Assistant Secretary of State Joseph J. Sisco and Israeli Ambassador Simcha Dinitz, making his maiden address in Washington differed widely and sharply last night in their assessments of the origin of the Six-Day War, the road to peace and other elements of the Arab-Israeli conflict. They addressed some 2000 people at the Sheraton Park Hotel in the climax here of Israel’s 25th anniversary celebrations.
Sisco, speaking first, said that the vision of both Arabs and Israelis “has often been clouded by myths of the past which have persisted in obscuring the realities of the present,” and referred to “lost opportunities” for a settlement. A “myth” that is “now accepted as reality in much of the Arab world is that the Six-Day War was the result of unprovoked Israeli aggression,” the State Department’s foremost Middle East specialist said.
“On the Israeli side, there is the myth that the Six-Day War was the result of a calculated Arab plan to launch a war of destruction against Israel,” he added. “In my view,” Sisco said in one of many passages that seemed to stress an even handed perspective to the conflict, “the most plausible explanation is that the Six-Day War resulted from improvised actions and reactions by each side. Combined with each side’s perception and suspicion of the other’s, the cumulative weight of these actions and reactions made inevitable a war neither side deliberately sought at that time.”
Sisco, who expressed confidence that the United States will “remain steadfast in its support for Israel’s security,” also described as a “myth that security is solely a function of the physical location of territorial boundaries.” In this connection, he quoted Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban as saying that “the question of boundaries is one of the components of peace and not its sole condition.”
PEACE BY PROXY IS A MYTH
Finally, Sisco said, “There is the myth that peace can be made by proxy–that powers not party to the conflict, acting independently or through the United Nations, can somehow substitute for negotiations between the parties themselves. This hasn’t been the case in any of the successful negotiations of international disputes in recent history, and the Middle East is no exception. The United Nations and outside powers can play a responsible role in encouraging the parties to get a negotiating process started. But they cannot be part of the process itself.”
Speaking of “lost opportunities” that have “slipped through the fingers of those concerned,” Sisco said that “perhaps the greatest opportunity” came after the Six-Day War when the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242. “Part of the answer,” he said, to the question of why opportunities had been missed, is that “neither side, Arab or Israeli, has collectively defined its goals.” Nor is there a “broadly agreed concensus on either side as to what the acceptable trade-offs might be.”
The U.S., Sisco said, is “continuing to press the search for answers” since the present no-war-no-peace situation is unstable and unsatisfactory. Just as the U.S. had called on the Arabs and Israelis in 1970, on the eve of the U.S. initiated cease-fire, to “stop shooting and start talking, today we urge they stop shouting and start listening,” he said.
IT TAKES TWO TO MAKE PEACE
Dinitz took issue with Sisco without directly referring to him. Speaking largely extemporaneously, the envoy said that in 1967 “when our soldiers were marching in a military parade, Nasser paraded his tanks in the Sinai desert and a hundred thousand Egyptian troops were moving into the Sinai to threaten the very life of Israel. Nasser said so himself on television for all the world to see. You could see it better than we. Israel didn’t have television at that time.”
In what some present interpreted as a polemical response, Dinitz declared, “we haven’t had peace for the simple reason that one can declare war, but it takes two to make peace.” Pointing to Israel’s peace offers, he said, “there is only one way to start on the road to peace; that is to stop talking of myths and start talking in terms of realities.” What is needed now, Dinitz stated, “is not a new framework but a different frame of mind. Peace can never be achieved by surrendering to blackmail or placating frustrations but only by talking together.”
The Arabs, he said, created a series of images, alibis and excuses why not to make peace. After each of the three previous wars, when new opportunities for peace arrived, the Arabs converted them “from a platform for peace into a jumping board from which to launch a new war.”
WILL RESPOND TO SOUNDS OF PEACE
Nevertheless, Dinitz said, “our minds are open for peace, our hands are extended and our ears attuned to every sound from across the border. If it is a sound of peace we will gladly reciprocate but if it is a sound of war we will know how to meet it as well.” Dinitz concluded that Israel is proud of “its great partnership with the United States, its government and the majority of its people.”
Some observers saw in Sisco’s remarks an intent to demonstrate American “even-handedness” in the Middle East and thereby induce the Arabs to move toward some sort of negotiations for a settlement. A high State Department official told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today that Sisco wrote the speech himself and that the White House was aware of its content. Prior to the meeting at the Sheraton Park Hotel some 2000 guests attended a reception given by the Israeli Embassy at the nearby Shoreham Hotel.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
