Interview with Abba Eban

INTERVIEWER: Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. To start off, can you tell me what Israel meant to the Jews, why it was necessary to have a Jewish homeland?

ABBA EBAN: Our situation at the end of World War II was as follows: we were wallowing in the fearful anguish of the Holocaust; the visual effects of the Holocaust had an effect that went far beyond the mere statistical enumeration of the victims. Our promised homeland was being assailed by regional violence and by international alienation. The victorious powers, the three of them - the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union - showed no intention whatever, at first, of recognizing the Jews of Palestine as a political reality. There wasn't a single ray of light on the horizon. The Jewish representatives at the United Nations conference at San Francisco were humiliatingly seated in some distant balcony, looking down at the 50 member nations, none of which had made anything like the sacrifices demanded of the Jewish people by its own martyrdom. That was the situation. Two years later - two years later - the gates were opened; masses of our kinsmen were coming back to their national home. The war of survival had been won, and our flag was aloft in its own name and pride. And there has never been, I believe, in the history of any nation, a transformation of fortune as abrupt and as speedy and as providential as that which the Jewish people had in that period, during the first two years of its existence.

INT: Why was there Israeli-Arab hostility?

AE: I..I regard that, the hostility of the Arabs to Israel, as a deterministic inevitability in a way, because there was no way in which the Jews, after their trials and ordeals, could renounce the idea of Jewish statehood, and there was no way in which the Arabs could possibly accept the Israeli demand for statehood. In other words, this was not a tragedy of choice, it was a tragedy of compulsion. It was really a Greek tragedy in that sense, that what the Jews had to insist upon was something which the Arabs could not possibly accept.

INT: But the Soviet Union was among one of the first nations to recognize Israel. What was the significance of that?

AE: The Cold War was destined to have an overwhelmingly powerful effect on the Middle East. We're all familiar with the Soviet Union in its capacity as Israel's adversary. It was after all the Soviet Union which, from 1950 onward, supplied the arms, supplied the incitement, supplied the defamatory propaganda, closed the international agencies to any recourse or access for Israel. In other words, the Soviet Union is well known as Israel's adversary. I would even say that there was a time when the Soviet hostility was more dangerous to Israel than was the combined hostility of all the Arab states. After... before that, there was a honeymoon, in which the Soviet Union made a very cold calculation. For them, the important thing was how to shake loose from what they called "encirclement by the West". "Encirclement by the West" meant that there were British bases all over the area, in Sairanaika and in Havania airport in Iraq and in Egypt, the Canal; and the complex, in the mind... the obsession of the Soviet Union, was how to shake loose from that encirclement. For them, British bases were absolutely the same as American bases: in the Soviet U.. Britain is simply the area which is just as American as the United States is itself. So that was their first calculation. Therefore, get the British out of the area, get them out of the Negev especially, which is where the British policy rather wanted to take root. So... and that lasted a year or two, during which the Soviet Union spared absolutely no effort of conciliation and of friendship towards Israel. I used to go along to the Park Avenue address almost every night; they always made their meetings at midnight, and I couldn't understand why, until it dawned upon me that midnight in New York is 8 in the morning in Russia, in Moscow, and therefore their leaders could take counsel. Those who took attitudes without taking counsel with the Soviet Union, usually disappeared from the scene diplomatically with extraordinary speed. So that was the situation: two years of uninhibited assistance, and then a whole long, long night of exile, during which we were faced by the Soviet Union as our principal adversary.

INT:  And what formed the basis, in that case, of the Israeli friendship with America?

AE: Israeli friendship with the United States was... first of all, it was kind of an offshoot of Soviet hostility. Israel had a very strong interest in having the United States further established as the leading power center in the Middle East. There was also, of course, a fraternity of values, and we made a great deal of that - especially during my own embassy there - and there was a lot on which we could rest. After all, the United States, like Israel - although on a much larger scale - was a nation created by immigrants and by pioneers, by people for whom freedom was the central theme of their existence, and it was possible therefore to dig deep into this bedrock of common values in order to achieve this entrendre, this... really... this co-operative relationship with the United States. And in addition, of course, there was the fact that there is a very large community... in the United States itself there's a large Jewish community, which is a kind of a bridge in which Israeli values and American interests can be deemed to coincide.

INT:  But the Americans weren't exclusively friendly with Israel in the Middle East during the Fifties and up to the mid-Sixties, and so on. Was their friendship with Egypt a challenge to Israel? Was there non-exclusivity? Was there an opportunity in the Cold War that Israel sought out?

AE: The United States is never exclusively friendly to anybody, and is not exclusively hostile to anybody. Whenever the United States faces a conflict, especially a conflict between democratic, freedom-loving countries, it tends to build bridges for its own policy in between the two antagonists; and therefore the United States will never give all of its friendship to anybody, but will also not give the whole of its hostility to anybody. And there were many years during which the United States, as it were, oscillated and fluctuated between these two concepts. "Yes, how can we support Israel, which is very deep-rooted in the American consciousness, without however totally alienating the Arab world? And how can we avoid alienating the Arab world but in a way that doesn't do harm to Israel?" And therefore, this kind of.. hybrid kind of approach to international conflict is, I believe, endemic to American attitudes.

INT:  Could you give me your assessment of Nasser, your opinion of Nasser, and the growth of Arab nationalism? How did that challenge Israel?

AE: When Nasser first came to power in Egypt, many Israelis were optimistic. After all, Israel had no love whatever of the previous regime under King Farouk - not only the dissolute habits that he had, but it was he, after all... under his influence that Egypt made war against Israel. Without the Egyptian leadership of wars, there probably would never have been a war between Israel and the Arab world. Egypt is the only country which led five Arab wars against Israel. But then it became obvious to us that Nasser was putting all his investment really on the Arab side, on the side of Muslim fundamentalism, on the side of Egyptian nationalism, very fiercely and virulently implemented, and on the side of the expulsion of the West. When it became evident that these were his objectives, it was not difficult for Israel to make alliances - first of all, extraordinarily, with the Western powers, with Britain and with France; that's the basis of the Sinai-Suez expedition. But it was clear from that point onward that Nasser had a militant quality which shut him off entirely froany prospect of conciliation with us, although there were soundings and gropings towards some kind relationship with Nasser throughout the whole period of his rule.

INT: And what threats was he issuing against Israel?

AE: The threat of Nasserism to Israel was nothing less than a threat of Israel's destruction. And although Arab propagandists have always denied this, I myself listened to a speech by Nasser on the... I think the 28th of May, 1967, in which he said: "Our objective is, first of all, to cancel the results of the Suez-Sinai war" - that meant to stop allowing our.. ships to go through the Canal - "But then let me say that I intend also to abolish the results of the 1948 war," which means the existence of Israel is optional.. and something to be stopped, eliminated.

INT: So why did Israel plan a preemptive strike?

AE: The only way in which Israel could resist this Nasserist threat was being the first to strike. If you look at the map, then Israel does not have any capacity of withdrawal...

INT: So why did Israel plan a preemptive strike?

AE: There is no way for Israel to win a war except by striking first. All you have to do is to look at the map, and you'll see that we don't have sort of large spaces into which we can retire for the purpose of restoring our positions. So that was the logic of the Six-Day War, and to some extent also of the Yom Kippur War as well, although then, in the Yom Kippur War, there was no preemptive strike at all.

INT: Was America's support vital to Israel? Can you tell me about your visit to Washington in May and your conversation with President Johnson? What did you ask him, and how did he reply?

AE: I made what turned out to be a very crucial visit to the United States; also to France and to the United Kingdom. In the month of May, ahead of the Six-Day War, the objective was to examine whether the powers were willing to carry out what had been their commitment to support Israel if we were blockaded again by the stoppage of our traffic in the Gulf of Aqaba and in the Suez Canal. And when it was obvious that that was going to be the Arab attitude, we could see that there was a casus belli in every sense of the word. Now, in France I received a douche of cold water from President de Gaulle. I hardly had time to sit down, let alone to exchange any pleasantries, before he bellowed at me, "Ne faites pas la guerre!" - "Don't make war," or in any case, "Don't be the first to make war." And he then said, "My solution is this: it's important that the four great powers should get together" - "Il faut que les quatre se concertent." When I said that to President Johnson, who asked me what President de Gaulle had said to me, he said, rather irritably, "What did he mean by 'the four great powers'? Who the hell are the other two?" So that was the reaction of the United States to the idea that there were four great powers. In Britain, surprisingly... I expected a colder response, but the response was very warm, and Prime Minister Harold Wilson gave me a very gossip-ridden account of how his ministers had voted that morning, saying he... I would be astonished if he [sic] knew how people voted: that my friend Crossman was actually against us, and that his friend George Brown was for us. But it was quite clear that their attitude would be totally dependent upon whether they were with or without American cover; and therefore everything now depended on President Johnson. He expressed to me a sense of his own impotence, that I never heard either before or since from an American leader. He said that he was actually confined, contained and frustrated by the Vietnam War. He said, "Without the Congress, I am nothing but a 6-foot-4 Texan. And unless you people move your anatomies up on the Hill and start getting some votes, I will not be able to carry out..." what was then his policy of forcing the straits with American power. That could have been done: the United States only had to send one ship through, and I believe that Nasser could have capitulated. He was not able to do that, and he kept talking about the limitations of his own power in words which almost made me compassionate towards him. And he then said, in a kind of Delphic oratory [sic] sort of mood: "Israel will not be alone unless it decides to be alone." And we in Israel started trying to solve that particular acronym so far as we could. It didn't seem to me very much; but there was a period when he really thought of forcing the straits, then a period in which he recognized his own limitations; and a third, a sense of intense relief when Israel solved the problem itself, not only by surviving but by winning the war. And when I went back after the war had been won, he didn't even try to conceal his relief at what had happened. He said, "Of course, our generals always said that you would win the war in any case, either in seven days if you had the first strike, or in 12 days if the Egyptians had the first strike." But Johnson went on, "My generals are always right about other people's wars."

INT:  Just to take you back to the beginning of the war: it's one of the most dramatic victories ever. What was Israel's sort of opening gambit? Can you tell me what happened on that first day?

AE: The opening gambit of Israel in the Six-Day War was really the closing gambit as well. The fact is that, although our tank forces don't like this to be said, the war was really won on the first morning, when the entire Egyptian air force was wiped out in a few hours. It was wiped out lastly... Sorry. The Egyptian air force was wiped out largely because they showed no sense of their vulnerability; they left their aircraft, almost inviting attack, on the ground, made no effort at concealment in deep hangars; and within a few hours I myself felt that the anguish, the torment of it - there was a real anguish and a real torment that had gripped the Israeli public, the fear that a great doom was moving towards us - that was assuaged and alleviated almost entirely by the first air strike. And I think when it came to thank General Weizmann and General Hod, who were the authors of that enormously successful air strike, we understood that they really had decided the issue, (Slight overlap) really within a few hours.

INT: What preparations had been made in Israel for war?

AE: Israel was given the chance of preparation, because the Egyptians moved first of all across the Suez Canal; from the Suez Canal they branched out into most of the wide open spaces of Sinai, and they approached us gradually and steadily and steadily for quite a long time, several days in fact, and therefore Israel knew that this tide of aggression was moving towards us, and that gave time for psychological preparation, the understanding in Israel that there was no escape from confronting this slowly creeping aggression. Moreover, Nasser himself made the aggression plain by the very act of announcing, I believe on the 28th of May, or a bit later, that he was going to close the straits, and he knew that for Israel the idea of being enclosed - strangled, as it were - in all our maritime approaches, that was going to be a casus belli, and therefore we did have a preparatory stage. It didn't make the anguish any less, but the country was geared, like a coil spring, ready to jump suddenly into action.

INT: At one point during the war, the Americans were asked by, or threatened by, the Russians, to get Israel to stop, to force Israel to come to a cease-fire. Did you feel threatened by the American approach to Israel, and was it necessary?

AE: The American approach to Israel...?

INT: To stop the war, to enforce a cease-fire?

AE: During the Six-Day War there was no time, and the Americans really believed that they had the capacity to stop the war. In fact, it was fairly evident from the very beginning that since Israel was going to win the war anyway, the United States ought to adjust itself to that possibility, and they did so, as I've said, in a spirit of relief. Later, when the Yom War broke out, then it really became a question of how far Israel could move its armies without incurring American displeasure.

INT: So let's talk a little bit about the resultsof the Six-Day War. Why were the occupied territories important to Israel?

AE: When we found ourselves with an area of jurisdiction extending all the way from the Golan Heights to the Suez Canal, most Israelis felt that we were sitting pretty. We had large areas, we had a capacity of negotiation that we'd never had before; for the first time, Israel had assets which it could either confer or withhold, and unless you have that capacity you're not a very effective negotiator. That was the first feeling. There was also the feeling of the liberation of a land, the access to areas which had been shut off for several decades, and there was some inspiration, especially in the reuniting of the city of Jerusalem. But as the years went on, it became evident to me and to many of my colleagues that in fact the territories were a burden and not an asset. First of all, we wouldn't have the military power to govern an area as large as that, and this was proved in the Yom Kippur War: Israel did not have enough military force to spread all of it out in such a way as would prevent any eruption into that enlarged area. The other point was that we were governing hundreds of thousands of Arabs against their will, and we were therefore in the full torment of the kind of quasi-colonial situation: a restive, rebellious population which didn't feel that it had any obligation whatever to accept Israeli jurisdiction as permanent, and that meant that we had to have detention centers, it meant that we had to go through all the punitive and repressive procedures involved in governing a nation against its will, and this was ceasing to happen all over the world and in general the world was liberating itself from coercive jurisdictions. And therefore, by the time we reached the Yom Kippur War, it was generally understood that we were not getting any real benefits from our large territorial space.

INT:  What was the impact of the Six-Day War on Israeli-American relationships, and how did that relationship become cemented?

AE: Israel's relations with the United States developed positively during most of that period. First of all, we had the advantage that there were American presidents, especially President Nixon, for whom the criterion of judgment was "Are these people for or against the Soviet Union?" and therefore, Israel's very blatant and visible anti-Sovietism was of great assistance, and may have even been the basis of President Nixon's unexpected support of the Israeli cause. The other effects, however, were, as I've said, negative, because we were alienated from the rest of the international community, which had developed a bias, a very strong prejudice against what I've called coercive jurisdictions, and who never believed that the territories had any except a tactical advantage. Israelis also were divided into two schools of thought, one of which thought perhaps we could keep all of these territories forever; the other one thought, no, we won't be able to keep them forever, but they are a useful bargaining counter for Israel to use in a negotiation. I belonged to what I call the tactical rather than the territorial approach, but.. we were split down the middle on this, and we never really reached a point of stabilization until the Oslo agreement, until the peace process, which accepted the doctrine of withdrawal, brought us down to earth, back to our senses.

INT:  Could you tell me about the American resupply of Israel, and the way in which it was a move which polarized relationships in the Middle East?

AE: The United States faced very difficult ordeals halfway through the Yom Kippur War...

INT: I'm sorry - I'm referring to the supply of the Phantoms at the end of '68, December '68.

INT: So could you tell me about the American resupply of Israel in December '68 and the impact that had on the polarization of relationships in the Middle East?

AE: The American-Israeli alliance was really consolidated during the Six-Day War. The United States reached the conclusion that it was rather dangerous to leave Israel, as it were, to stew in its own juice - all kinds of unexpected eruptions of Israeli initiative would take place - and therefore the American-Israeli relationship ought to be institutionalized, it ought to be formalized. It must, of course, depend upon a maintenance of the balance of power, which was Henry Kissinger's, of course, major obsession; and therefore there was never any problem after 1967 in obtaining a basic American rearmament of Israel, and that created the kind of power which enabled us to survive in the larger ordeal of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. The Phantom aircraft that President Nixon authorized were very crucial psychologically for keeping us under some kind of restraint, and giving the United States the major say in its military relationship with Israel.

INT:  In the inter-war period, during the war of attrition, you heard that there were Soviet pilots manning the planes. Can you tell me what your reaction to that was, and what you thought that might mean in terms of an Israeli-Soviet confrontation?

AE: There was a very delicate moment when I suddenly heard, on my way to a visit to our coastal area, that Soviet pilots had been diagnosed very clearly as participating in the Egyptian raids and in the counter-attacks by the Egyptians against our own artillery bombardments; and that's the very grave moment. And the United States believed, however, that these pilots were training pilots and that their major objective was to see that Soviet arms would not be wasted on incompetent pilots, and therefore this panic, as it were, subsided very quickly. It was only later, during the Yom Kippur War, that the idea of Soviet intervention became really very vivid in our consciousness. The sequence was this: first, Israel, proudly brandishing its power, was sending its aircraft over Cairo and creating these booms, these reminders of Israeli presence. Nasser responded by a sense of panic; off he went to Mr. Brezhnev and said that "I'm being humiliated by the Jews. They create a sense of total vulnerability even of our major cities. You have to stop... you, the Soviet Union, to stop that, by supplying me with effective anti-aircraft armaments." Reluctantly, I believe...

INT: So, just to resume, to take up your answer, can you tell me about the request - they were going to have to request anti-aircraft armaments?

AE: Egypt reached the conclusion that they must have anti-aircraft equipment from the Soviet Union in order to prevent Israel from doing exactly what it liked with the Egyptian air space. The third thing was that Brezhnev, I believe reluctantly, acceded to that request - reluctantly because it was never the policy of the Soviet Union to intrude itself into areas which it had previously regarded as American areas of influence. But that, of course, made the Yom Kippur War possible, and to that extent some of us, in our own domestic discussions, believed that it was a mistake to provoke a process which led to the Soviet entry in such a blatant way into the power balance in the Middle East.

INT: Could you tell me how Israel felt about the Soviet build-up in the Middle East?

AE: During the Yom Kippur War, we became very conscious that the...

INT: Sorry to interrupt you again - I'm just referring to the inter-war period, when Soviet weaponry comes back into the Middle East. Were you aware of it, really, is my question, and what was your response?

AE: We were, of course, aware of the fact that the Soviet Union was escalating the arms race. Almost every year, instead of MiG 19 it was MiG 21 and MiG 23 - on wentthe MiGs escalating. This forced Israel into exorbitant expenditure for its own air defenses. This led to a certain tension in our relations with the United States, which used to say to us that "Israel never seems to be satisfied with anything that we, America, does for them." But in fact it was the build-uof Soviet power that created the inevitable explosion in the year 1973 - inevitable because we could not possibly continue to keep pace with the escalating arms race.

INT: You've brought me to the Yom Kippur War. Let's talk through the Yom Kippur War in detail, in that case, or break it up into segments. First of all, can you tell me about your reaction to the news of the attack - were you alarmed? And what was the significance of it falling on Yom Kippur - was it an added outrage?

AE: The first bombardments of Israel in the Yom Kippur War took place on Yom Kippur; but I found, in my relationships with other countries, which were frequent, especially in the United Nations, that nobody was very impressed with the fact that they had chosen that particular day. I couldn't find any nation, even Canadians, Australians and Scandinavians, in a legendary way kind of tied to the support of Israel, who thought it was unnatural that if they were going to make war, they would make it in conditions congenial to their own success. (Coughs) Therefore, we dropped the emphasis on the sanctity of that day. But the war itself, of course, created a sense of vulnerability that Israel had never known before. Hundreds of tanks were destroyed on one special day: f-five hundred tanks on one day, 50 airplanes on another, and we faced such a serious depletion of our military resources as to give the entire country a sense both of anguish, torment and fear, real fear. Therefore, it could only be corrected by an assurance of American replenishment; and this reached us very quickly indeed. I don't accept the theory that the United States delayed in order to put screws upon us. There was no delay whatever. On a Tuesday morning, I was telling the United States that we would win the war by Friday. On the Wednesday it became evident that this was not going to be the case. On Thursday, the United States played around with the idea of supplying aircraft on the basis of charters. This fell through under President Nixon's very firm disapproval, and he said, "It can only be American aircraft. We must send everything that will fly," and this was largely because he saw the Soviet Union as the major element of provocation in that issue. And later, of course, the Soviet Union had to be made to feel that it was stretching its relations with the United States much too far. This is when the Soviet Union said to the United States: "We've got to stop the Israeli advance. We prefer to do it you and we together, but if not together, then we are prepared to do it alone." At that point, President Nixon really went into a kind of crisis mode, and he included in the American fleet movements what he called a "nuclear element", in the hope - which turned out to be a justified hope - that this would deter the Soviet Union from believing that the Middle East was simply a local, regional squabble.

INT:  May I take you back, to break down the war in little details, because it's just that I'd like to look at this in a detailed fashion in the film. Could you tell me, for me, initially whether Israel thought that they would be defeated, and then when they realized that actually the military situation was becoming critical, and what their response was - how they went back to the United States to say, "Now we really need a little more of your help"?

AE: There came a time in the Yom Kippur War when Israel had to have a sense that if it was to spend its own resources, its aircraft and its tanks, in a rather prodigal way, they must have the absolute assurance of replenishment. That was the importance of the American airlift. That airlift eventually took such dimensions as to dwarf even the Berlin airlift, which had always been the central temperature-inspecting idea of the policy of the great powers. And therefore, here we were in the condition where, without the sense of replenishment, our own army would be very parsimonious in the use of existing weapons. This meant that we would be in danger of being overwhelmed. After all, the Egyptians had penetrated deeply into Sinai. We had responded by penetrating more deeply into their area. And the idea of a possible great power confrontation arose, I think, during October 1973, in a way that it had never arisen before.

INT: Could you tell me... could you just describe for me the various options considered for getting the supplies from America to Israel? What options were considered, and what stages did it go through?

AE: The replenishment of Israel (Clears throat) by the United States took several stages. The first, of course, was the announcement that they intended to replenish. That was psychologically of great importance, especially for our military command. The second stage was to decide whether American aircraft would be used. This was positively adjudicated by President Nixon and Kissinger, who were the chief supporters of the replenishment of Israel at the time. The third was the actual arrival of Hercules aircraft, which were received rhapsodically by the military command.

INT: Why has it been said...

INT: So, you've described to me the options considered for the resupply. Why has it been said that America kept Israel dangling?

AE: It should not be said that the Americans kept Israel dangling, because those who know the ways, the habits of American bureaucracy, ought to believe that it was absolutely providential that between our asking for these arms on Tuesday, and Friday when they were all in the air, that was a shorter time for an American bureaucratic process to work its way out than any that we had ever expected before. This a legend; I think it has its sources in various conflicts and disputes within the American establishment itself. But what I must make very clear is that the two leaders who were most constant in their view that the balance of power had to be restored in Israel's favor, were President Nixon and Secretary Kissinger.

INT: But Israel had to apply quite a lot of pressure on America to make them move to begin with. Do you have any anecdotes or any stories you can tell me about making America move, making America see the seriousness of the Israeli situation?

AE: The United States began to understand that we were in a serious situation when we suddenly changed our tune from this very blithe, typically Israeli self-confidence that "We're going to win the war by Friday" to a report that, as a result of what happened on that Tuesday, we were losing our life-blood: we were losing the planes and we were losing the tanks. That's when they really rose to the understanding that we were in trouble. I made a visit on the Saturday to Secretary Kissinger, and he started getting on the telephone in my presence. He called up the British Foreign Secretary, Alexander Douglas-Home, and said would the United Kingdom propose a cease-fire. And Sir Alex said he had examined the situation; no, the British delegation would not suggest a cease-fire: the Egyptians would be against it - which did not seem a very convincing reason for us. And then Kissinger called up the Australian who was the Security Council president at that time, and said would he get the Security Council into action. At that period we were in a quandary, because Israel has the following experience of Security Council cease-fires: if we are in military trouble, then nobody will offer us a cease-fire; if we are militarily successful, then we could get a cease-fire anyhow, on our own volition. And therefore we were blocked, and the cease-fire ... Security Council was not an option. And therefore, the only option tremained really was unilateral American replenishment.

INT: Can you tell me why the resupply was important, and how it was received - what people were saying and doing in Israel?

AE: The replenishment by the United States of Israeli armaments, especially tanks and aircraft, became very important indeed, bewithout the assurance of replenishment, our own military command would have been very parsimonious and very niggardly in the distribution of existing weaponry. And therefore, it's not that the planes and tanks were going to reach us in time - there wasn't going to be any in time because the war came to a very quick end. But the knowledge that the pipeline was being filled with American weaponry was absolutely crucial psychologically, emotionally, and in the strict military sense.

INT: How did people respond in Israel?

AE: Oh, Henry Kissinger arrived here from a trip to Moscow. He went to Moscow, and he had made commitments which some of our leaders, especially Golda Meir, our Prime Minister, believed to have been rather rash. And when he landed, he said, apparently, "I'm going to be (Laughs) chastised and... for this." And we then took our car through, and he was cheered rapturously wherever he went. In other words, there was a sense that if anybody could deliver Israel from that sense of strangulation, it could only be the United States. And he in fact became very popular, and he faced with us, in very close consultation, the problem of the Third Army; and this was really resolved by an Israeli decision, because when our chiefs of staff told us that in order to get the Third Army into our captivity - which sounded to be a very useful thing to do - we would have to lose 1,000 Israelis, the answer was as follows... the governmental answer in Israel was as follows: that the Third Army, if we capture it, we'll have to give them back anyhow through the Red Cross, and the 1,000 Israelis will never come back. And that was the very macabre kind of foundation on which our decision was made to call the thing off.

INT:  I'm going to go back and just ask you a few questions, just to pick up. Firstly, can you tell me what the popular feeling was in Israel when the American resupplies arrived, what people were doing and saying?

AE: The arrival of the American supplies was held for some time in some kind of secrecy. Therefore, there was never a very clear-cut expression of relief. But when the planes actually began to arrive and, in these capacious hulls of these Hercules aircraft, tanks, one after the other, came out, the Israeli reaction was really rapturous, and we did understand then that we did have an ally.

INT: After Kissinger's visit to Moscow, you went to meet him at the airport. Can you tell me why he was afraid about his reception, how the crowds responded to his arrival, and then what he had to ask you? You know, he had to ask you about how Golda Meir felt and so on. Could you tell me that in a story - what was Kissinger's fears on arriving in Israel from Moscow?

AE: When Kissinger arrived in Israel from Moscow, he was rather apprehensive about how our Prime Minister Golda Meir would treat him, because she had been alienated by the fact that there had been a kind of a (Phone rings) radio silence...

INT: So, when Kissinger arrived in Israel from Moscow, what were his fears, and why, to the cease-fire? And how did you greet him at the airport? What did he ask you about the reaction of Golda Meir and the Cabinet, and what did you tell him?

AE: When Henry Kissinger arrived from Moscow, I met him at the airport, and he seemed to be apprehensive - he thought that our Prime Minister would assault him in a rather punitive way. I think he did regard Golda Meir as a kind of a punitive schoolmistress, (Laughs) and therefore he was a bit agitated. But when we took the car through various areas, he was applauded wherever he went, and I think he then understood that he did have power to affect Israeli decisions. The first decision was to dissuade us from attempting to capture the Third Army, which would have meant hundreds of thousands of Egyptians in our captivity, but of course we would have had to release them to the Red Cross.

INT: And was in fact the Cabinet... was Golda Meir rather angry with Dr Kissinger for arranging a cease-fire quite so fast and without consulting Israel?

AE: The fact that Kissinger had really committed the United States and the Soviet Union together to a cease-fire, and had even accepted a resolution called 338, which laid down for the first time the idea that there had to be a negotiated settlement... Golda's reactions could have been more severe than they were. But I think the meeting that they had - and they had one meeting alone - was one in which they did understand that the United States and Israel were really now in the same boat, and that they were now afflicted by an enemy, the Soviet Union, too powerful to be ignored.

INT: ... Do you think, during the war, there was a real possibility of the Soviet Union facing Israel on the ground?

AE: There was a period when the Soviet Union addressed the United States in the following language - and I heard this from President Nixon himself: "The Israelis are advancing too far, beyond Suez, beyond the city of Suez. We can't tolerate this. The best thing would be that we and you" - namely "we" the Soviet Union and "you" the United States - "should work together to stop them. But if that's not feasible, then we are prepared to go in alone." That was the real flashpoint at which the United States had to say to the Soviet Union, "We will not tolerate your encroachment into that area," and therefore, instead of the Soviet Union sending troops, an arrangement was reached under which observers, unarmed observers of the United Nations would come in and take up their positions - countries from Poland, Czechoslovakia and some of the Western countries.

INT:  Another question about the cease-fire. Could you tell me... when Dr Kissinger came to Israel on 22nd October, what was his attitude to the cease-fire, when it would start, and how was it that Israel should proceed? I'm thinking about a working lunch that you had with Dr Kissinger, when he wanted to negotiate a framework, and there was an understanding that the cease-fire would only start after a couple of days - there was a little bit of time for Israel to continue with the war.

AE: When Kissinger arrived on the 22nd of October, he had two motives. The first motive was, of course, to get a cease-fire, because the war was escalating in a very undesirable fashion. But the second objective was to see that what he called a "balance of power" could be reestablished, and the balance of power at that time meant that Israel had to be rather stronger on the ground than it had been; and he therefore played around very skillfully, as always, with the timing of the cease-fire.

INT: Very good. Could you tell me once again ... I just wanted as clean an answer about the nuclear capability given to Israel by the United States... can you tell me why it happened and when - when and why in fact it happened?

AE: Some time in the third week of October, the fact that alarmed the United States was that the war tended to be internationalized. The Soviet Union said quite bluntly to the United States: "The Israelis have got to be stopped in their present advance. We think it should be done by you and we together, by our deterrent influence, but if necessary we are prepared to do it alone." Now these words - "we the Soviet Union are prepared to do it alone" - struck all the alarm bells possible in Washington, and forced President Nixon to reply, first of all by sending in naval units, and then letting it be known that these naval units included what he called a "nuclear element".

INT: ... Some more general questions. Could you give me an assessment of Kissinger in the way he managed this, and his personal style as a diplomat? What is your assessment of Dr Kissinger?

AE: The first thing everybody has to acknowledge with Henry Kissinger is, of course, his skill, especially in making two adversary parties each convinced that he was acting in their interests. That isn't an easy task. But the fact is that that is endemic really to mediation. You never say exactly to one party what you say to the other, and that sometimes gives the impression of duplicity. It is in fact an essential, endemic part of the mediatorial role: toeach party you give a version that is more congenial to it than it would be to its enemy. But behind all of these maneuvers, Henry Kissinger (Phone rings) came to this area...

(Cut)

(A bit of preliminary discussion)

INT: So could you conclude, really, with your comments about Kissinger's style of diplomacy?

AE: Everybody has to acknowledge Kissinger's skills, of course. His major skill was to let each party believe that he was acting basically in their interest. But behind all these maneuvers, there is the fact that he had a very strong attachment to the idea of Israel, and he never wanted to be in a position where he could be portrayed as letting Israel down; and this was at work, I think, throughout the whole of his mission.

INT:  I'm thinking of Kissinger's trip to Moscow, when he went to Moscow to talk to Brezhnev about the cease-fire and so on. Do you think there were times when détente threatened Israel's interests, Israel's security in the Middle East?

AE: Israel's security in the Middle East, of course, was never more precarious than when the Soviet Union was threatening to intervene directly, because at every stage throughout the Cold War, the idea of Soviet hostility was much more prominent in Israeli minds even than the reality of Arab hostility; and unless the Cold War aspect is fully understood, one will never understand why Israel was so vulnerable in its reactions as it was.

INT: And did détente, do you think... was the interest of Israel made second to the interests of détente?

AE: There was a point where the détente attitudes may have threatened Israel's interests. This, however, was because at a certain stage, the United States and the Soviet Union, at a meeting in California, displayed such an apathy about the Middle East that Israel had the sense of being abandoned. We were not being urged to do anything, we were not being asked to do anything, and there was a feeling that there would be deadlock. There were some people in Israel who thought that deadlock was favorable because it seemed to be consolidating our existing territorial positions. Others of us believed that without a movement, without some kind of dynamism in the peace process, we might be left adrift and would probably lose our American friendships.

INT:  Did the Cold War help or hinder the search for peace in the Middle East?

AE: There's no doubt that in general the Cold War was a negative influence upon our security, and therefore upon Middle Eastern stability. It was the Soviet Union that armed the Arabs, it was the Soviet weaponry that poured into their coffers, it was the Soviet Union which closed off Israel's access to international agencies, it was the Soviet Union which led this great campaign of defamation, which sometimes reached anti-Semitic formulations against Israel, and therefore the Cold War was certainly not an affirmative background for Israeli policy to operate.

INT: What started the peace process, and how would you characterize the initial stages of it?

AE: The peace process began as a direct result of a new orientation in Israeli policy. For the first time, under Prime Minister Rabin and Foreign Minister Peres, for the first time Israel made the Arab world and the Moslem world the focal point of its foreign policy. Israel had always looked outside its region for assistance. In the First World War, it had been Britain; in the... then it had been the United Nations, which providentially, unexpectedly came to Israel's aid and offered its recognition; then, for some brief, shiny moment, it was France that supplied the weaponry and the... what we called the "nuclear deterrent"; and thereafter it was always the United States. But now, instead of looking outside the region, there was a decision by the Rabin-Peres administration to say the Middle East should be the area in which we should seek a breach of the wall of hostility. And the first results of the peace process were sensational: suddenly Israel was in relationship with 15 Arab states, not only with Egypt and Jordan, but also some of the states of the Gulf and North Africa and Morocco and Tunisia, and it seemed to be that... it seemed to us that we were all set fair for the great Israeli dream of creating centers of contact and influence in the Arab world. This, however, came to a very strict and screeching halt with the election result in 1997.

INT: Very nice. Just very briefly: what was the importance of Resolution 242?

AE: Throughout the whole Middle Eastern conflict, Israel was always looking for some formula on which a real peace process could be based, and 242 was that formula. I myself took part in about 50 meetings with the American and British representatives who proposed Resolution 242. One of the virtues of 242 was that it was the same whether you wrote it from left to right or right to left: it was just 242. But in fact, that formula, which put withdrawal and peace in this harmony and this concerted context, became, first of all, the basis of a treaty with Egypt; then it became the basis of a treaty with Jordan; then it became the basis of our relationship with the Palestine authority, and it therefore was a successful political gambit.

INT: That's a lovely answer. My last question, before I just check. I know you were at Princeton at the time. Can you tell me what you think the achievement of the Camp David agreement in 1979 was?

AE: The Camp David agreement of 1979 was the major breakthrough of Israel into a relationship with an Arab country. Of course, it was then said, "Well, it's only one Arab country." Egypt is not just one Arab country: Egypt is the political and cultural center of the Arab world, and it would be impossible to have a real peace process unless Egypt was the leader in that particular dynamism. Quite recently, I went to interview President Mubarak, and when I said to him that "the peace process started here in this city, and could never have started anywhere else," the look of rapture on his face was really worth everything.

INT: Wonderful.