Thirteen Days in September

  The main idea that Vance took with him was what Fisher called the “one-text procedure.” The concept was simple: the arbitrator in a dispute creates a document and then asks each side for its response. Matters that are not contested are counted as agreed upon. Those that are disputed are then addressed in a way that continually narrows the differences. When each side finally concurs on the language, that issue is also marked off. The key, all along, is that the arbitrator controls the document. Whenever the contending parties hit a stalemate, the arbitrator proposes new language. In this methodical manner, Fisher believed, disputes that would otherwise lead to bloodshed, economic ruin, and centuries of enmity could be sanded down by patient negotiation. He was seeking a cure for war.

  Carter had his own method of negotiation, which he had first developed during his years on the Sumter County school board, when he had to deal with labor disputes. He would outline in advance what he thought would constitute a fair settlement and then try to bend each side toward his position. When he was governor, rural Hancock County, which had a history of racial violence, became the first county in Georgia in which blacks held all the top offices. That spurred panic among white citizens, who still constituted the majority of the city of Sparta, the county seat. The white mayor ordered machine guns for the city police officers, which led the black-controlled county government to order thirty machine guns in response. An arms race began between the two branches of government that could lead to a kind of civil war. Instead of occupying the county with state policemen or calling out the National Guard, Carter studied the complaints on each side and then composed a list of compromises. He sent a special assistant, Cloyd Hall, to interview both sides and make a presentation to the community. On October 1, 1971, Hall called him, and said, “Governor, I’ve got a birthday present for you.” It was a truckload of machine guns.

  Now, at Camp David, both Vance and Carter had the chance to put their experience to the test.

  Harold Saunders, the assistant secretary of state, had spent all Friday night into Saturday morning writing what would be the first of twenty-three drafts of an American proposal. Carter listed about thirty items that he called “Necessary Elements of Agreement.” They included:

  An end to war.

  Permanent peace.

  Unrestricted passage of Israeli ships through Suez Canal and Gulf of Aqaba.

  Secure and recognized borders.

  Diplomatic recognition and an exchange of ambassadors.

  Phased Israeli withdrawal from Sinai and demilitarization of the peninsula.

  An end to blockades and boycotts.

  Abolition of the Israeli military government in the occupied territories.

  Full autonomy for the Palestinians.

  Determination of the final status of the West Bank and Gaza within five years, based on UN Resolution 242.

  Withdrawal of the Israeli military into specified security locations.

  A prompt and just settlement of the refugee problem.

  Definition of the final status of Jerusalem.

  An end to Israeli settlements in Sinai.

  No new Israeli settlements or expansion of existing ones in the occupied territories until all negotiations are complete.

  Formal signing of a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt within three months.

  Putting all of this on paper caused the American team to focus on what was really important or realistic to achieve at the summit. When Carter met with his team that afternoon, he made several changes in the proposal. For the time being, he decided to omit the demands to end Israeli settlements because Begin would focus on that issue exclusively. He amended the clause concerning “secure and recognized borders” to say that the borders might incorporate “minor modifications” that differed from the 1967 armistice lines. He also deleted a provision that linked the implementation of a treaty between Egypt and Israel to the creation of a self-governing authority on the West Bank and in Gaza. Inevitably, he began thinking of two separate agreements. This would lead to what many critics consider to be the failure of Camp David to achieve a comprehensive peace, while others believe that it allowed the summit to achieve anything at all.

  “The president was very frank in saying that we should try to get an Egyptian-Israeli agreement started and concluded,” William Quandt, who was part of Brzezinski’s staff on the National Security Council, wrote in a memo that day. “If there are any delays in negotiation of the West Bank/Gaza agreement, that is somebody else’s problem. [Carter] said that he hoped both agreements could move in parallel, but it was clear that the Egyptian-Israeli one took priority, and if nothing happened in the West Bank for ten years he would not really care very much.”

  Gaza was usually lumped with the West Bank as a single issue, but in fact each side regarded it as a distinct concern. It was physically separated from the West Bank, complicating the design for any future Palestinian entity; it was also home to the densest concentration of Arab refugees in the Middle East. Members of the Israeli delegation privately urged Sadat to take it back under Egyptian dominion, but he didn’t want it, and Begin was aghast that Gaza was even on the table, insisting that it was part of the historic Land of Israel.

  THE ISRAELIS WERE BEGINNING to chafe at the confinement. Begin was calling Camp David “a concentration camp de luxe.” They joked about digging an escape tunnel. “It all reminded me of the World War II films about submarines,” Weizman recalled. “Here we were, in the enclosed, claustrophobic atmosphere of Camp David, with Captain Jimmy Carter at the periscope.” He compared the expected American proposals to depth charges slowly descending upon the Israelis, as they held their collective breath and hoped the bombs would not sink them.

  That morning, Weizman set off on his bicycle to conduct his own private negotiation. He was often at odds with his prime minister and appeared to the other delegates to be inappropriately close to the Egyptian president. After Sadat’s trip to Jerusalem, Weizman was the only member of the Israeli cabinet who subsequently developed a friendship with him. Whenever Sadat had something he wanted to discuss with the Israelis, it was Weizman he summoned. Carter observed that Weizman was regarded within his own delegation as an adversary or even an enemy.

  Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel happened to be on another long walk with Sadat. Like Begin, the Egyptian president was complaining that Camp David was beginning to remind him of prison.

  “What makes things even gloomier is the fact that our intramural colleagues are, of all people, Begin and Dayan, with whom we have to deal!” Kamel said.

  “We are dealing with the lowest and meanest of enemies,” Sadat agreed, as he led Kamel on his rapid pace through the forest footpaths. “The Jews even tormented their Prophet Moses, and exasperated God!” He added, “I pity poor Carter in his dealings with Begin, with his stilted mentality.”

  Just then, Weizman approached on his bicycle. Kamel dreaded seeing him, believing that Sadat’s obvious affection for Weizman colored his thinking. No doubt Sadat had talked himself into believing that he was using Weizman as a means of gathering intelligence on the Israelis’ positions, but Kamel feared it was the other way round, offering the amiable but ambitious Israeli defense minister unfettered access to the mind of the president of Egypt. Sadat had already had one private meeting with Weizman and had given no report to his delegation about what transpired. Kamel shuddered when Weizman asked if he could pay another visit later that afternoon. “Of course,” Sadat replied, “it’s always a pleasure to talk to you.”

  A few hours later, however, when Weizman arrived at his cabin, Sadat seemed impatient and distracted. The constant fights with his delegation were extracting a toll on his mood.

  “I get the feeling that a lot of things aren’t moving for psychological reasons, not practical ones,” Weizman observed.

  “Of course,” Sadat replied. “I’m sure it’s ninety percent a psychological problem.”

  “I suggest you talk to Dayan,” Weizman said, bringing up a name th
at evoked strong feelings in Sadat. “He heard you repeat that you do not trust him because he’s a liar.”

  “This is true,” Sadat agreed. “He’s a lying man.”

  Weizman urged him to set his personal feelings about Dayan aside. “He has influence over Begin,” he advised. Weizman then probed to see if there was any room for maneuver in Sadat’s positions. “There is no argument about the Sinai being your country,” he said. “But a lot of things have happened in the course of thirty years. You must understand the mentality of our people. On the one hand, they never believed that an Arab leader—certainly not the leader of the largest and strongest Arab nation—would come to Jerusalem. But the Israelis are still convinced that any error is liable to bring a disaster upon them.” For that reason, the settlements needed to stay in place.

  “How can I show my face before the other Arab states if that is the price I pay for peace?” Sadat protested. Even if he agreed to such an arrangement, he said, it would breed new problems in the future. He had already told Begin that he would agree to a phased withdrawal from the peninsula. “I told him other things that he did not understand before. Full recognition? Yes! International waterway in the Tiran Straits? Yes!”

  “And the airfields?” Weizman asked hopefully.

  “They have to be evacuated within two years!”

  Weizman observed that Sadat did not mention full diplomatic and commercial relations, something that Sadat had agreed to in previous conversations between the two men.

  “I know I spoke to you about it,” Sadat conceded, “and I can tell you that I want it. But Begin said in the Knesset: ‘I will not give anything without getting something in return.’ I will behave the same way.”

  “What do you want to achieve here?” the frustrated Weizman asked.

  “I want to reach agreement on a framework,” Sadat assured him.

  Weizman left the meeting feeling that Sadat was not inclined to make any major concessions, but at least he didn’t want the talks to break down. The Egyptian proposal was obviously not Sadat’s final word. “He may have climbed too far up on his high horse, in which case he would need an American ladder to help him down,” Weizman concluded. On his way back to his cabin, he hummed a snatch of the Israeli national anthem, “Our hope is not yet lost!”

  WHILE WEIZMAN AND SADAT were conferring, other members of the Egyptian delegation sat around, killing time and chatting about the movies that they had been watching. They noted who was coming out of Begin’s cabin and speculated on what might have been said. There was little else to do until the Americans produced their document. Idleness was a part of their forced confinement. Finally, the mysterious Tohamy arrived. Except for the heads of state, Tohamy was the only person at Camp David with his own cabin, which made his status all the more inscrutable. No one knew what he did all day here in the woods, but as soon as Tohamy arrived the other delegates perked up. “He could hardly cross the threshold of the bungalow before all the weariness, gloom and anxiety disappeared like magic, to be replaced by joy, liveliness and jest,” Kamel recalled. “And we were all ears!”

  Tohamy interpreted their dreams and recounted miraculous tales of his adventures: for instance, how he had been poisoned on a visit to another Arab state, then retreated to his room and bolted the door, touching neither food nor water for three days as he treated himself with a poison antidote that he happened to always carry with him. He provided a fanciful report that Dayan had just now agreed to restore Jerusalem to the Arabs. Turning to address Kamel, he burst out, “Jerusalem has been put in trust with you, brother Mohamed; beware of renouncing it!” Everyone recognized that as a delusion, but it was nice to hear.

  When Kamel fretted that he was supposed to meet with his Israeli counterpart, Dayan, Tohamy told him that all he had to do was tighten his right fist, fix Dayan with a firm gaze, and then suddenly open his hand and shout, “Tohamy!”

  Tohamy’s attention often turned to the gaunt, patrician figure of Boutros Boutros-Ghali. A figure from the ancien régime, Boutros-Ghali had been born in a hundred-room mansion in Cairo and educated at the Sorbonne, where he took a degree in law. His grandfather, Boutros Ghali, after whom he was named, was the first—and only—Coptic Christian prime minister of Egypt. (In 1910, a Muslim fanatic shot him after he had negotiated an extension on the Suez Canal concession for the British, on terms more favorable to the Egyptians.) Given his talents and the trust Sadat placed in him, Boutros-Ghali should have been made the foreign secretary instead of Kamel. But Boutros-Ghali was not only a Christian; he had compounded his political difficulties by marrying a Jew. High office in Egypt would never be his. (He later became secretary-general of the United Nations.)

  Tohamy fixed on the idea that Boutros-Ghali must convert to Islam—here, at Camp David, where it would take on greater symbolic importance. The others in the cabin jokingly offered to take bets on whether Boutros-Ghali would see the light. Later, however, some of them privately begged him to keep talking to Tohamy in order to distract him from the negotiations. Boutros-Ghali agreed. As it happened, he had studied Islamic law and was well versed in the doctrines and teachings of most important Muslim scholars. For the rest of the summit, the two men spent many hours walking through the autumnal forest, discussing fine points of Islamic scholarship as Tohamy continually urged him to accept the true faith. “I felt strange about this, but it was important to draw him away from the others,” Boutros-Ghali later confessed. “I was the decoy.”

  IN THE EVENING, a tense crowd of onlookers gathered on the porch of Begin’s cabin to watch the Israeli leader play chess with Zbigniew Brzezinski. It was a highly charged match: two Polish expatriates facing one another, each with a reputation for ruthless strategic brilliance. Begin identified Brzezinski with the Polish feudal lords who had made life so miserable for the Jews back in Brisk. Brzezinski’s Catholic father had been a Polish diplomat to Germany during the rise of the Nazi Party and then to the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge, so the associations were really stark.

  Brzezinski was blond and athletic, with steepled eyebrows that gave an immediate impression of intellectual disdain. He was a political innovator, constantly injecting fresh ideas into the discussion. No obstacle seemed insurmountable to his agile mind. Carter appreciated the fact that when all solutions to a problem appeared blocked, Brzezinski could offer five or six fresh alternatives. But at Camp David, perhaps because of the cloud of suspicion that hung over Brzezinski in the Israeli imagination, he was less prominent in the meetings than Vance. The Israelis noticed that Brzezinski chafed at riding in the backseat.

  Although he was usually hyperaware of the political currents flowing through powerful personalities, Brzezinski once had been totally surprised by Begin. In one of his first trips to Washington to talk to Carter, the new Israeli leader invited Brzezinski to breakfast at Blair House. Thinking it was a private affair, Brzezinski was surprised to be greeted by reporters and television cameras. Begin appeared, holding a dossier in his hands. He explained to the press that the folder contained information about Brzezinski’s father, Tadeusz, helping Jews to escape Germany while he was ambassador. Begin’s public praise of his father brought Brzezinski nearly to tears. Despite this emotional moment, Begin still privately condemned Brzezinski as “ocher Israel”—a hater of Israel. They were such different men, divided by their common background—“Poles apart!” Yechiel Kadishai cracked.

  As the match started, Begin announced that this was the first time he had played chess since September 1940, when he was arrested by the Soviet police because of his Zionist activities. On that fateful day, he had been playing chess with his friend Dr. Israel Scheib. Aliza had calmly invited the detectives to join them for tea. They thanked her but said they were in a hurry, although they allowed Begin to polish his shoes. As he was leaving, he told Aliza, “Don’t forget to tell Scheib that I concede that last chess game to him. He was leading, anyway, when they interrupted us.”

  For a man who hadn’
t touched a chessboard in nearly four decades, Begin played surprisingly well. Observing the match, Dayan compared the scene to combat. In the first game, Brzezinski recklessly attacked and lost his queen. Begin was also an aggressive player, but more systematic and deliberate. Brzezinski adjusted his strategy and won the second game, but he fell behind in the third. By now, word had spread all over the camp about the match. At one point, Begin’s wife appeared and seemed so pleased. “Menachem just loves to play chess!” she exclaimed, confirming Brzezinski’s growing suspicion.

  Hamilton Jordan sidled up to one of the Israelis in the audience. “Do me a favor and make sure Begin wins,” he remarked. “Otherwise Zbig will be unbearable.”

  Begin did win, three games to one. Later, a lawyer with the Israeli delegation decided that Brzezinski had lost the match on purpose, as part of a larger strategy: “He thought it would put Begin in a good mood, so he would give up the West Bank,” said Meir Rosenne. “It did get him in a good mood, and he became more extremist than ever.”

  THAT NIGHT, Mohamed Kamel and Boutros Boutros-Ghali once again lay in their bunks, talking until late at night as Kamel poured out new worries. Kamel chided his roommate for talking to the Israelis, especially to the gregarious Weizman. “Did we not agree not to speak to those people?” he demanded. Boutros-Ghali said that negotiating was more than sitting around a table. “It is also a dialogue away from the table.” He tried to calm down the agitated foreign minister. But Kamel was too overwrought to be reasonable. He was humiliated because he had lost control of his delegation. He was also losing control of himself; his passions and his anxieties were running away with him. What did Sadat really want? Kamel wondered aloud. The Egyptian president was so secretive and unpredictable he might say anything! The future of the nation was on the line. Who knows what he might have already pledged without consulting his advisers? But Sadat had burrowed into his cabin and rarely came out, even for meals. Americans visited him—even Israelis did!—but rarely members of his own delegation. He never went to the movies or the pool hall, emerging only to pray in the theater or go for his daily constitutional. The ordinary intelligence one might pick up from such an informal interchange was maddeningly unavailable.