The Israel-Palestine Conflict by Neil Caplan

Author:Neil Caplan [Caplan, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119524014
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2019-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

9

From Camp David to the West Bank to Lebanon

Camp David and the Israel–Egypt Peace Process

In the wake of the October 1973 war, with its near‐miss of a superpower nuclear confrontation, the main actors of international diplomacy went into high gear in pursuit of a settlement of the Arab–Israeli conflict – although without inviting the Palestinians, as now represented by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), to join the process. Despite the perception of victory in surprising the Israelis, crossing the Suez Canal, and overrunning their front lines, Egypt and the Arab states were beginning to realize that there might be no purely military solution to their dispute with Israel and that diplomatic means needed to be employed as well. The Arab states meeting in Algiers in late November 1973 reiterated earlier declarations demanding full Israeli withdrawal from lands occupied in 1967 and affirming support for the Palestinians, but also hinted that the long‐stymied movement from ceasefire to peace might be possible if two preconditions were met: (i) the evacuation by Israel of the occupied Arab territories, including Jerusalem, and (ii) the re‐establishment of full national rights for the Palestinian people.1

International efforts toward a settlement during this period were stage‐managed by the United States, more specifically by its energetic Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. With unusual tenacity and cleverness, Kissinger made the US the pre‐eminent broker and mediator in the Middle East, effectively sidelining the USSR which was, under a United Nations façade, a co‐convener of the December 1973 Geneva Conference. This conference, at which the Arab states and Israel were invited to sit down to discuss peace, opened with some predictably stiff and formulaic statements, and was promptly adjourned sine die. The idea of getting the parties to resume discussions in an international conference at Geneva or elsewhere was periodically floated without result until 1991 (see Chapter 10).

Under the umbrella of the adjourned Geneva Conference, Kissinger went on to perfect the art of “shuttle diplomacy” between Middle Eastern capitals, hammering out the terms of two disengagement agreements between Israel and Egypt (signed 17 January 1974 and 1 September 1975), and one between Syria and Israel (31 May 1974). Not unlike the General Armistice Agreements brokered by Ralph Bunche in 1949, these accords were limited to military matters but nonetheless served as the basis for future attempts to negotiate peace. Although Israeli leaders were not always pleased with the concessions Kissinger pressed them to make, they did benefit from (and the Arab states were correspondingly disappointed by) his acceptance of two of Israel's preferred negotiating strategies: to deal with each of the Arab states one by one, rather than together in a multilateral or multinational conference, and to exclude the PLO, despite its growing standing and popularity at the United Nations.

Egyptian president Anwar al‐Sadat engaged in negotiations with Kissinger with an eye to maneuvering Egypt closer to the US, in hopes of getting the Americans to exert some pressure on Israel. Correspondingly, Kissinger's mediation activities positioned the US for the first time as the ideal “honest broker” between the Arab states and Israel.

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