Thread by @MouinRabbani

THREAD (Jimmy Carter, Part 1): Former US president Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100. In his later years he was widely admired by Palestinians, and broadly detested by Israelis, some of whom are exuberantly celebrating his death on this platform. It’s a very different picture than that which existed during his presidency.

Carter was elected to office in 1976, ousting Gerald Ford, who had assumed the presidency in 1974 when Richard Nixon was forced to resign on account of the Watergate scandal. Perhaps on account of Carter’s previous obscurity, it was a surprisingly close election. Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon, thus ensuring the latter wouldn’t be held accountable for Watergate (Nixon never faced the prospect of accountability for his infinitely more serious crimes in southeast Asia) sealed Ford’s fate with many voters. Ford was additionally weakened by a strong challenge for the Republican nomination by Ronald Reagan, representing the radical right of the party, and by presiding over Washington’s final defeat and ignominious withdrawal from Vietnam on 30 April 1975.

In the Middle East, Carter was an unknown quantity. That was certainly not the case with the outgoing administration. Henry Kissinger, appointed National Security Advisor during Nixon’s first term and additionally Secretary of State during his second, retained both positions until late 1975 and the latter for the remainder of Ford’s presidency. By the time of his 1977 exit he had dominated the US foreign policy agenda for almost a decade. A Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, Kissinger was, largely on account of his identity, viewed as irredeemably pro-Israeli. He often was, but this was primarily because he believed Israel served US interests – in the Middle East, in the Cold War, and during an era of revolutionary challenges to US power in the Third World. And secondarily because embracing Israel was a useful arrow in his quiver for his relentless bureaucratic warfare against Beltway rivals.

As with others Western leaders, the crucial support Kissinger provided to Israel was never enough and didn’t earn him much credit. He was routinely accused of appeasing Israel’s enemies and compared to Neville Chamberlain in the Israeli press, which considers it an outrage when foreign diplomats – particularly Jewish ones – serve the interests of their own governments rather than Israel’s. Carter, and most recently Biden, would suffer a similar fate.

In 1975 Israel’s sense of entitlement had become too much even for Kissinger. In the aftermath of the 1973 October War, which like Israel he had thoroughly failed to anticipate, Kissinger successfully managed to monopolize Middle East diplomacy to the exclusion of the Soviet Union. In 1974 this resulted in military disengagement agreements between Israel and both Egypt and Syria. Keen to avoid another Arab-Israeli war and the possibility of further disruption to world energy markets, his next target was an Israeli-Egyptian agreement that went beyond the military dimension and would include a more clearly-defined political agenda.

From Kissinger’s perspective this would serve two crucial objectives. First, it would remove the most powerful Arab military force from the Arab-Israeli equation, and secondly prevent a scenario in which Egypt would renew its strategic alliance with Moscow. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who had signed a Treaty of Friendship with the USSR in 1971, abruptly expelled 20,000 Soviet military advisors the following year and was eager to replace Soviet with US patronage. Kissinger feared that an erratic Sadat would in frustration with US diplomatic failure and Israeli intransigence once again turn to Moscow for support. An added benefit for Kissinger was that a second Egyptian-Israeli agreement would serve to isolate and weaken Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which were aligned with the USSR.

Kissinger recognized that he could not achieve his objectives without an Israeli withdrawal east of the Sinai Peninsula’s strategic Giddi and Mitla Passes. Yet the Israelis proved so obstinate that Ford, upon Kissinger’s urging, wrote and made public a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin which read in part:

“I am writing to convey my deep disappointment over the position taken by Israel during the course of the negotiations [with Egypt] … Secretary Kissinger’s mission, which your government strongly encouraged, involved the vital interests of the United States in the area. The failure to achieve an agreement is bound to have far-reaching effects in the area and on our relations. I have directed an immediate reassessment of U.S. policy in the area, including our relations with Israel, with a view to assuring that the overall interests of America in the Middle East and globally will be protected. You will be informed of our decisions.”

Within months of this “reassessment” bombshell (for which Ford was condemned by 76 of 100 US senators), Israel promptly withdrew from the Sinai passes. The resulting agreement, commonly known as the Sinai II Agreement of September 1975, and in which Egypt and Israel proclaimed that “the conflict between them and in the Middle East shall not be resolved by military force but by peaceful means,” laid the basis for the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty negotiated by Carter.

To Israel’s delight Sinai II was accompanied by several US-Israeli bilateral which included, among others, a US commitment to supply Israel with advanced offensive weaponry (which Washington had previously threatened to withhold in response to Israeli intransigence); a US commitment to ensure Israel’s energy security; a US commitment that Washington would not put forward any diplomatic initiatives “that Israel would consider unsatisfactory”; a US commitment to use its veto at the UN Security Council on Israel’s behalf; a US commitment to Israel that Washington “will not recognize or negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization so long as the Palestine Liberation Organization does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and does not accept United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338”; and a US commitment that, if Washington develops a “final position” on the Israeli-Syrian border, “it will give great weight to Israel’s position that any peace agreement with Syria must be predicated on Israel remaining on the Golan Heights.”

True to its word, the US several months later, in January 1976, vetoed a UN Security Council draft resolution that explicitly called for a two-state settlement and had been endorsed by the PLO. Colter Louwerse’s (@ColterL) landmark examination of this episode is required reading for those addicted to the trope that “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”. See his “Tyranny of the Veto” in Diplomacy & Statecraft 33:2 (2022), pp. 303-329, and available online.

For all intents and purposes, Ford and Kissinger committed Washington to fully aligning US Middle East policy with Israel’s agenda and priorities. The strategic partnership between the two states, initiated by John F. Kennedy, consolidated by Lyndon B. Johnson, and greatly expanded by Nixon, was institutionalized by Ford and Kissinger during the mid-1970s.

In the Middle East, Carter’s initial proclamations about prioritizing human rights in US foreign policy were not seen as a meaningful change of direction. Rather, they were dismissed as empty posturing no different than that of his predecessors. Friend and foe alike were confident it would be honored mainly in the breach and reserved for deployment against adversaries like the Soviet Union and other communist states.

Yet, in March 1977, only two months into his presidency, Carter in impromptu remarks, after proclaiming that “one of the finest acts of the world nations that’s ever occurred was to establish the State of Israel”, laid out his view of the three bases for “lasting peace” in the Middle East. The first was “the recognition of Israel by her neighbors, [of] Israel’s right to exist, Israel’s right to exist permanently, Israel’s right to exist in peace”. The second, “the establishment of permanent borders for Israel”. Carter then added, “And the third ultimate requirement for peace is to deal with the Palestinian problem … There has to be a homeland provided for the Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years”.

Carter, who by all accounts was highly intelligent, known for his command of detail, had a longstanding interest in the Middle East on account of his Christian faith, and had developed a deep knowledge of the region, presumably chose his words carefully, pointedly avoiding “Palestinian state”. Yet by merely uttering “Palestinian” and “homeland” in the same sentence, and thereby implying the Palestinian question required a political rather than merely humanitarian resolution, bipartisan howls of outrage erupted in the echo chamber known as the US Congress, accompanied by denunciations in the nation’s editorial pages.

Nevertheless, at a press conference two months later, when asked, “Do you think that Israel should accept the Palestinian homeland if the Palestinians or PLO accept the fact of Israel?”, he responded, “[Y]es. I don't think that there can be any reasonable hope for a settlement of the Middle Eastern question, which has been extant now on a continuing basis now for more than 29 years, without a homeland for the Palestinians. The exact definition of what that homeland might be, the degree of independence of the Palestinian entity, its relationship with Jordan, or perhaps Syria and others, the geographical boundaries of it, all have to be worked out by the parties involved. But for the Palestinians to have a homeland and for the refugee question to be resolved, is obviously of crucial importance.”

Carter, a born-again evangelical, had been drawn to the Middle East by his deeply-held religious faith long before he became president. For this and later for more secular reasons, Israel held a special status for him, and he considered Arab-Israeli peace a moral as well as political obligation, through which he would contribute to Israel’s security and survival. Yet in pursuing this objective he had also become increasingly familiar with the Palestinians, and their plight had clearly made an impression on him. It was a sharp contrast not only with previous US presidents, who preferred to pretend that Palestinians don’t exist, but also with the broader US political class, which generally took the position that Palestinians shouldn’t exist at all.

It is often forgotten that it was not Carter who engineered the seismic shift in Arab-Israeli relations represented by Sadat’s November 1977 visit to Jerusalem. That initiative was primarily the work of Sadat, his deputy prime minister Hassan Tuhami, Israeli foreign minister Moshe Dayan, and Yitzhak Hofi, who led Israel's Mossad intelligence agency.

Washington was presumably aware of the series of secret Egyptian-Israeli meetings that preceded Sadat’s visit, primarily conducted in Morocco, which had since 1961 been ruled by loyal US client and Israeli ally King Hassan II. But for most of 1977, the first year of his presidency, Carter was busy arranging a more comprehensive diplomatic initiative.

Specifically, Carter hoped to reconvene the Geneva Peace Conference, aborted after a single meeting in December 1973, and designed to bring together Israel and the Arab states under joint US-Soviet auspices presided over by the Secretary-General of the United Nations. In early October 1977, Washington and Moscow issued a joint communique in which they called for the Conference to be convened “not later than December 1977” to achieve a “settlement [that] should be comprehensive, incorporating all parties concerned and all questions”. It further stated:

“The United States and the Soviet Union believe that, within the framework of a comprehensive settlement of the Middle East problem, all specific questions of the settlement should be resolved, including such key issues as withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the 1967 conflict; the resolution of the Palestinian question including ensuring the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people; termination of the state of war and establishment of normal peaceful relations on the basis of mutual recognition of the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence.”

While the above statement may seem trivial today, and even objectionable for avoiding the core issue of Palestinian self-determination, it created a firestorm in both Washington and Israel. Its implicit suggestion that the PLO would participate in Geneva to negotiate – horror of horrors – the rights of the Palestinian people in a Middle East peace conference co-chaired by the US was considered beyond the pale. Within days the Carter administration backtracked, and Israel and the US agreed a working paper that adopted Israel’s terms for the conference, and included a secret annex in which the US committed that Israel could choose the Palestinian delegates to Geneva.

Confronted with the contents of the working paper, which – with the exception of the secret annex – was quickly leaked, the PLO announced it would not attend the Geneva Conference if the strictures of the US-Israeli bilateral document prevailed over those of the US-Soviet joint communique. Syria, as in 1973, stated that it would not participate if the PLO was not also present. Since Israel had already persuaded Washington to exclude the PLO, neither was aware that their objections were moot.

Given Carter’s commitment and tenacity, it is entirely possible that together with the Soviets the initiative could have eventually been salvaged, and Israel compelled to participate on the basis laid out in the US-Soviet joint communique or a formula reflecting its core principles. It’s also possible that key officials in Carter’s administration, such as National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brezinski, who was hardly an Israel flunkie but was a dedicated Cold Warrior, could have persuaded Carter to ditch an initiative that required US-Soviet cooperation and a prominent role for Moscow in Middle East diplomacy. We’ll never know because, on account of Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem, the Geneva Peace Conference was stillborn.

Multiple explanations have been put forward for Sadat’s decision to ditch Geneva and go solo. He was certainly confronted by growing domestic instability, primarily on account of his policies of economic liberalization known as infitah, which threw open the door to subsidy cuts and crony capitalism that would reach its apex under his successor Husni Mubarak. In January of 1977 popular discontent erupted in bread riots, in effect a spontaneous urban uprising, that left some convinced Sadat was about to be overthrown. Grabbing the international limelight by embracing Israeli prime minister Menahem Begin was certainly one way of escaping forward.

Not entirely unrelated to the above, it has been suggested that Sadat was impatient to resolve Egypt’s conflict with Israel and the enormous burden it placed on Egyptian society and its treasury, and did not want Egypt’s agenda to be tied to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace settlement, which particularly in view of Begin’s virulent opposition to withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories and the Syrian Golan Heights, might take many years to achieve.

Sadat’s primary motivation, in my view, was his desire to cement Egypt’s geopolitical re-orientation, and make Egypt indispensable to US policy in the Middle East by concluding a peace agreement with Israel and being the first Arab state to do so. It would ensure US military and economic support for Egypt, and make Egyptian regime stability a vital US interest. Sadat may well have been sufficiently impressed with himself to believe he could successfully leverage Egypt’s power and position to jumpstart a comprehensive Arab-Israeli settlement and resolution of the Palestine Question. But even he must have known that a separate peace that would strengthen Israel’s position vis-à-vis other Arab adversaries and the Palestinians was always going to be the most likely outcome. Having already demonstrated his willingness to abandon allies in wartime and go his own way during the waning days of the 1973 October War, he now ditched the entire Arab world and sacrificed Cairo’s leadership position within it in pursuit of his grand design.

Given Sadat’s agenda, Carter might reasonably have been expected to react ecstatically to the images of Sadat landing in Tel Aviv and being welcomed by Israel’s leadership. In fact, Washington was caught off guard. While it must have been aware of the budding Egyptian-Israeli relationship, it was not informed of the impending visit and appears to have been unaware of its timing.

More importantly, Carter understood that Sadat and Begin were, quite deliberately and each for his own reasons, determined to make short shrift of his initiative to achieve a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace settlement. It simply went up in smoke, and couldn’t have left him pleased.

With considerable exaggeration, former Mossad official Yossi Alpher states that “it took the Carter administration over a month to give any sort of blessing to the Sadat initiative”. Alpher also claims that Sadat, in order to facilitate communications, had requested that an Israeli representative be stationed at the US embassy in Cairo in the guise of a US diplomat, that he was chosen for this role, but that Carter nixed it on account of his rancor at being outmaneuvered by his client regimes.

@ColterL Be that as it may, the Egyptian-Israeli honeymoon proved to be relatively short-lived. Weeks after Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem, Begin was received by Sadat in the Egyptian city of Ismailia on the west bank of the Suez Canal. The discussions did not go well.

Recognizing the extent of his regional isolation, and hoping to salvage his role within it, Sadat sought to persuade Begin to accept, if not Palestinian statehood, then at least the principle of Palestinian self-determination, even if to be further negotiated and realized at a later date. Sadat’s negotiating team consistently as a rule took a firmer approach on this topic. In his response to the Egyptian proposal Begin categorically rejected it. He insisted that Israel intended to establish permanent Israeli sovereignty over “Judea, Samaria, and Gaza”, and would go no further than proposing limited autonomy for the Palestinians in the occupied territories. In so doing he also vaporized Sadat’s hopes of seeking to bring Jordan into the equation.

On the Sinai Peninsula Begin accepted the principle that Israel would need to withdraw to the international border as it had existed between Egypt and Mandatory Palestine, but in addition to its demilitarization insisted upon “the retention of Jewish settlements to be administered by Israel and protected by an Israeli force”. In other words the Israeli occupaton of Sinai would formally end, but Egyptian sovereignty in the territory would be emptied of all meaning. Even this was too much for Begin’s constituents, with one outraged Sinai settler telling Time Magazine: “I didn’t come from Miami Beach to live in Egypt!”.

@ColterL But ultimately it was Begin’s insatiable lust for Palestinian land that prevented the two leaders from concluding their meeting with a joint communique.

Carter on this occasion poured oil on the fire. After having privately informed Begin the Israeli prime minister had not gone far enough, he publicly praised Israel’s autonomy proposal as “a long step forward” and added that Washington could not accept “a radical Palestinian state in the heart of the Middle East". While music to Begin’s ears, a visibly upset Sadat, now the subject of 1,001 Palestinian and Arab I-told-you-so’s, commented that “Carter is making my job very difficult. This embarrasses me. What surprises me most is ignoring the importance of the Palestinian issue, the core and crux of the whole problem”.

It was against this background that Carter definitively jettisoned Geneva and Washington became actively and deeply involved in Egyptian-Israeli negotiations. This would in September 1978 result in the Camp David Accords, to be followed on 26 March 1979 by an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. It would change the face of the Middle East, and the experience would also fundamentally affect how Carter viewed the region and engaged with its realities for the rest of his life.

NB: One could easily spend several lifetimes reading the voluminous literature on Carter and the Middle East. Two of the best are William B. Quandt, a Middle East specialist who was a member of Carter’s National Security Council and has written extensively on the topic, and Jørgen Jensehaugen (@jjensehaugen), author of Arab-Israeli Diplomacy Under Carter: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (2018). END