We had a de facto arrangement with the Jordanians before we had an official peace treaty with them. Signing that peace treaty with Jordan was o.k., but no big deal. If you have an understanding with the people who count, that’s enough. In the Arab world there is only one person who counts in every country. There is only one dictator. It’s Mubarak, Abdullah, Assad, and it used to be Saddam Hussein.
You were opposed to the Camp David accords. What would you say to those who claim that a cold peace with Egypt is better than fighting on that border? Let me tell you a story I know from someone who was very, very close to Jimmy Carter. At one point after Begin was elected prime minister, Anwar Sadat lost his cool. He had thought he could reach some kind understanding before the election that brought the Likud to power. When the Likud was elected, he lost his cool and said it was a terrible blow for him. He then intimated to the Americans that he desperately wanted an accommodation and that he was willing to give up his claim on part of eastern Sinai. Carter heard this but never told anybody about it until after Begin gave everything up.
Begin made a tragic mistake. He didn’t have the guts to stand up to Sadat and tell him that maybe after 50 years we can talk about giving up all of Sinai but now we have to retain control of the eastern portion of the Sinai Peninsula. If you don’t want to call it a peace treaty, we’ll call it whatever you want to call it. We need the access from Eilat down to Sharm el Sheikh. We can have de facto relations providing we can pass through the Suez Canal, and through the Straits of Tiran, and with no Egyptian army east of the Suez Canal. It was achievable.
When I negotiated with the Syrians and Palestinians, we realized then – but it was too late – that the blunder of returning the last inch of Sinai had a very negative impact on the chances of achieving some kind of territorial compromise in the other areas because this was a precedent. The Syrians, Lebanese and Arafat, they all said, You withdrew to the last inch in Sinai, why not on the Golan and West Bank too? It hounded and still hounds us. If Begin would have retained even one kilometer it would have had a positive impact in the other areas.
How do you feel about Prime Minister Sharon?s expressed desire to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza? I think it defies logic. Sharon is misreading the map. He believes that by initiating this kind of a plan he is catering to what the polls seem to say the majority of the people in Israel want. He as a leader has to get the people to understand what it means to leave Gaza. It’s not just leaving and forgetting about the million Arabs who live there. They are going to hound us much worse than before.
Most important though, he is misreading the American scene. In my view, the Bush administration doesn’t want anything to happen that would rock the boat in an election year. Sharon is mistaken in thinking that all American administrations want Israel to just withdraw from the territories. It’s not the actual withdrawal that Washington wants Israel to carry out. Washington wants something that would set matters at ease. Something that would not only not harm Israel but would not precipitate an explosion that could rebound on the U.S.
