mideastfacts.com
This proposal was accepted by President Sadat of Egypt in February 1971. Israel recognized it as a genuine peace offer, but rejected it; the Labor party was committed to broader territorial gains from the 1967 war. Note that the Jarring-Sadat proposal offered nothing to the Palestinians. The basic problem is not Palestinian rights per se, but rather the fact that recognizing them would bar Israeli control over the occupied territories.
At the insistence of National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, the US backed Israel's rejection of the Sadat offer, adopting Kissinger's policy of "stalemate." As usual, the US decision to back Israel's rejection of the Jarring-Sadat peace proposal removed the events from history and public discussion, at least in the United States. In Israel, in contrast, even conservative Middle East specialists recognize that Israel may have "missed a historic opportunity" in 1971 (Itamar Rabinovitch, asking whether Israel also missed such an opportunity when a Syrian proposal was rejected in 1949).
The Jarring-Sadat proposal was virtually identical to official US policy, formulated in the State Department plan of December 1969 (the Rogers Plan). It also conformed to the general interpretation of UN 242 outside of Israel. The Rogers plan suggests that this was also the US interpretation at the time, a conclusion supported by other evidence. In an important article in a British Middle East journal, Donald Neff, a well-known US journalist and historian specializing on Middle East affairs, reviews a State Department study based on records of the 1967 negotiations.30 This study, leaked to Neff, has been kept secret "so as not to embarrass Israel," Neff concludes. The study quotes the chief American negotiator, Arthur Goldberg, who was strongly pro-Israel. Goldberg informed King Hussein of Jordan that the US "could not guarantee that everything would be returned to Jordan; some territorial adjustments would be required," but there must be "a mutuality in adjustments." Secretary of State Dean Rusk confirmed to Hussein that the US "would use its influence to obtain compensation to Jordan for any territory it was required to give up," citing examples. Goldberg informed officials of other Arab states "that the United States did not conceive of any substantial redrawing of the map." Israel's withdrawal would be "total except for minor adjustments," Goldberg assured the Arabs, with compensation to Jordan for any such adjustments. His assurances led them to agree to UN 242. In a private communication to Neff, Dean Rusk recently affirmed that "We never contemplated any significant grant of territory to Israel as a result of the June 1967 war." The US interpretation of UN 242 contemplated "minor adjustments in the western frontier of the West Bank," "demilitarization measures in the Sinai and Golan Heights," and "a fresh look" at the status of Jerusalem. "Resolution 242 never contemplated the movement of any significant territories to Israel," Rusk concluded.
Advocates of Israeli policies in the United States commonly claim that this interpretation of UN 242 is contrary to the stand taken by Arthur Goldberg and the US government generally. Thus the news columns of the New York Times inform us that the Israeli version of UN 242, which permits Israel to incorporate unspecified parts of the conquered territories, is "supported by Arthur J. Goldberg," citing later comments of his in which he did indeed support the Israeli version.
One of the more extreme apologists, Yale Law professor and former government official Eugene Rostow, claims that he "helped produce" UN 242, and has repeatedly argued that it authorizes continued Israeli control over the territories. In response to his claims, David Korn, former State Department office director for Israel and Arab-Israeli affairs, wrote in November 1991 that helped produce' Resolution 242, but in fact he had little if anything to do with it." He was an "onlooker," like "many others who have claimed a hand in it." "It was U.S. policy at the time and for several years afterward," Korn continues, "that [any border] changes would be no more than minor." Korn confirms that "Both Mr. Goldberg and Secretary of State Dean Rusk told King Hussein that the United States would use its influence to obtain territorial compensation from Israel for any West Bank lands ceded by Jordan to Israel," and that Jordan's acquiescence was based on these promises. Rostow's pathetic and evasive response contests none of these statements. |
