Arab-Israeli peace deal collapses, March 1975

It took only two days and nights for all the work that Dr Kissinger has done in the Middle East to collapse about his ears. The state department no doubt has the most accurate and voluminous log of the secretary's comings and goings in the past few months, but anybody who's followed him in print can only guess at the numberless broken nights and interminable days of arguments, the scores of times he's arrived in a strange land at nightfall, while his body told him it was high noon.

The doctors who have studied the body chemistry cycles, what are poetically called the circadian rhythms, they long ago warned businessmen and others who had to leap across time zones, that there was more to the dislocation of a man's personality than the feeling that he'd arrived in London and left his bowels in New York. They have said, and many a big firm has heeded their warning, that nobody should lose five hours of his natural day and then dive into a conference and make anything like a serious decision. 'Wait,' they advise us, '24 hours!' 

Well, Dr Kissinger has had to ignore this advice routinely. Whatever we may think of Dr Kissinger's talents as a diplomat, I don't think anybody can question President Ford's tribute to the skill and tireless dedication of the one man, who more than any other Secretary of State in our time has defined and carried out the foreign policy of the United States. The buck, as we all know, may stop at the president's desk but Mr Ford has never pretended to be either a foreign policy expert like Truman, or a foreign policy fan like Kennedy. He's not only had to lean on Dr Kissinger, he's had to hand him the ball, in South-East Asia and Europe, and Latin America, and in the Middle East. 

And so while Dr Kissinger has been able to feel the confidence that comes to a man who has, more or less, total responsibility, he now also has to take the rap, and the last few days have been the darkest of his American career. For in one week, Cambodia collapsed, the Congress refused to vote any more money, South Vietnam began to crumble along with the Kissinger Peace Agreements, and then on Sunday night Dr Kissinger stood before a microphone in Tel Aviv and his voice broke as he pronounced the word 'failure'. And he got ready to go home on what he called, 'a sad day for America and a sad day, also, for Israel'. And to sharpen the wound, he heard that Egypt was unwilling to have him make a farewell stop. 

So he went home, forlornly saying, 'We will have to look for different methods and new forums'. And then, on Tuesday, when the Arab world was celebrating the birthday of Mohammed, King Faisal was shot and killed by his nephew. And it takes no diplomatic correspondent to guess at the blow to American prestige and the hatred of Israel that that dreadful act could provoke. 

The first reaction of many Americans was a kind of horrified relief that at least the assassin was known and caught, otherwise throughout the Arab world and beyond it would have been impossible to tell any politician, let alone a street mob, that it was not the work of the CIA. 

It's very early to know how, or why, the worst happened to Dr Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy and perhaps there will never be a time when the historians can apportion blame. But from what can be pieced together from a dozen or more good reporters on the spot – the spot being Tel Aviv, and Cairo, and Aswan, and Jerusalem, and Washington – it's possible, I think, to gauge the conflicting moods of the Israelis and the Egyptians, or better, the attitudes of each of them that froze the diplomatic game into a stalemate. So far as we can see here, Egypt wanted Israel to retreat from two strategic passes in the Sinai and to give back the Abu Rudeis oilfields. Israel was prepared to surrender nothing without a precise guarantee from Egypt, a formal, carefully worded declaration of non-belligerency. 

That doesn't seem an extraordinary thing to ask, but all through these talks, President Sadat couldn't speak for Egypt alone or make any one-way pledges. He had the Palestinians and the Syrians on his back, and when he learned of Israel's tough, and precise definition of non-belligerency, he called the condition 'absurd'. Israel wanted a guarantee that the declaration would allow her six months to complete the pull-back, and nobody denies that in that time Israel could build another line of defence well beyond the two forfeited strategic passes. Egypt said it should be done in not much more than three months. Israel wanted everything she gave up to be de-militarised and converted into a buffer zone in which the United Nations could keep its troops for as long as the Security Council decided. Egypt said they could stay there two years, at most. 

The last dice in Dr Kissinger's hand was a proposal that they scrap the non-belligerency clause and give to the United States a promise that neither of them would have recourse to war. Sounds superficially like the same thing. But it would not prohibit fortifying beyond the surrendered zone and either side could presumably go on being belligerent in un-marshalled ways, economic sanctions, for instance. Well, it didn't work and the talks collapsed as suddenly and finally as a failing newspaper quits publication, that's to say, within hours. There were few ceremonial courtesies to soften the blow. Mr Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, called a press conference in Jerusalem, stated the Israeli case, but did end with a special tribute to Dr Kissinger and the American government for what he called, 'their unbelievable efforts to move toward peace'. 

On the Egyptian side, a Mr Fahmi, the Foreign Minister, said it was the end and he hoped that the Americans have learned the lesson and 'will not allow themselves to be the prisoners of Israeli actions in the future'. And from Beirut, the, I suppose, inevitable word came in that Syrian and Palestinian officials openly welcomed the failure of the Kissinger mission. 

We now leave the pros and cons to the historians and wonder what's next. There was a flurry of dramatic rumours in the press of several countries and hawkish congressmen here who are prepared to blame the Democratic majority for the loss of Cambodia and Vietnam and were quick to pick up rumours from Egypt and Israel that Dr Kissinger had been accused by one side or the other, or both, of proving in South-East Asia that the United States was not a dependable ally. It was a relief when the Israeli Prime Minister made a point of saying that events in Indochina had nothing whatsoever to do with the failure of the Middle Eastern talks. And then, on a tip from some roving correspondents that there were suspicious military moves by Egypt and Syria, we heard that Israel had mobilised her reserves. Again, it was Mr Rabin who said that while Israel had made herself ready for any belligerent move, there had been no mobilisation and nothing that could justify a military alert. 

But of course the fear is very persistent here that while Dr Kissinger is looking for 'different methods and new forums', the Arabs and the Israelis will resort to the same methods and the oldest forum, of war. While we cross our fingers and hope it won't happen, Washington now finds itself under a new cloud of gloom. The cloud, moving in as the diplomats move on, is the gathering prestige of the Soviet Union in all this, for the Egyptians were quick to announce that they would revive the Arab front, join Syria and the Palestine Liberationists, call for a meeting of the Geneva Peace Conference and so pass the ball to its chairman, Mr Gromyko. And it surely is no offence to objective reporting to say that if Mr Gromyko is open to persuasion equally by the Egyptians and the Israelis, then Mr Gromyko's open mind is the miracle of the decade. 

There's one story, a tailpiece to the whole, long, sad episode that's worth retelling because it's one that Congress will try to get to the bottom of before it comes to vote on, what is called in congressional jargon, 'matters pending', but which might soon turn into 'a matter urgent'. This has to do with a request from Israel for two and a half billion dollars in more American military and economic aid. For the past few months, this has been something that President Ford has been brooding over. He's not yet worked out a formal request, or given it to the Congress. 

The story concerns what President Ford's attitude may have been in the last days of the talks. A report published in the New York Times said that, at the last minute, the president had sent a note, and a stiff one, to Prime Minister Rabin, and he'd sent another, and gentler, note to President Sadat. The Israeli press picked up the story of the first note and said it was bitter and accusing. Well, anybody who knows Mr Ford, who's a tactful man at worst, would doubt that. But the White House acknowledges the note and yet it won't describe the tone of them, and it simply announced that the president feels both sides made a serious, and sincere, effort at negotiation. But it's come out since that the president did warn Israel that the United States might have to re-assess its whole policy toward her, and so far the contents of that note are secret. But so far, too, there is no other reason to believe that the United States has departed from the committment it made in 1947 and as held to ever since, which is a guarantee to protect the independence of the State of Israel. The true sign of a change, and the worst news for Israel would be the denial or reduction of more American military aid. 

While all this was going on, I discovered last week that there was a little-noticed anniversary. 200 years ago, on 22 March, Edmund Burke stood up in the House of Commons and delivered his famous speech urging the belligerent Parliament 'to study war no more and move toward conciliation with the American colonies'. And there's a sentence in there which was spoken in a kind of frenzy of common sense. It's high flown but not, I think, irrelevant in the context of the Middle East on the brink. 

This is it: 'The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war. Not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of endless and intricate negotiations. Not peace to arise out of universal discord formented from principle. It is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts'.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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