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- [00:01]
A
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B
Hello and welcome to EMP with me,
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A
Anita Anand, and me, William Dalrymple. And last time we discussed the yom Kippur War, 1973, the secret warning from King Hussein that was dismissed, the audacity of Sadat's deception operation, the Egyptian water cannons blasting through the Balev Line, and Sharon's counterattack across the Suez Canal. Today, we're in the aftermath, the world that 1973 made, and Eugene Rogan, our wonderful friend of the show, our most favorite guest. We're not allowed to say that, but it's true. Professor of modern Middle eastern history at St. Anthony's College.
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B
Can I just say, other favourite guests are also available.
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A
And Eugene, for those who have not come across it before, is the professor of Modern Middle eastern history at St Anthony's College, Oxford, and the author of the Arabs, which have been my companion for the last two, three weeks. This extraordinary book taking us from the Mamluk period, but then diving deep into all this extraordinary modern history. And Eugene is back for his fifth episode in this series to guide us through one of the most dramatic episodes in modern history.
- [01:38]
B
Because, you know, if 1973 can be regarded as the earthquake, today's episode is all about the tectonic shifts that any earthquake produces, but the geopolitical shifts that we're still living through today. Eugene, a very warm welcome to you.
- [01:53]
C
Thank you, Anita. Good to be back.
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B
Can we start with talking about one of the main characters in this episode, and that is Menachem Begin, because if you look at Big and his biography is like a 20th century summary in one man, because he's born in Brest Litovsk in 1913. It's part of the Russian Empire there. Now it's Belarus. And he is part of a family of deeply observant Zionist Jews. The Nazi invasion destroys almost every single person that he loves. Both his parents are murdered, his brother is killed. Begin flees to the Soviet Union. He's then arrested by the nkvd. He's split, spends time in a Siberian labour camp. He reaches Palestine in 1942 as part of the Polish Army. And by 1943, just a very short space of time, he's the commander of the Irgun Zwei Lumi, the Jewish underground organization that the British themselves classified as a terrorist group and that most of the Zionist mainstream regarded as dangerously extreme. First of all, tell us why did they have that attitude to Irgun? And then just tell us a little more about how quickly Begin rose through the ranks.
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C
Well, there were two dissident groups break away from the Haganah, dissatisfied by changes in British policy that were going to restrict Jewish immigration and would deny the Yeshu of the Jewish community of Palestine their ultimate goal of statehood. And these two groups decide that you have to take a much harder line, even at the height of the Second World War, and begin to push back against the restrictions imposed by the British colonial authorities in the Mandate. And they believe that the only things that the British would understand are would be violence. So they bring violence to it. I remember in writing the Arabs setting off a bit of a frisson by describing Menachem Begin as a terrorist. But he would have adopted the title himself. And it was certainly what he's accused of by the British. They were, in a sense, the people without a major state army behind them. They used the weapons of the weak, which is to say terrorism, to try and achieve their political aims and literally drive Britain, which since 1939 was no longer seen as the handmaiden to the birth of an Israeli state or a Jewish state, to what they now termed as an illegitimate colonial occupier in Eretz Israel. And they declare war against this British mandate in 1944.
- [04:10]
B
And I mean, the British even put a price on Begin's head. I mean, that's how seriously they take the threat from him.
- [04:15]
C
Begin was, in every sense of the word, a fanatic. But I think you've explained why, Anita. Having seen his world of Poland destroyed by the murderous antisemitism, the genocidal antisemitism of Nazi Germany, he was only too aware of what was being done in Europe to Jews. And there is going to be a side to these new Zionists coming in the context of the Second World War, which is an absolute desperation, a will to statehood, because they believe that without that, there will be no safety for Jews in the world. It could happen again. And so Begin is willing to use all methods at his disposal to get the desired goal of a safe haven for Jews in a very dangerous world.
- [04:58]
A
And Eugene, tell us about the two main atrocities which are put at his door. The blowing up of the King David Hotel and then Deir Yassin.
- [05:07]
C
So the King David Hotel is the headquarters of the British Mandate authorities during the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, and as such, had gathered all the papers of all the investigations that the British had been doing against both the Irgun, which Begin headed, and the Stern Gang, which was headed by Yitzhak Shamir, a colleague of Begins, who would later rise to become Prime Minister as well. And the papers gathered in these investigations revealed that there was a period of collaboration between all three Jewish armed forces, the Haganah, the legitimate army of the Yishuv, and these two splinter groups, terrorist groups, the Stern Gang and the Etzel, or the Irgun. And their fear was if that connection was established by the British going through the papers they had seized, this could lead to a clampdown on the armed forces of the Yishuv. And so Begin takes matters in hand and determines that the only way to ensure that the compromising material that the British Secretariat holds is never used against the Yishuv, they had to blow up the building that contained it. They arranged a team carrying milk tins to go into the basement of the building, and they claimed that they gave due warning. The British maintained there was no warning, but the explosion was an earthquake and it literally sheared a wing off the hotel. It killed scores of people, wounded many, many more, and of course, scattered to the winds. All of the papers and was the
- [06:32]
A
first sort of such hotel bombing. I mean, since then, we've seen many other hotels in the Middle east blown up, including most recently in Taba by Al Qaeda. But this was the first hotel bombing in the Middle East.
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C
Yeah. And I think really it was a shock for the British authorities to have an act of such violence. And it was so clearly a terrorist act targeting a civilian site like a hotel. And it was in that sense unprecedented. So, yeah, you're right. I think modern viewers might be a little bit inured to this kind of violence by the regular spectacle we've seen of buildings collapsing. But for, you know, 1946, unprecedented.
- [07:11]
B
And tell us about Deir Yassine as well, because we covered it a little bit in our Gaza series, but it'd be worth reminding people again what that was.
- [07:20]
C
Scenes a village near Jerusalem where the villagers, in the context of an ongoing civil war between Jewish and Arab forces in Palestine in the aftermath of the UN partition resolution of November 1947, actually concluded a non aggression pact with the Jewish forces and basically said they would do no harm to Jewish forces if Jewish forces would do no harm to them. And the Haganah respected that non aggression pact. But the two breakaway factions, the terrorist organizations of the Jewish Armed Resistance, the Stern Gang, the Irgun, did not respect this non aggression pact and they sought to sow panic that might provoke Flight so that Palestinians would flee the areas.
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A
Literally the definition of terrorism to create
- [08:12]
C
terror, it is an act of terror. And so they broke the peace with the village. They came in large numbers of armed men and literally shot their way through the village, driving villagers out and killing those who stayed. The numbers were disputed. We used to talk about numbers around the range of 250. It was actually Palestinian historians who have revised the figure downward to a figure that's more around. I think around 150. But the fact of the matter was it was a massive killing of Palestinian civilians designed to provoke panic and flight. And it achieved exactly that goal in that, in the aftermath of Deir Yassin, there was a sense among Palestinian civilians that there was no force to protect them against the violence of the Jewish forces. But at the same time, because it was seen as an atrocity, a war crime, it was an act denounced not just by the British authorities, but I would say by influential Jewish leaders right around the world who did not wish to associate the forces at work in Mandate Palestine trying to fill the potential of statehood that the partition resolution of the on gave them. They were very concerned that the violence done in Dariusim not derail that. So you'll see many denunciations of the violence that isolated Begin and Shamir for what their militias did.
- [09:24]
B
Yeah, but you know, again, it's the timelines for Begin which are head spinning because in other series that we've done here on Empire, we see that that transition from being somebody who's involved in terrorism to somebody who is then involved in business, you know, who becomes a politician, it's gradual, it's slow. But after 1948, begin quite quickly forms the conservative right wing party Herod. First of all, how does that happen? How do people react to that? As you say, you know, there were people in the Haganah who may have sympathized with him and others who didn't. But certainly he was deemed a threat one day, and then the other day, okay, a politician.
- [10:04]
C
So Minahim Begins was a different kind of politician than the more liberal Labor Zionists who, coming from Germany and Eastern Europe, had really been the leadership of the Jewish community in Palestine or the Yishuv. This is your Jewish executive. And they were led by Ben Gurion. They presented a reasonable face of Zionism to the world, and they hoped through persuasion and negotiation to achieve their goals. Begin was an extremist, and as we said before, he knew all too well about the violence that was being done to Jews that we would call the Holocaust. After the War. Well, the true magnitude was known, but he was already aware of that and was absolutely determined to achieve statehood. But once Israel had achieved that statehood at the end of the 1948 war and after the armistice agreements in 1949, he then does transition to engage in the political sphere of the new state of Israel. And he's there to represent a more right wing vision than the liberal Labor Zionism of Ben Gurion and co. He's much more informed by revisionist Zionism associated with the hard line of Zev Jabotinsky, who is going to be very influential not just through Herut and Likud, but right down through Netanyahu and the current right wing government that he holds.
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B
Well, I mean, we've touched on him in your company before, but just remind everybody who Jabotinsky was.
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C
Jabotinsky is the Zionist philosopher of the Iron Wall, which is to say you don't expect any people to willingly give up their land. You must force them out and then you must force them to respect your new ownership of their land by mounting such a strong wall that no one will be able to break through it. And this has been, if you like, the militarist vision of Israel, which has inspired many in the right and extreme right of the Israeli political spectrum which
- [11:56]
A
we're seeing played out this minute in the West Bank.
- [11:58]
C
Yeah. What I wanted to say though is we do it in justice. To Begin to characterize him just as the extremist he was, actually, he was a very eloquent soapbox politician. My colleague Avi Schlaim writes in his memoir Three Worlds about his experiences of moving from Iraq to Israel after 1950. And as a young man, the first person he was attracted to politically was Menachem Beginning. Really, he would go to rallies of Begin's party and was just immediately swept away by the sheer force and charisma of the man's rhetoric. And of course, he was speaking to the those who were disenfranchised by the Ashkenazi dominated liberal Labor Zionism. Begin was going to find his footing among the disenfranchised immigrants, particularly Mizrahi Jews coming from the Arab world and were in a sense the disadvantaged immigrants in Israel. Those were his people. And, you know, he was to prove increasingly successful in displacing Ashkenazi labor dynamism with a more right wing Zionism we associate with the Likud.
- [13:05]
A
Which brings us up now to 1977, which is where in a sense we're really sort of kicking off in this episode, May 1977. Menachem Begin wins the election, and it's the first time Likud has come to power. It's an earthquake, it's a revolution.
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C
And I think it confronts Israelis with a new reality that it will take them time to adapt to. These realities are that those once marginalized, sort of North African or Arab Jews or Iranian Jews have now come to power. And this is a harder line. Israel that is less interested in peace than it is in securing the territorial hold over a Greater Israel running from the Jordan river right to the Mediterranean Sea.
- [13:52]
B
But with that background and with that message and that kind of charisma, it isn't it surprising that begins first term is also the one that, you know, sort of he's the man who's most committed to Greater Israel, but he is also the man who signs the first Arab Israeli peace treaty. How does that happen?
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C
It's a remarkable story, Anita, and I think that it reveals Menahem beginning to have been an unwilling passenger on a bus that sets in motion, not in Tel Aviv, but in Cairo, when an Egyptian president that we have previously written off as being rather uncharismatic, whose street cred was enormously elevated by the success of the initial Egyptian war effort in 1973, and who seems to be motivated first and foremost by realigning Egypt with the United States to help with its development needs and to secure its position in the Arab world. And his awareness is that the best way to get in closer to the United States would be to address the unresolved issue of Egypt's relations with Israel. It was to the shock of everyone in Egypt and abroad that Sadat took the unprecedented initiative, with very little warning of hopping on an airplane and flying to Israel in his willingness to demonstrate the seriousness with which Egypt would pursue a genuine peace with Israel. And that caught Menachem Begin completely by surprise and left him responding to events that he did not initiate.
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A
So, Eugene, paint us a portrait of Anwar Sadat. We've come across him briefly before, but give us the backstory on this extraordinary man who's upended the apple cart by taking this unprecedented move.
- [15:46]
C
It's such a good question, and I'm going to bring a little personal reflection to bear here, because I was actually in high school in Cairo at the time of Sadat's visit to Jerusalem. And having grown up between Beirut and Cairo, in which no one ever spoke of Israel as such, but just a Zionist entity where everyone across the Arab world had grown up being indoctrinated to see Israel as the enemy. It was just an unprecedented shock to see the Egyptian president board an airplane and fly to Israel. Distances are nothing, they're so close.
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A
And El Al, apart from anything else, it was an Israeli aircraft that took him there.
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C
It was unbelievable to sit with my Egyptian friends watching television and not being able to discern whether Sadat had just proved that he was a hero or a traitor. And he was an unreadable man. You ask for a portrait of him. He is a pious man from a village in the Nile delta who had risen through the military, was one of the founders of the revolutionary movement in Egypt in 1952.
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A
He's dark skinned in a society where darkness carries social stigma too, isn't he? He's not the kind of. He's not the poster boy in the way that Nasser was.
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C
He certainly didn't have that kind of movie star handsomeness to him that really made people fall for Nasser in a big way. But more than just his dark complexion will you'll remember that he had a dark spot on his forehead. His zabiba or raisin, as it's called in Arabic, is a sign of a pious Muslim's frequent prayer piety.
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A
A man whose head has hit the ground so often during prayer. Right, yeah.
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C
This is someone who prays five times a day to his God. And it was a big part of Sadat's appeal to Egyptians was that like them, his Islamic faith is something he would wear on his forehead.
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B
I mean, I've been sort of obsessed with Sadat because he's a man of such contradictions. You know, on the one hand, Islam is clearly one of his great motivating factors. But we're also told that, you know, he has these two great loves, Gandhi and Hitler, two people you would not put in the same elevator in a building. But he reads them, we're told obsessively when he's a young man. And the reason he likes to read them and reread them is because he loved Gandhi's non violent resistance to British colonialism, which was successful. And he was also attracted to Hitler's method of driving the British out of Egypt by force. So you've got all of these sort of conflicting pressures on him. What does that sort of mold him into is that, you know, you've described how Begin could hold an audience in the palm of his hand. Was Sadat was not that man, was he?
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C
No, Sadat really was not the person whose speeches filled city squares. And so he had to find his appeal to the Egyptian people. I mean, first off, it was by prosecuting A successful war effort and you've had the time to discuss 1973, but it really did make him the hero of the crossing in Egyptian propaganda. And that propaganda was picked up by the Egyptian people. The Cairo I moved to in 1975 still addressed their president as the hero of the crossing.
- [18:54]
A
And they still. What do they call the 1973 war that's still regarded as a victory despite the rest of the world regards it as another Arab defeat.
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C
Well, if you went to the military museum in the Citadel of Cairo next to the Muhammad Ali Mosque, I just remember going there as a high school kid and it was full of all the wrecked tanks and airplane that had been destroyed by the Egyptians in the course of the war. They had visible, tangible evidence to make the claim that they'd given the Israelis a threat thrashing. And then they neglect the way Sharon outflanks them, surrounds them and forces them into a surrender essentially in the Western desert. But yes, I mean, his credibility is raised by that. And so what he lacks in charisma, he is able to make up for by having been the hero of the crossing. But also he's bold and he's decisive. And that was what left Egyptians confused by his decision to fly to Israel and address the Israeli Knesset. In a sense, going over the head of a Israeli Prime Minister who was seen as an obstruction to making peace, to speak directly to the Israeli people. And I think most Israelis responded to Sadat precisely because they saw him as someone speaking to them.
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B
Yeah, but I mean, he also rises above the head to most of the Arab world because let's not forget, I mean, it wasn't so long ago we were talking to you about the Arab world, saying, no, no, no, we will not rec. Recognize Israel, we will not speak to Israel, we will not, you know, allow Israel to, to exist as a, as a new state here. So how does, how does the Arab world react to him and to this?
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C
Well, you can imagine the chorus of no's that follows Sadat's initiative, particularly by
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A
the Palestinians, we should say. And Arafat is absolutely livid, isn't he?
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C
Oh, absolutely. But the first person he turns to before making his trip is actually Hafez Al Assad in Syria, who had been his ally and partner in prosecuting the 1973 war. And Assad says to him, don't do this, my friend. This will weaken our common Arab front. There's a way for us to achieve the goal of peace by staying together. If you go, you're going to be on your own. And that was exactly as it turned out to be. In going to address the Israeli people, he set change in motion. But among the changes was a universal rejection of Egypt's initiative and an immediate warning that should Egypt continue down the road towards negotiating and concluding an agreement with the Israelis, that it would lead to Egypt's exclusion from the Arab League and its isolation by all other Arab countries. They were literally going to boycott Egypt. And that's not a small threat because you have to remember the Arab League is. Its seat is in Cairo. Egypt is in a sense, still in the leadership position of the Arab world.
- [21:45]
A
Yeah, that's something we forget today when Egypt is poorer and more marginal than it was then. Egyptian movies are watched all over the Arab world. Egyptian film stars are the big heroes everywhere. And Egypt is seen as glamorous and a place that people go on holiday. And it's the intellectual center of the Arab world in a way that it perhaps no longer is.
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B
Pyramids, the Kit Kat Club, you know, it was high fashion, it was. It was cool.
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C
Soft power, hard power, economic power, military power. No, Egypt was the heavyweight of the Middle East. It was the center of gravity. So I think, you know, you talk about the three no's of Khartoum, they're still being respected by most of the Arab countries. Sadat's given a clear choice. You continue down this road by yourself. And if you lead it to its logical conclusion and conclude a separate peace with Israel, you're on your own, brother. We will totally cut you off.
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A
One crucial thing that we shouldn't miss out here is the Soviet factor. Now, the Russia is providing all the weapons to Egypt at this point. And one of the things that's been very successful in the 1973 war has been the SAM Anti Aircraft Systems, which shot down a great number of Israeli aircraft in a way that hadn't happened in 1967. And Sadat has now cooled on the Soviet alliance. He's suspicious of the Russians. This is one of the reasons that he makes this move.
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B
We should also say, actually, Egypt is thick. It's awash with Soviets. You know, they're all over the place. They're in very high positions. They're advisors, they've got a massive presence. So, yes, just to pick up from what Willi said, he's suspicious. What does he do and why does he do it?
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C
Well, remember that Sadat had run cold on the Soviets before 1973 and had expelled all Soviet 72.
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A
He kicks them out, doesn't he?
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C
Yeah, he expels all Soviet advisors because in A sense, as you've said it, they were very large presence. They threw their weight around in a way that for Sadat and his high command felt a little imperial. And they were resentful of the intrusiveness of their Soviet advisors who might be bringing high tech gear to Egypt, but wouldn't let the Egyptians put their finger on the button. So Sadat, in many ways, I think the second point, he was a very effective player in the Cold War in playing the Soviets against the Americans or the Americans against the Soviets.
- [24:08]
A
Was there any sense, Eugene, in which he'd warmed up the Americans to what he was going to do? Because what we do see, of course, is a shift towards America and America after this, is providing the Egyptian weaponry and a huge aid package too. Is there any sense which that was prepared before he flies to Jerusalem or not?
- [24:28]
C
Absolutely. Because what we've left out of our analysis, of course, is in the immediate aftermath of the 73 war, the Americans take seriously Egypt as a military threat, and they help broker a disengagement agreement between the Egyptians and the Israelis that leads to a retreat of Israeli forces away from the east bank of the Suez Canal, allows for the clearing of the canal to be restored to international shipping, and is the first example of a new respect for Egypt after the successes it enjoyed at the start of the October War, and the Americans beginning to take this Egyptian administration seriously. But for Egypt, they also had in the course of the war, they knew how reliant they were on Soviet weapons, particularly air defense, but they had seen how much better American kit was. And so they were looking to make a shift of patrons away from the Soviets towards the Americans. And that whole Sinai disengagement period in the mid-1970s, before you get the flight to Israel and launching the Camp David process, is the period where the Americans and the Egyptians are beginning to sound each other out with a newfound respect and ideas being that there might be a shift in this Cold War away from being a client of the Soviet Union to working more directly with the United States.
- [25:49]
B
So, I mean, the visit itself, we should spend some time talking about this because it happens on November 19, 1977. And he does, it does get some respect as an Israeli guard of honor that greets him. Tell us a bit more about, you know, the visual, the optics, as we like to say in politics these days, the optics of that visit.
- [26:06]
C
Eugene, again, remember for the Israeli people that Egypt, the most populous Arab nation, the most heavily armed Arab nation, the most serious foe that Israel faces in the region to be able to make peace with Egypt would be to ensure the security of the Jewish state forevermore. There would not be an Arab war against Israel that could threaten Israel if Egypt wasn't a part of it. So seeing Sadat get off the airplane on their territory was, for many in Israel, the fulfillment of a dream. It is recognition, it is acceptance, it is the willingness to take Egypt's desire for peace to the Israeli state itself. And so, in a sense, if we thought he wasn't charismatic to Egyptian audiences, I think for Israeli audiences he was an absolute charm. I think that they were so open to him and he was very courteous towards them. He held himself with respect and he showed respect to his hosts in Israel.
- [27:10]
A
He was very dapper, wasn't he? For all that. He wasn't the sort of movie star. He was quite vain and sort of theatrical too.
- [27:17]
C
He was. And he understood the drama of the moment and he played to it. And he used that to be able to put a hard message to the Israeli people when he took to the rostrum at the Knesset to make his case. And his case was, there is benefit to both of us to ending our state of war. But peace will not come for free. And remember, at this point, Israel is still in occupation of large parts of the Sinai Peninsula, even after the disengagement
- [27:45]
A
and building settlements there.
- [27:46]
C
And there were settlements in the Sinai that were ideologically motivated by zealous Zionists looking to establish the largest footprint for the state of Israel. The Sinai was certainly a welcome buffer, protecting the more central parts of Israel from Egypt having that expanse of desert territory. And so it will require sacrifices on both sides. And Sadat also made clear that this would involve the recognition of. Of the rights of the Arab countries who had been at war with Israel too, and had also suffered territorial losses. Egypt was not coming there, as Sadat presents it, simply for Egypt's own interests alone, but to talk about how in sort of concluding the issues with all of its neighboring states, Israel might live at peace with all of its Arab neighbors. So it was a message that said, this isn't going to come easily, but if we bring goodwill to it, we can negotiate our way towards something which will be good not just for us, but for our children's generation too.
- [28:47]
A
Eugene, that takes us very neatly up to the eve of Camp David. We're gonna take a break now and after the break, deal with the 1978 Camp David agreement.
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D
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- [30:07]
A
Welcome back. So, Eugene, before the break, you took us to Sadat's Jerusalem visit. Now we're gonna go to September 1978 and Camp David. Tell us about President Jimmy Carter. Again, a very different sort of figure to anything we've seen before in the White House. So all three of these main participants are breaking the mold in different ways. Tell us about Jimmy Carter.
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C
It's a very good point. Point that already we're dealing with such an unusual match of personalities in talking about Sadat and Begin. And I think Jimmy Carter emerges as the essential man to create a synergy between those two very different Egyptian and Israeli leaders. Jimmy Carter was, in his own way, breaking the mold of leadership in America. We haven't elected many people from the American south to the presidency.
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A
Few are still peanut. Peanut farmers.
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C
Fewer yet peanut farmers. So he really came from the rural south, coming from the state of Georgia, he was in a sense, the antithesis of the Nixon White House, which had been so discredited by the Watergate scandal that the Republican brand had been seriously tainted. And here was a clean pair of hands, a person with his evangelical faith who could speak directly to that majority of Americans who wear their Christianity on their sleeve and in a way made him more open to engage with the Judaism of Menachem Begin. You know, as an evangelical Christian, that Hebrew Bible is absolutely critical to Carter's understanding of his Christianity, as we see
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A
with the current administration at the moment, where, again, this Christian Zionism thing is a hugely important factor.
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C
Oh, absolutely. But also it allows him to appreciate the religiosity of Anwar Sadat. You know, the pious zabiba on Sadat's forehead was a sign to Carter that this was a man of ethics and religious values and faith with whom he could do business. And I think Carter really saw himself as the kind of the connection between these two different leaders, Begin and Sanat, whose policy differences seemed almost unbridgeable. And Carter sees himself as a man who can bridge their differences.
- [32:22]
B
Now, we should say we're going to talk about Camp David a lot in this half and we should really. I mean, if you don't know, and I'm sure most of you do, but it's this secluded over 100 acres of country retreat that since the time of Roosevelt, and I think Franklin D. Roosevelt had another name for, he called it Shangri La when he established it. But Camp David becomes this, this retreat. It's staffed entirely by U.S. navy and Marine Corps, but it's a place where the President can, can have private conversations, the most sensitive diplomatic conversations. So. And this will probably be the biggest Camp David has ever seen, the most contentious one, Eugene, that Camp David has ever experienced since its been inception in the 40s.
- [33:07]
C
Well, you know, because it is a vacation hole for serving American presidents, it's organized around a series of cabins. And those who go to Camp David often are able to get out a suit and tie and wear casual clothes. And I think the idea is by cutting yourself off from all the influences of the outside world, that reasonable people can sit down at a table in their loafers and their open neck shirt, roll up their sleeves and get the job done. And it will be used by subsequent peacemakers. You know, we think about the way Bill Clinton would bring Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak to Camp David to try and hammer out a resolution of the sort of failing Oslo process. So others will use the special environment. But remember, we talk about being cut off from the whole world. These heads of state are not without their aides. They're surrounded by teams who are very engaged with what's happening in the world around them, communicating the developments that are going on. They do exercise constraints and controls on what their leaders can say and do. So there were pressures binding our leaders to the limits of policy imposed by their own countries. That I think Jimmy Carter Foundation a real challenge to get them to break through, to secure a deal that both sides could agree to.
- [34:21]
B
So Eugene, this cabin diplomacy, it's something that Carter talks about, this informality, this kind of relaxed atmosphere that Camp David tries to inspire in those visiting. What does he say about it?
- [34:35]
C
Well, because they're not always sitting around one big table. And when the various leaders have their differences, they retreat to their cabins where they're set on by their aides. And this dynamic was really undoing the negotiations between Begin and Sadat. And they reach a Breaking point where they simply cannot agree on the terms under which both sides might make peace. And Carter visits one cabin, he visits the other, and then he goes back to Begin's cabin, and he asks Begin to sort of tell him about his grandchildren. And he makes the point that if Begin had the courage to deal with. With Egypt and make peace, he would be making a world that would be safe for his grandchildren. And Begin tears up. Really it touched him. And it was one of those moments where he decided to go beyond the limits that maybe his aides and people back home were trying to impose, and that the benefit of making peace was actually worth the risk that he might be taking in this leap of faith. And Carter chalks that up as the breakthrough moment that saves Camp David from failure and leads towards the final Camp David accords.
- [35:36]
B
We're just seeing each other as humans. I mean, you've met Carter, haven't you? Tell me how that works.
- [35:42]
C
Well, it was such a fantastic opportunity to be able to ask him more detail. And so the question I was really curious about was about the Palestinians. And however wonderful it was to secure peace between Israel and Egypt, was it not a failure that it wasn't a framework that embraced also the Palestinians? And Carter was absolutely adamant that the Palestinians had been integral to everything that he had believed that Begin had signed up to. And he felt betrayed by Prime Minister Begin that after the signing of the deal and he was back home here again, the pressures of home apply themselves. And Begin was like, we've complied with 242. We've withdrawn from Arab territory. No one said all the territory was necessary, and we're doing peace with Egypt and Palestine is something else. And Carter felt betrayed by that.
- [36:33]
A
Eugene, this is important to clarify my understanding and tell me if I'm wrong, is that at Camp David, there was the agreement to leave Sinai, but the only agreement about the west bank and Gaza was a settlement freeze. It wasn't that they were going to withdraw from those two territories. Am I wrong about that?
- [36:52]
C
It was a commitment to resolve the Palestinian question to the satisfaction of the Palestinian side.
- [36:57]
B
It's interesting that Carter would trust Begin when the whole language of the region changes, when Begin comes to power, because the west bank is the term that we use today. But Begin insisted on calling it Judean Samaria, which is, you know, this biblical historical term, which does suggest that his, you know, initial standpoint is that this is not. We're not taking new tracts of land. We are liberating tracts of land that belong to us anyway. I mean, So, I mean, is Carter naive, or does Begin make a U turn? I mean, what do you think happens here?
- [37:35]
C
I think that Carter saw his interlocutors as people of faith and people of values, but I don't think he ever believed that they had abandoned their ideologies when they came to Camp David. He knew what he was dealing with. But in a sense, indeed, if you hope to achieve peace, you hope to drive your negotiating partners beyond their ideologies into the area of compromise. And I think that's what Carter was hoping to achieve. And I think he believed he'd achieved it. I think he believed the Camp David Accords provided a framework not just for peace between Egypt and Israel, but between Israel and all the other Arab states too. But that it was going to be through this process of abandoning ideology and pursuing pragmatic compromise politics that you would achieve the peace deal that would ensure the safety and security of next generations.
- [38:28]
B
Eugene, what is the reaction from the PLO to the Arab League to these sort of chats and talks of grandchildren going on at Camp David and the resulting decisions made?
- [38:41]
C
Well, it seemed like there were a lot of grandchildren that were being left out of the Camp David Accords, if you think about Palestinians or Syrians or Lebanese or Jordanians or anybody else who suffered losses through the Arab Israeli conflict. But the Arab world had a lot of advanced preparation for this possibility. They had been gathering in Baghdad as an Arab summit to address the crisis of Egypt breaking with Arab ranks to conclude a separate peace with Israel. And so they formalized their threat of imposing total isolation on Egypt in the event, it should conclude peace with Israel and break with Arab ranks. And so in the immediate aftermath of the announcement of the Camp David Accords that went into effect, and from that point forward, all Egyptian ambassadors were withdrawn from every single Arab capital. Egypt would be represented by intersections in neutral countries like Pak or Switzerland in most Arab capitals. And Egypt, it's almost as though the lights went out for the country because its centrality to Arab affairs taken away, being at peace with Israel and a peace that didn't enjoy widespread support among the Egyptian people themselves. They're not a warmongering nation. They were happy not to have the prospect of going back to war again. The Egyptians had suffered more from the Arab Israeli wars than any other country. But they valued their place in the Arab world more than they valued peace with Israel. They didn't go to Israel. They didn't have friends in Israel. They didn't see the benefit. They just saw Egypt moving into a new orientation that was really quite alien to them, aligned to America and at peace with Israel. And I think it creates a real tension.
- [40:19]
A
And that, I think, is a place that Egypt has never regained that centrality that Egypt has under Nasser. When Egyptian film stars are being worshiped all over the Arab world, when Egyptian singers are being heard on radios all over the Arab world, that sort of ends at this period. And also, there's a sense, I think, that in the 60s and 70s, a lot of Arabs went to Egypt for their holidays. And this is the period when Arabs start appearing in London and you start having limos up and down Kensington and outside Harrods and that sort of thing. And Arabs no longer spend their summer holidays near the pyramids or at Sam Al Sheikh, but come to Europe and they become familiar figures in London.
- [40:59]
B
Yeah. And also, it would explain. You're giving us the paving stones that take us to October 6, 1981, because with that much ill will from the Arab world and indeed from great swathes of his own population in Egypt. This is the date of the assassination of Sadat. Now, can you tell us a little bit more about how this happens? It's almost eight years to the day after the Yom Kippur war began. October 6th. What happens?
- [41:26]
C
Well, in a sense, as you say, October 6th is a sacral day for the Sadat presidency. It represents the day when Egyptian forces cross the Suez Canal and break through the Bharlev line and make Sadat the hero of the crossing. This is the title that he takes for his war victories of 1973. And so the observance of the anniversary of the October becomes just a moment for Sadat to stand in front of the Egyptian people and to remind him of his struggles and his heroics. He would always appear in full military dress. He would take to the viewing stand. It was a predictable ritual because it had been done every year since 1973. And I suppose that's what made Sadat so vulnerable to an assassination attempt on that day, because one could predict with absolute certainty how the parade would unfold. And here a group of Egyptian extremists,
- [42:23]
A
specifically Islamists, isn't that right?
- [42:25]
B
Are they called Egyptian Islamic Jihad? I mean, is that the title that they go by?
- [42:30]
C
They gave themselves the name Takfir Bhijra, and that language reveals that they are inspired by the writings of a Sayyid Qutb, who was the Muslim Brother breakaway, whose prison writings before his hanging in 1966 would go on to prove among the most influential in kind of contemporary Islamic politics, particularly the jihadist military vision of Salafi politics. And so a group who believed that Sadat had betrayed Islam and was being an unjust tyrant. They call him the Pharaoh because Pharaoh stands in the Quran as the ultimate symbol of the unjust, irreligious tyrant, oddly,
- [43:12]
A
of Solomon Sulaiman, who is the symbol of justice in the Quran.
- [43:18]
C
Ironically, well, the ironies are compounded because of course, the tomb of the Unknown Soldier which faces the viewing stand by which the October 6th parade passes is in the shape of a pyramid. So here you have the Pharaoh taking a seat in the viewing stand facing his pyramid as carload of. Carload of jeeps, soldiers.
- [43:40]
A
Yes, we should describe this. So what happens on, on October 6, 1981, is that a truck in the parade stops unexpectedly. Soldiers jump out, they throw grenades and open fire on the reviewing stand. And Sadat is killed immediately. 11 others die. And Khalid Istanbuli, the leader, shouts as he opens fire. This is the title of endless books about this subject. I have killed Pharaoh. I've told this anecdote about interviewing Mubarak before, but Mubarak was there and he gave me a very detailed description of this moment. And he is in the third row and he told me that seconds after the firing begins, his military training takes over and he hits the floor and rolls under the reviewing stand. And he was there listening to the shooting above him with no idea whether Sadat was alive because he was two rows back and he could hear the screams. He can hear the chaos. And he doesn't know whether, you know, this children's about to come over and find him. And he lies there in the dust and he tells this story in, I suppose, 1994. I interviewed him about this and he took about sort of 15 minutes to tell this story. It was, you know, he remembered every
- [45:01]
C
as you would, of course, in real time.
- [45:03]
A
No drama, no self pity, just this extraordinary thing of surviving this moment when you so nearly died.
- [45:08]
B
But I wonder, Eugene, if that, you know, that explains why, you know, if you're that close to death and you see Sadat being blown to pieces before your very eyes, that you decide, okay, you know what this idea of a separate peace, this idea of, you know, taking on the Islamists, I'm not doing it. So, you know, when he does come to power and has his presidency, nearly 30 years of presidency, he defines himself by doing the things that Sadat did not do. I mean, is that a fair assessment?
- [45:40]
C
Yes. I mean, Hosni Mubarak was always his own man. And if you like the charisma factor seems to be waning with each succession in the Egyptian presidency.
- [45:49]
A
The Egyptians call him Levashki Reid. That was always the joke, which is
- [45:54]
C
not what any general would want to be called. Right, the laughing cow.
- [45:58]
A
I liked him. I thought he was a very sort of full of bonhomie. He was a very jolly character to hang out with with. Surprisingly lively and a good storyteller actually.
- [46:08]
C
You know, it's okay to write the obituary of Mubarak in balanced terms, but he certainly took Egypt into a new direction. Still looking out for the military and power. He was himself a high ranking air force general.
- [46:26]
A
A kind of new Mamluk regime whereby the military take over over. Exactly.
- [46:31]
C
That's been going on since 1952. What he represents is the Arab autocrats for life who begin to groom their sons to succeed them and in that sense takes Egypt down big business and family business and maybe cutting the military out. Which might explain why the military would allow their president to fall to a popular uprising in 2011, the Arab Spring. But for now, no. He was the designated vice president, the safe pair of hands who was able to hold the ship of Egypt together through the turbulence of the post Sadat moment and to accelerate Egypt's reintegration into the Arab world. Because it does follow in the years after 1981, it does come back from the cold. The Arab League will return to Cairo, people will go back to those nightclubs on Pyramids Road. And Egyptian films continue to circulate. But it took a while for a new president. Maybe the death of Sadat was necessary for Egypt to be able to move beyond what he had done and find its place in the Arab world again.
- [47:32]
A
And tell us about the legacy for Palestine. Cause that in a sense is the great omission at Camp David, as you say. Carter thinks that he's got a deal that's going to bring at least autonomy for the Palestinians and hopefully some measure of peace. But that part of the deal fails completely.
- [47:50]
C
But I think when it comes to Palestine, you are dealing with a political movement that represents an existential threat to those who adhere to revisionist Zionism, for whom having the largest possible Israel is the essential fulfillment of the mission of creating a Jewish state that would be a refuge for Jews anywhere in the world. And for that, Judea and Samaria are both strategically important, but they're also ideologically important. This is the birthplace of the Jewish people and its history.
- [48:18]
A
And archeologists are digging it up at this point and discovering all these early Jewish settlements, the very, very first Israelite buildings and the beginnings of the Jewish faith. They are there.
- [48:33]
C
So for Menachem Begin as Prime Minister, the idea that there would be some settlement with the Palestinians that might make for compromises in the west bank was out of the question. And he, seconded by very influential generals like Ariel Sharon, who was in his cabinet as Minister of Defense, are going to be doubling down on Palestinian nationalism, forbidding Palestinian flags, banning all contact with anyone associated with the plo. It was illegal under Israeli law. You're so far from talking about negotiating. And so this will, in a sense be leading towards a growing conflict by an Israel that's no longer concerned about the danger from its southern flank with Egypt to deal with what it sees now as the new threat of a rising Palestinian movement seeking international recognition since Yasser Arafat's 1974 speech before the United nations. And where, you know, the areas under Israeli occupation are looking to the PLO to see their Camp David to Palestinian statehood, something Menahem Begin was absolutely determined to prevent.
- [49:40]
B
In many ways, the Abraham Accords do a similar thing, don't they? They have peace talks, but they don't address the Palestinians situation.
- [49:48]
C
That is the absolute flaw with the Abraham Accords. But more than that, the idea of normalizing with Israel is always going to be compromised so long as Israel is not a normal state in the sense of a state with defined boundaries. Boundaries are part of what makes for a normal state in international law. And for the lack of defined boundaries, you don't know quite what you're recognizing by giving full recognition to Israel. And as those in the Abrahamic Accords have learned, you can, by normalizing Israel, find yourself at peace with a country that is engaging in desperate warfare against fellow Arabs. And that will always play very badly with your own citizens.
- [50:27]
A
And those borders remain undefined today. And this issue of where Israel's borders will lie is as unclear now as it has always been. And the Israelis are now into quite a big chunk of Syria. They've announced they're going to take a great chunk of Lebanon. As we record this week, that news has come that they're going to go up to the Litany river again. And so this is a major flaw in both Camp David and the Abraham Accords.
- [50:55]
B
Well, look, I mean, actually next time we are headed to Lebanon, we're going to head to Beirut. It's 1982. We're going to be talking about the 70 day siege of West Beirut, the PLO's evacuation under an American guarantee. And then the night of September, September 16, 1982, we're gonna have Kim Gattas with us. She grew up in Beirut. As you know, Kim is a fabulous guest and her book Black Wave is one of those great works of modern Middle Eastern history which really does show us how we got here because of what happened then. Don't miss it. And if you want to hear the rest of the series right now, you don't have to wait. You know that. Just go to empirepoduk.com empirepod uk.com and follow their link in the episode description Till the next time we meet. And thank you so much, Eugene, before I even think of signing off, you are an absolute superstar. Thank you so much for your time.
- [51:49]
C
Thank you so much, Anita. I've enjoyed these conversations more than I can tell.
- [51:52]
B
Well, till the next time we meet, it is goodbye from me, Anita Anand.
- [51:56]
A
And goodbye from me, William Durimple.
- [52:07]
E
Why did we really go to war with Iraq?
- [52:09]
F
And did Saddam Hussein really have weapons of mass destruction?
- [52:14]
E
I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist.
- [52:16]
F
And I'm David McCloskey, author and former CIA analyst. We are the hosts of the Rest Is Classified. And in our latest series, we are telling the true story of one of history's biggest intelligence failures. Iraq WMD.
- [52:29]
E
In 2003, the US and UK told the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But they were wrong.
- [52:38]
F
This wasn't a simple lie. It was something far more complicated, far more interesting and far more dangerous.
- [52:45]
E
Spies who believed their sources, politicians who wanted the public to believe in the threat, and a dictator who couldn't prove to. And we'd already destroyed the weapons.
- [52:56]
F
In this series, we go deep inside the CIA and MI6, go into the rooms where decisions were made, and look at the sources who fabricated the intelligence that took us to war.
- [53:07]
E
The Iraq war reshaped the Middle east and permanently weakened public trust in governments and intelligence agencies, and its consequences are still playing out today.
- [53:17]
F
Plus, in a Declassified Club exclusive, we are joined by three people who are at the heart of the decision to go to war. Former head of MI6, Richard Dearlove, Tony Blair's former communications director, Alistair Campbell, and former acting head of the CIA, Michael Morell.
- [53:32]
E
So get the full story by listening to the Rest Is Classified and subscribing to the Declassified Club. Wherever you get your podcasts,