A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (22 page)

After taking office as prime minister of Israel, Menachem Begin made some very harsh statements that almost precluded any necessary compromises, but he made a fine impression on all of us when he came to visit in July. We had long private talks, and I had the impression that he would not abandon his basic commitments to his supporters in Israel but would be as accommodating as possible to my proposals concerning peace with Egypt and Palestinian control over their own affairs.

At this time it was assumed that there would be a multinational peace conference in Geneva, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 338. This plan soon proved to be too bureaucratic for implementation, and the planned involvement of both the United States and the Soviet Union aroused strong opposition from Israel and Egypt.

One weekend when our family was enjoying Camp David, Rosalynn suggested that this would be an ideal place for negotiating teams to benefit from the privacy and quiet atmosphere. I agreed with her and sent handwritten invitations to Begin and Sadat in August 1978 to join me for comprehensive peace talks. They both accepted.

I described our thirteen days together in
Keeping Faith,
and several other books have been written about our negotiations at Camp David, but I would like now to describe some of the more personal relationships that developed there.

I had practically memorized the maps of disputed areas and the voluminous briefing books prepared on the biographies of Begin and Sadat by our intelligence agencies. These included their early lives, political careers, promises and obligations to powerful political groups, and psychological analyses predicting how they would react to pressure while negotiating and after they returned home.

When Begin arrived at Camp David in September 1978, he made it clear to me that he was prepared only to outline some general principles and then turn over the responsibilities to our cabinet officers for future detailed negotiations. I disagreed and found that Sadat was willing to support my more ambitious plans for peace talks. I got both leaders to agree
that if we failed I would make public my final proposal and let each of them explain why he accepted or rejected it. Another agreement was that we would not share our daily discussions with the outside world, and we did not deny a rumor among the two negotiating teams that all the outside phone lines were tapped.

At first I thought I could bring both men into a small room in my cabin and get them to discuss with me all the advantages that a peace agreement could bring to their people. But I found this to be impossible, because both of them would ignore my proposals and revert as soon as possible to vitriolic exchanges about things that had happened during the four wars between their countries during the previous thirty years. On occasion, they would go back to Biblical days. Finally, after three days had been wasted in loud arguments, I decided that they should be kept apart, and we maintained this arrangement for the remaining days together. I had created a single document that outlined my concept of a comprehensive peace agreement. I would take it, usually first to the Israelis and then to the Egyptians, modifying the text only when absolutely necessary. Progress came slowly but surely, paragraph by paragraph.

Tensions became so great that I thought we should take a break, and we all agreed to visit the nearby Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg. All officers trained for military duty had studied this conflict in detail, as had I and almost all the top leaders from Israel and Egypt. There were excited comments as we were guided from one location to another—except from Begin, who had never received military training. I began to worry about his relative isolation in the group, but then we reached the place where Abraham Lincoln made his historic address. Everyone got respectfully quiet to contemplate the scene, and after a few moments Begin began to recite Lincoln’s words: “Fourscore and seven years ago . . .” This was an emotional experience, the most memorable of the day.

Late at night on the ninth day I became concerned about Sadat’s safety. He was ahead of all his delegation in accommodating my proposals, and we knew that some of the Egyptians were fervent in their hatred and distrust of Israel. His foreign minister had resigned in protest and returned to Egypt, and some of his other top officials were on the verge of
rebellion because of concessions he had made. I had sent word that I wished to see Sadat late that afternoon and was told that, uncharacteristically, he had already gone to bed and did not wish to be disturbed. I was doubtful about the truthfulness of this response, and for one of the few times in my life I could not go to sleep. I finally arranged through Zbig Brzezinski to have security arranged outside Sadat’s cabin, and I was relieved to see him the next morning.

On the eleventh day, I was meeting with Secretary of Defense Harold Brown about some important budget issues when Secretary of State Cy Vance burst into the room and said that Sadat had his luggage on the porch of his cabin and had asked for a helicopter to take him back to Washington for a return to Egypt. This was one of the worst moments of my life. I knew that he was doubtful of our potential success after Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan told him that Israel would make no more concessions. I went into my bedroom, knelt and prayed for a while, and for some reason I replaced my T-shirt and blue jeans with a coat and tie for the first time since I’d arrived. Only then did I go to Sadat’s cabin, where he and I had a terrible confrontation. I used all the arguments and threats I could muster, and eventually he agreed to give me one more chance.

By the thirteenth day there were only a couple of unresolved issues, which were of paramount importance to Prime Minister Begin. One concerned the status of Jerusalem and the other removal of all Israelis from Egyptian territory. He would not yield on either, and he was very angry with me. We all decided that our only option was to return to Washington, acknowledge failure, and plan for some possible future efforts. My secretary came to me with a request from Begin that I sign photographs of the three leaders as souvenirs for his eight grandchildren. Without telling him, she had called Israel and obtained their names, so I inscribed them, with love, to each child. I went to Begin’s cabin, and he admitted me with a polite but frigid attitude. I gave him the photographs, he turned away to examine them, and then began to read the names aloud, one by one. He had a choked voice, and tears were running down his cheeks. I
was also emotional, and he asked me to have a seat. After a few minutes, we agreed to try once more, and after some intense discussions we were successful.

On the way back to Washington we called Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford to give them the good news, and followed this with a press conference at the White House.

My first knowledge of Panama came when I was a student at Georgia Tech, an engineering school that concentrated on relations with Latin American countries. There were several students from Panama, my first acquaintance with anyone from a foreign country, and I was able to practice my rudimentary Spanish. They were proud of the Panama Canal, which provided good job opportunities for them and a permanent connection with the United States. As a naval officer serving on ships that operated in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, I became more aware of how valuable the canal was to international traffic, in times of peace and war. It was during my time as a state senator that I became aware of serious disharmony between Panamanians and Americans. My friends from Panama told me about the arrogance of some Americans who lived in the Canal Zone, prejudice against Panamanians with dark skin, and preference in hiring and pay practices that made local workers feel inferior. As president, I began working on a settlement of the Panama Canal arguments as early as possible. I will describe this process in some detail because it would become the most difficult political challenge of my life, even including being elected president.

The canal had been a divisive issue between America and the people of Panama and Colombia for seventy-five years. Construction of a canal had begun under the French in 1881 but was later abandoned because of increased costs and the deaths of many workers from typhus fever and other diseases. The United States had signed a treaty with Colombia in
1903 to take over the canal project, but when it was not ratified, President Theodore Roosevelt indicated to rebels in the Panama area that the United States would support their independence from Colombia. This strategy succeeded because of the exercise of American military force. The United States unilaterally drafted a favorable treaty with Panama, which was hurriedly signed on the night of November 18, 1903, in Washington, just a few hours before a delegation from Panama could arrive and examine the text. Panamanians were ostensibly represented by a Frenchman who had last visited Panama eighteen years earlier. The huge engineering feat was completed in 1914, and the canal was operated under American supervision, with many Panamanian workers.

There were constant altercations relating to sovereignty over the Canal Zone, culminating in a confrontation during the early months of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. President Eisenhower had pledged to the Panamanians that no U.S. flags would fly over the zone, but some American students raised a flag on January 9, 1964, and massive rioting by Panamanians erupted. American troops responded with force, and twenty Panamanians and four Americans were killed. Johnson called Panamanian President Roberto Chiari to express his regret, and Chiari demanded that the treaty be revised. Johnson promised to consider Panamanian grievances, and he launched negotiations for a new treaty. However, opposition from the U.S. Congress was so great that he never submitted the agreement for ratification.

Negotiations continued under Presidents Nixon and Ford, but neither proved willing to send a treaty to Congress. Meanwhile, Panama and a number of other Latin American countries pressured the United States to act. Positions on both sides hardened. In 1973 Panama took the issue to the UN Security Council, where the United States exercised its veto over a demand that a new, “just and equitable” treaty be negotiated. The “unaligned” nations, not just in the Western Hemisphere but around the world, all supported Panama’s demands.

During the fall of 1975, thirty-eight senators introduced a resolution against any revision in the existing treaty, aware that thirty-four could block any effort. Polls indicated that only 8 percent of the American
public was willing to relinquish control of the canal, and conservatives saw this as a prime issue. Both Ronald Reagan and the John Birch Society launched nationwide crusades in 1974 with speeches and video and audio tapes. This was a challenge that I inherited.

After studying the issues, I concluded that Panama had legitimate claims and initiated substantive negotiations. General Omar Torrijos was then the ruler of Panama; I learned to respect his political courage and honesty and to consider him a personal friend. I had two experienced and respected negotiators, Ellsworth Bunker, former ambassador to Argentina and several other countries, and Sol Linowitz, who had been chairman of Xerox. They reached a successful formula early in August 1977. One treaty would apply from 1979 through 1999, when the Canal Zone would cease to exist and the area would belong to Panama. The other would be a permanent guarantee that the United States would protect the canal and have priority of using it in a time of emergency. Now I had to persuade sixty-seven senators to vote for a highly unpopular agreement that many of them had promised to oppose.

My first effort was to recruit Presidents Ford and Nixon, and Senate leaders Robert Byrd (Democrat) and Howard Baker (Republican) as allies, and then convince other senators that their most influential home state political leaders would be supportive, or at least neutral. We began inviting as many as two hundred prominent citizens from individual states to the White House, where military commanders, cabinet officers, and I would explain the canal’s history and outline the advantages to our country if the treaties were implemented. My cabinet members and other senior officials made more than fifteen hundred appearances throughout the nation, and I induced forty-five doubtful senators to visit Panama and see how vulnerable the canal was to sabotage and how able were the Panamanians who provided most of the technicians in charge of its operation. Our military commanders in the Canal Zone and General Torrijos, with the demeanor and frankness of a sergeant, proved to be excellent salesmen.

I invited national leaders from the hemisphere to attend a signing ceremony of the negotiated documents in September 1977, and eighteen
presidents and a number of other top officials attended the emotional event. As Torrijos and I prepared to enter the large auditorium from a side room, he burst into tears and wept for a few minutes on his wife’s shoulder until he regained composure. Unfortunately, we had to wait until the following year for the Senate to begin substantive hearings in the committees on foreign affairs and defense, and then have extensive floor debates. The public endorsement by Senators Byrd and Baker was a positive factor, but massive pressures were put on senators who expressed an inclination to oppose the treaties. By this time, opinion polls showed that 34 percent of Americans approved the treaties.

Assisted by Frank Moore, I kept a notebook on my desk with all pertinent information I could obtain about each senator, including twenty or more names of people or organizations that were most influential with each one. I kept a running tally of those committed to vote either for or against the treaties. I knew their primary involvements in state or national affairs, and whether they had any personal interests in the canal. There were nine “undecided” Republicans whom President Ford agreed to call, though only one of them finally voted yes. There was a flood of crippling amendments, and Senators Robert Dole and Jesse Helms charged publicly and falsely that Torrijos and his family were drug dealers and that high officials in the United States had been bribed. The Senate had closed sessions where these charges were refuted. A vote on the first treaty was scheduled for March 16 and the other a month later. With a week to go I had fifty-nine promised votes. Eleven senators were still unsure, and I had to have eight of them. Here are some key concerns that had to be addressed: