Step by Step

Abstract

Because of their inability to read the signals in time, American leaders had contributed to the outbreak of war, but once it started Nixon and Kissinger engaged in crisis management of a high order. By the war’s end, no one could doubt that America held the key to progress in Middle East diplomacy. Behind Israel’s military success lay America’s airlift of essential supplies, while her leaders had responded to Kissinger’s wishes, albeit reluctantly. For her part, Egypt, though not yet Syria, had used the conflict to signal her willingness to re-open a dialogue with Washington. In short, Kissinger appeared to be uniquely placed to push ahead for the kind of negotiated settlement envisaged in Resolution 338. In fact, his search for an acceptable settlement was to ensnare him into one of the most protracted, and personally demanding, diplomatic missions of the post-war era, in the course of which he was to incur the disfavour of many Israelis and the distrust of many Arabs. But by September 1975, he had negotiated three disengagement agreements, two for Sinai and one for the Golan Heights, which, if they amounted to less than the breakthrough for which many hoped, were only achieved at the price of a seemingly endless series of ‘teeth-grinding’ sessions in the capitals of the Middle East.