A Path to Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

George J. Mitchell served as a Democratic senator from Maine from 1980 to 1995 and Senate majority leader from 1989 to 1995. He was the primary architect of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement for peace in Northern Ireland, chairman of The Walt Disney Company, US Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, and the author of the Mitchell Report on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, as well as the books The Negotiator and A Path to Peace. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999.

Alon Sachar has worked to advance Middle East peace under two US administrations. He served as an adviser to the US Ambassador to Israel, Daniel B. Shapiro in Tel Aviv from 2011-2012, and to President Obama’s Special Envoys for Middle East Peace, George J. Mitchell and David Hale, from 2009 to 2011. In those capacities, Alon participated in negotiations with Israelis, Palestinians, and Arab states. From 2006 to 2009, he served in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, focusing on the US bilateral relationships with Israel and the Palestinians as well as Arab-Israeli relations. Alon has also worked out of the US Consulate in Jerusalem, which serves as the US diplomatic mission to the Palestinians. Today, Alon is a lawyer based in California where he was born and raised. He is the author, with George J. Mitchell, of A Path to Peace.

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A Path to Peace

1

LEADERS IN DISAGREEMENT

The exchange between Begin and Reagan—the “saddest” of the Israeli prime minister’s life—took place in 1982. Reagan’s timing was not random. Israel had just withdrawn the last of its troops from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in accordance with the peace treaty between the two nations. Two months after the withdrawal the Israeli Army invaded Lebanon in an effort to push out Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization. From there the Palestinians had launched attacks on Israel’s northern cities and towns. Israel’s military operation in Lebanon lasted for months, ending only with U.S. mediation and when the PLO agreed to leave Lebanese territory.

With Israel out of the Sinai, the violence in Lebanon reduced, a pro-Western government set to be inaugurated in Beirut, and the PLO on the run, President Reagan decided to adopt a “fresh start” initiative. He hoped to capitalize on what suddenly appeared to be a favorable regional environment. The core of the initiative was a comprehensive diplomatic solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors, to be achieved in part by providing autonomy for Palestinians in parts of the West Bank.1

But Begin immediately and categorically rejected the Reagan Plan. Relinquishing control of any of the West Bank was antithetical to his ideological commitment to Israeli control of biblical Jewish lands, and he had just paid a heavy price to push the PLO away from Israel’s northern borders. Palestinian autonomy, Begin worried, would bring them right back.

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U.S. and Israeli policy disagreements have existed since the relationship first began. President Harry Truman (1945–53) is often celebrated for initiating our close and strategic partnership with Israel. But that good relationship was not a foregone conclusion in the decades following Israel’s independence.

From the outset of his administration, President Truman concerned himself with the plight of Jewish refugees, the survivors of Hitler’s Final Solution who remained stranded in dilapidated displaced persons camps in Europe. Israelis have never forgotten that he was the first world leader to recognize their fledgling state, just eleven minutes after their 1948 declaration of independence. “At our last meeting,” recalled David Ben-Gurion, a founding father of Israel and its first prime minister, “I told [Truman] that as a foreigner I could not judge what would be his place in American history; but his helpfulness to us, his constant sympathy with our aims in Israel, his courageous decision to recognize our new State so quickly and his steadfast support since then had given him an immortal place in Jewish history. As I said that, tears suddenly sprang to his eyes. And his eyes were still wet when he bade me goodbye.”2

The early years of the U.S. relationship with Israel took place within the context of the cold war. With Soviet influence entrenched in eastern and central Europe, Asia, and beyond, the United States believed it urgent to prevent the Soviets from gaining a foothold in the Middle East. Even with his sympathies, Truman’s decision to recognize Israel was not easy or automatic; because he feared that either Israel or the Arab states would be pushed into the arms of the Soviets his initial inclination was for a binational arrangement in which Jews and Arabs would coexist. Therefore his decision to recognize Israel surprised even some of the most senior officials in his administration.3

One day after Israel’s declaration of independence, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia4 began military action against the new state. This first of several Arab-Israeli wars lasted ten months; Israel was ultimately victorious, and without U.S. military assistance as Truman had imposed an arms embargo on both sides. The policy of pursuing balance in America’s relationship with the Arab states and Israel continued for decades.

In 1956 President Dwight Eisenhower did what today is unimaginable: he threatened to break off ties with Israel altogether. This crisis in relations followed a combined surprise attack by France, Britain, and Israel to gain control of the Suez Canal, which had just been seized and nationalized by Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Because the Canal provided the shortest route for ships traveling between Europe and Asia, its geopolitical significance at the time, and even today, cannot be overstated.

France and Britain had their own reasons for initiating the war, not least of which was to protect their influence and interests in the region. The British government was the largest shareholder in the Suez Canal and British and French shippers among its largest patrons. Israel believed Nasser’s populism and celebrity status posed a threat to its existence. Nasser had become the charismatic face of pan-Arab nationalism, positioning himself as the leader who would unite the Arab world and destroy Israel. To that end, Egypt had for years supported a steady stream of Palestinian guerrilla attacks into Israel, and enforced a blockade against Israel’s southern port city on the Red Sea. Following Egypt’s nationalization of the Canal, Nasser banned its use by Israel.

Eisenhower worried that armed conflict would enhance Soviet influence in the Middle East. Though wary of Nasser and his arms deals with the Soviet Union, Eisenhower disfavored war and preferred a diplomatic solution to the Suez crisis. He immediately and unambiguously cautioned the British and the French against armed conflict. When they did not heed his warning and proceeded to involve Israel in their plans, Eisenhower was shocked and angered. With the Soviet Union threatening to engage militarily in support of Nasser, Eisenhower scrambled to end the war in a way that preserved regional balance. But by then Israeli forces had taken full control of Sinai.

Over strong objections from the Israelis, Eisenhower pushed through a United Nations resolution calling for their full and immediate withdrawal. He warned Israel that failing to comply with the resolution would “impair the friendly cooperation between our two countries.”5 Eisenhower went so far as to threaten to cut off U.S. assistance to Israel, to seek Israel’s eviction from the UN, and to withhold U.S. support in the event of an attack by Soviet-allied forces. Ben-Gurion desperately sought a meeting with the president to explain his position, that Israel was reluctant to simply withdraw its forces without clear assurances of its security and its continuing right to navigate the Canal and other international waters. But Eisenhower refused to meet until after Israel agreed to withdraw. Ben-Gurion complied, but bitterly.6

The Suez crisis was the lowest moment in U.S. relations with Israel. Efforts to prevent the Middle East from becoming yet another cold war arena had failed, for the Soviet Union made inroads. Cairo, Baghdad, and other Arab capitals drew closer to Moscow.

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