Camp David summit

There's an old New York saying that 'if you stand on the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway, sooner or later you'll see everybody who is anybody’.

It’s a folk saying that's had to be drastically amended since, today, if you stood on the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway, you'd see just about every layabout and pimp who was devoted to drug pushing, thievery and prostitution of both sexes. The song '42nd Street', which we hear from time to time on late night re-runs of the movie of the same name, is a reminder, part-wistful, part-preposterous of a time, not many decades ago, when the most daring sight you could see there were a horror movie, young bucks off to a burlesque house and Damon Runyon and Walter Winchell exchanging gossip about Broadway's 'Guys and Dolls'. 

The saying has been amended to say, 'If you stand on the corner of 50th Street and Fifth Avenue between St Patrick's Cathedral and Rockefeller Plaza, then you'll see everybody who is somebody'. 

The other day, a brilliant, gusty day, you could have seen somebody who was somebody. A man in a snappy dark-blue suit, with a patterned tie, crinkly hair flecked with grey, a long face with a cheerful squirrel's podgy jowls and a general air of benevolence to all passers-by, like a favourite priest taking in his parish. He stopped from time to time to shake a hand, sign an autograph, wag a knowing finger and, before he finally got into his car, chuckled bravely at a rising chorus of boos. He was Richard Nixon. 

He'd come to New York from his exile in California to sign a contract for a new book he's writing about the presidency. Not, so help us, his presidency – we've had a sheaf of books about that, including his own – but THE presidency, the institution and its likely future. A short book, so he says, but long enough to persuade him to put off for a while his promised trip around the world. He even threw a press conference, the first since the dreadful one just before he quit in 1974. It's hard to believe now that it's been over four years. 

The first question, naturally, was this New York appearance a rehearsal or launching pad for another plunge into politics? Mr Nixon must know as well as any sitting politician that there is not a Republican candidate for the November congressional elections who would run the risk of a public embrace from him. No comeback, he said, but he did foresee a political role for himself. 'My role,' he said, 'is to write from time to time and comment from time to time on the major issues which confront the United States in the free world from a non-partisan stand point.' 

Even though he'd said the writing of his new book would postpone his world trip, somebody was bound to ask him, and did, about the snub he got from the Australian government which was quick to let it be known that he would not be welcome except as a private visitor. Very much the old Nixon, quick to explain to the naive press that they were suffering from an entirely pardonable misunderstanding that the seeming rebuff was really a diplomatic exchange, he said, 'I understand that completely. After all I'm not an official. I had only hoped to be there at a time when I could call on governments. The Australians found it wasn't the time.' 

He said unremarkable things about peace and the Middle East but he did vent one anxiety that's beginning to be felt far beyond the confines of San Clemente or the Republican Party or the nests of the old hawks. It was about the Russians. 'They have eroded,' he said, 'the United States' position in parts of Asia and Africa and unless there's a change of direction in American policy, a strengthening of will and of our military capabilities, the future will certainly be dangerous.' He smiled at everybody, he bowed his shoulders, he waved, he was off to the sidewalk and the handshakes and the autographs and the boos. Did he feel hurt about the boos? 'Not at all,' he said, 'they were part of the American political system.' 

I imagine this little scene will have been reported abroad because it's tasty and leaves itself open to sinister and scandalous interpretations from those French and Italian magazines that see rocketing scandals in every husband out on his own, every politician taking a drink, every ex-president who's photographed in public. I don't see any reason to take this incident at anything but its face value. Mr Nixon was not back from Elba. He was back from California and now he's back there again to start once more writing, I presume, his rather good prose and playing his rather bad golf. 

Meanwhile, back at the camp. Camp David, that is. I see, by the way, that the... the Soviet press offered its readers a foxy explanation of why Camp David is called Camp David. It was christened, they say – they don't say when – to remind people of the Star of David and the United States' devotion towards Israel. I just ought to say that it's been 19 years since Mr Khrushchev was at Camp David and his first summit meeting before the Russians had made a point, or policy, of opposing Israel. Camp David is, as you surely know by now, a presidential retreat in the mountains of Maryland, set up first by President Eisenhower and named after his grandson, David. 

I, myself, have been to several so-called 'summits' of one sort and another and there ought not to be a reporter alive who envies the assignment. At their best, from the newsman's point of view, there's a daily press briefing in the vaguest terms and the more enterprising reporters are reduced to writing up brief histories of Bermuda or Nassau or Camp David. And when they're over, there's a communiqué which is unfailingly a masterpiece of gobbledygook or plastic pieties – the parties had free and useful and open discussions; they share a fervent desire for peace; they reviewed all the issues in depth, of course, and became thoroughly familiar with each point of view; they are determined to strive for understanding and peace; they intend to consult often in the future... that's usually about it. 

Well, this Camp David must have been the absolute in a non-news assignment. Hundreds of reporters were crowded into nearby motels, a press room was set up where, from time to time a presidential press officer said the meetings were proceeding usefully or getting down to the nitty-gritty unspecified, otherwise nothing. The newspaper reporters at least must have been able to cable their editors that there was nothing to report but the broadcasters had a rougher time. After all, the networks had spent piles of money on the facilities and the lines and housing their technicians and commentators. And what could they tell us? Night after night, they came on in open, rumply shirts and crinkly foreheads, and said that between them and the discussions was barbed wire, that nobody knew what was going on and that was the way it had been planned. 

The nuggets were such items as that the president had talked to Mr Sadat for 90 minutes, he'd seen Mr Begin alone one time, not alone next time, had been the guest of Mr Sadat, had had a kosher dinner with Mr Begin. And the broadcasters milled around the big, hot press room and yawned and played poker and went off for walks. And then spruced up for the nightly appearance on a national network to tell us that the news was... there was no news! 

It all reminded me of Ralph Waldo Emerson's remark when Samuel Morse flicked the switch that carried the first telegraph message. Somebody exulted in the thought that Maine could now talk to Florida. Emerson said, 'Yes, but has Maine anything to say to Florida?' 

But, however well guarded was the conference this time, we shall soon know the gist of what went on and the best hope that the three mountaineers broke the eleven-year deadlock springs from the fact that President Carter knew when he called the meeting that, if it failed, there would not be another year or so of fencing and recrimination. There might very well be an early war. 

And before they met reporters and statesmen, United Nations' delegates, most reasonably informed onlookers knew and said that the issue was what it had been since 1967. The West Bank. Who owns it? Who is sovereign? If Egypt and Israel agree on an answer, everything else falls into place. If not, there is very little but the oncoming prospect of war. 

There was, at the start of the summit, in fact at the start, long ago, of all the conflicts between Israel and Egypt, a contradiction. Both parties got to the point of saying that a peace agreement rested on the United Nations' famous Resolution 242. 'Agreed!' they said. 'Splendid!' said the UN and the United States and Egypt. For the key provision of that resolution said plainly that Israel should withdraw from territories conquered and occupied in 1967. 

Alas, for resolutions and the lawyers who frame them. When this resolution was first passed, I recall my lawyer saying, 'There has never been a perfect, legal document.' Somewhere, he said, in every one of them there is, what he called, a 'sagging' clause.' We looked for it and we didn't find it. But the Israelis found it. 

It was nothing more or less than the absence of the definite article ' the' T-H-E. The resolution said, 'required to withdraw from territories occupied in 1967'. And we all took this to mean the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. THE territories occupied, which meant 'all'. The Israelis properly and literally interpreted to mean 'territories, some' and, ever since, we've been asking which? And when? And many of the disunited United Nations have been thundering away at Israel for not taking 'territories' to mean 'all the territories'. 

The issue, as the Carter administration saw it, was how to convince Israel that if she voluntarily shrank to the smaller Israel of 1967, she could have the security of that smaller state guaranteed. If Mr Carter did that, his stature as a leader would grow to the skies. If he didn't, it will be bad news not only for the Democratic Party in November, it will be grave news for the West, for the Middle East, for all of us.

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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