Three American diplomacy giants took the stage together at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University on Tuesday to analyze their policy during the years on either side of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, especially in the immediate lead-up and aftermath of the war. The three were Dr. Harold Saunders and Professors William Quandt and Daniel Kurtzer. They were not here as academic researchers, but rather as witnesses.
During those years, the three held senior positions in the U.S. National Security Council and the State Department, and in fact were among the close advisers of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who held a very different perspective than the Israeli leadership at the time. Kissinger's America, under the stewardship of President Richard Nixon, viewed the Israeli-Arab conflict as a secondary issue -- a tributary of the much bigger issue: the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The U.S.'s generous arming of Israel, and even more importantly, the behind the scenes agreement between Nixon and then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir to avoid an Israeli withdrawal from Sinai, rested mainly on Kissinger's belief that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat would come to the conclusion that it is better for him to be a Washington ally than a Moscow proxy.
The U.S. wanted to bring Egypt over to its side, and essentially succeeded. Sadat banished his Soviet advisers, but Washington was slow to get the diplomatic process going. There were too prominent exceptions. One was almost omitted at Tuesday's lecture: At the end of the War of Attrition, in the summer of 1970, then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan initiated a provisional agreement stipulating that the IDF withdraw from the Suez Canal to the Mitla Pass in Sinai, and in exchange, Sadat open the canal to ships aiming to normalize ties and reduce the threat of war.
American diplomat Joseph Sisco explained to then-Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin that the initiative was a "nonstarter" because, according to the American viewpoint, an open canal would make it easier for the Soviets to ship supplies from the Bosporus and the Mediterranean Sea, through Suez, to Vietnam, and that would harm American interests. It was only later that Kissinger changed his mind and backed the initiative. In January 1971, Sadat surprised the world and agreed, but in Israel, Rabin and Dayan were virtually alone in their earnest support of the idea. Ultimately Meir and her ministers torpedoed the initiative, and missed an opportunity to avoid the subsequent Yom Kippur War.
During Tuesday's symposium, the American diplomats said that they were surprised when Sadat rushed to send appeasing explanations to Washington as to why he had launched an attack despite the pending diplomatic process. At the end of the day, the entire thing was a tragedy of errors. Meir didn't believe Sadat. Kissinger wanted the Egyptian president on his side. Both Kissinger and Meir doubted the somewhat strange Egyptian president's ability to seek peace. When did the peace process begin? Before the Yom Kippur War? Two years after the war, when Rabin, from his perch in the prime minister's office, basically executed the same initiative he and Dayan backed in the past? In 1970? That is a question for historians, as well as those who worked in diplomacy and then became historians.
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