlock due to disagreements between the Soviets and the Americans, the British presented the US with a suggestion for a compromise. The US showed the British draft proposal to the Israeli representatives. In light of American and Israeli concerns the British agreed to make some changes to their proposal, including changing the word ‘frontiers’ to ‘boundaries’, which implies firmer and more permanent borders, and affixing the adjective ‘recognized’. The British declined to add the definite article ‘the’ before ‘territories’, as the Arabs had requested, since they understood that Israel would interpret that to mean a withdrawal from all territories, but they consented that the preamble should state that it was inadmissible to “acquire” territory by conquest.

On 16 November 1967, the British ambassador to the UN, Lord Caradon, submitted to the Security Council the revised proposal. Eban convinced Eshkol that there was no chance that the US could pass a proposal that was more favorable to Israel, and that it was advisable therefore to support Caradon’s proposal, which, as stated, had US backing, rather than embark on open confrontation with the US.

The inter-superpower agreement, which began with the ceasefire agreements that ended the June 1967 war and continued in the Glassboro Summit Conference in late June 1967, attended by President Johnson and Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin, culminated in Security Council Resolution 242, on 22 November, 1967. The Security Council voted unanimously to accept the British proposal. This resolution became the accepted legal framework for a Middle East settlement and for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the resolution, Israel was called upon to withdraw from “territories” that were captured in the Six Day War. All Middle East countries were required to end the state of war between them and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states in the region, and to accept their right to live peacefully within secure and recognized borders. The Security Council declared it essential to guarantee the “freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area” and demanded reaching “a just settlement of the refugee problem” (and not “the Palestinian refugees” as the USSR had wanted). UN Secretary General U Thant was called on to appoint a special envoy who would leave for the Middle East to conduct talks with the countries concerned and to facilitate their efforts to reach an accepted agreement by peaceful means.

Resolution 242 was worded in balanced and ambiguous language, so that each side (Israel and the US on the one side, and the Arabs and the USSR on the other) could interpret it according to their interests. This ambiguity of the resolution was a necessary condition for its adoption; “Had the resolution been composed in a manner that could not be interpreted one way or the other – it would have stood no chance of passing; and certainly no chance of passing as it did: consensually, unanimously, without a vote.”

The countries involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict did not accept the resolution with great enthusiasm. Syria rejected the proposal immediately. Egypt and Jordan, who had reservations initially, decided to accept it under an interpretation which said that Israel was required to withdraw completely from the territories it had captured in 1967. Jordan agreed to accept Resolution 242 after the US applied intense pressure on King Hussein, and after American Ambassador to the UN, Arthur Goldberg, promised the king on 3 November 1967 that the US government would work to restore the West Bank to Jordan with minor border adjustments, and that the US would use its influence to “get Jordan a role” (influence) in Jerusalem. Goldberg added that the US did not accept the Israeli position that the matter of Jerusalem was entirely off limits for negotiations.

In a meeting that took place two days later, on 5 November 1967, Goldberg told Hussein that Jordan should support the American version of the Security Council resolution because this was the best offer the US could make to the Arab countries. Goldberg made it clear to Hussein that adopting a Security Council resolution that the US could not support would be meaningless since only the US could use its influence with Israel to get it to support a resolution that called for its withdrawal from Arab territory. Goldberg reiterated that the US would work to return the West Bank to Jordan, with minor border adjustments, and even went on to promise that in exchange for those lands that would remain under Israeli sovereignty, the Latrun area for example, the US would see to it that Jordan would receive compensation in the form of access to the Mediterranean.

The ambiguity of the resolution enabled all sides to have their wishes partially fulfilled. The Arabs and the USSR urgently needed a resolution that would point to, however tepidly or ambiguously or in most equivocal terms, the requirement for Israel to withdraw from the territories it had occupied. This resolution allowed the USSR to reclaim some of its lost prestige in the eyes of the Arabs. The Western countries, especially the US, felt the need to accommodate the Arabs and not be seen as unconditionally supportive of the Israelis. The US sought, in the wake of the war, to avoid a complete rupture with the Arab states, especially those it saw as relatively moderate: mainly Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and to some extent Egypt as well. The US believed that showing some consideration to Arab interests and avoiding support for Israel’s continued possession of captured territories would prevent a wholesale move of the Arab countries into the Soviet fold. Moreover, in terms of inter-superpower relations, the US hoped to avoid exacerbating tensions with the USSR and to try and reach conciliation and understanding, if not agreements for thawing the “Cold War”. It must be remembered that the Americans were at that time up to their necks in Vietnam. They were also experiencing great domestic turmoil internally (particularly with respect to the civil rights struggle for de facto equality for African-Americans). Therefore, they were eager to calm the Middle East arena and prevent a head-on collision with the Soviets. The USSR was at that time suffering from an ever deepening rift with China and from internal troubles in the Communist bloc, and thus it too was trying to avoid escalating tensions with the US in the Middle East.

The question of the legal standing of Resolution 242 has occupied the interest of many diplomats and legal scholars, some of whom are of the opinion that the resolution has no legal binding. For example, Yehuda Blum, a professor of International law, states that “[…] only those Security Council resolutions that are adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter – the one that deals with sanctions – are legally binding to all member states. Resolution 242 in contrast is, formally speaking, a mere recommendation (if it were not so there would have been no need to ask Israel and Egypt and the rest of the countries to consent to adopt the resolution)”.

Despite the criticism, the resolution’s importance should not be discounted. The ambiguous wording in the declaration made it possible to enact its “practical provision”: dispatching the Swedish UN mediator, Gunnar Jarring. Furthermore, it was on the basis of this resolution that the US began its mediation efforts between the Arabs and Israelis, which culminated in the initiatives of Secretary of State Rogers in December 1969 and June 1970. In addition, Resolution 242 accelerated contacts between the superpowers in their efforts to agree on the matter of resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.

(Continues…)Excerpted from The Nixon Administration and the Middle East Peace Process, 1969–1973 by Boaz Vanetik, Zaki Shalom, Guy Solomon. Copyright © 2013 Boaz Vanetik and Zaki Shalom. Excerpted by permission of Sussex Academic Press.
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