The agreements for separation of forces, the two between Israel and Egypt and the one between Israel and Syria, were achieved through what was called the step-by-step diplomacy of Henry Kissinger. In early 1977 there was a new administration in the United States, as Jimmy Carter became the President in the White House. And the Carter administration had a different approach to the idea of Israeli-Arab peace. Instead of the step-by-step diplomacy by Kissinger, which was based on the view that a comprehensive settlement wasn't quite possible, the Carter administration sought to achieve precisely that. A comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Americans sought to reconvene the Geneva conference which had been convened just after the October war of nineteen seventy-three, once, in December of 1973. The Americans thought to reconvene the Geneva Conference as a forum where the Arab States and the Soviet Union would participate in the achievement of a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But Israel had very serious reservations about the idea of an international conference and a comprehensive settlement. The Israelis believed that an international conference where all the Arab states would take part those involved in the conflict. And together with the Soviet Union and the PLO possibly, would make the achievement of an agreement with the Arabs not that much easier, but that much more difficult. The fact that the various Arab states involved in the conflict will be negotiating in Israel simultaneously would make the achievement of an agreement much more difficult and in this understanding, Israel was on a collision course with the Carter administration. But it wasn't only Israel that was in a, a different mood than Jimmy Carter on the attitude towards comprehensive settlement. This was also true of Anwar Sadat of Egypt. Sadat, like the Israelis, was not interested in Soviet participation, didn't like the idea of an international conference, and did not want to negotiate with Israel in tandem with the other Arab states. Strangely enough, the U.S. position on comprehensive peace and the Soviet role in the formation of a peace between Israel and the Arabs was much closer to the radical position of the Syrians than it was to the more moderate positions of the Israelis and the Egyptians. The Syrians wanted an international conference and a joint Arab delegation that would negotiate with Israel. Not so much to make peace with Israel, but to block Egypt from making a separate agreement with the Israelis, which the Syrians believed, and correctly they believed, was Egypt's real objective. The PLO for its part also supported the idea of an international conference, not so much to negotiate a peace agreement with Israel, but mainly to both of their position as the sole representative of the Palestinians and to block the Jordanians from establishing an agreement with Israel at the Palestinian's expense. In Israel there were very important and unexpected political changes shortly after Cater enter the White House. In May 1977, the Israeli political right led by Menachem Begin and the Likud party won the elections in Israel for the very first time. Menachem Begin sought a deal with Egypt. As a believer of greater [FOREIGN], that is all of historical Palestine should be part of the Jewish political Patrimony. Begin wanted a safer deal with Egypt, which would not have to make him deal with the withdrawal from the West Bank and such issues that he did not want to approach. And here, there was a certain Israeli-Egyptian common interest. Both Israel and Egypt were impatient with the efforts to establish an international conference that neither of them really wanted to have as the forum for negotiation. Sadat was very keen for an initiative of his own that would enable Egypt to finally achieve the real objectives of the October war. And that is a process that would allow for Egypt, re, to regain all of the territory that it had lost to Israel in 1967. >> [COUGH] >> Sadat's sense of urgency became even more acute as the socioeconomic situation in Egypt deteriorated further in early 1977. There were food riots in Egypt as a result of the cancellation of subsidies which made it all the more important for Egypt to look for ways to exit from the very costly Arab Israeli conflict. In mid-September of 1977, Moshe Dayan, the foreign minister in Menachem Begin's cabinet and Hassan Tuhami, an Egyptian deputy prime minister, held secret talks under the auspices of the King of Morocco in Morocco on a possible peace agreement between them. Shortly thereafter in early October, the US foreign secretary Cyrus Vance with his Soviet counterpart Andrei Gromyko issued a Joint Statement on the convening of an international conference to achieve Arab Israeli peace. This Soviet US Joint Statement was dropped on Israel and the Egyptians quite by surprise, and very much in opposition to what both the Israelis and the Egyptians really wanted. They were, as we have seen, not really interested in an international conference that would make direct negotiations between Israel and Egypt very difficult to really attain. The US on the other hand was convinced that without Soviet participation, and without the Syrian and PLO involvement, there could be no comprehensive agreement. Egypt and Israel on the other hand, were quite convinced that if there was Soviet involvement, and involvement of Syria and the PLO, there would be no deal with anyone at all.
