Summary
Reagan’s first secretary of state, whose Cold War-oriented frame, formed largely under Kissinger’s guidance, in Perceptions of Palestine’s account naturally favoured Israel: Haig regarded Carter’s focus on the Palestinian problem, autonomy negotiations and settlements as a distraction, sought a U.S.-Israeli-Arab “strategic consensus” against Soviet “interventionism and exploitation” before any peace negotiations, authorized the secret Mroz-Arafat contact channel — and, although he probably gave no green light in so many words, held a point of view, in Veliotes’s words quoted here, that “we’d all be better off if we didn’t have to worry about the Palestinian problem”, which gave Sharon freedom to act in Lebanon (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 2024-2033, 2080-2091).
Details
- Haig told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March 1981: “Only when local states feel confident of United States reliability and secure against Soviet threats” would they “be willing to take the necessary risks for peace” (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 2026-2027).
- He felt the State Department bureaucracy was “overwhelmingly Arabist in its approach to the Middle East and in its sympathies” and set out to ignore its policy advice (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 2044-2045).
- Haig appointed Richard Fairbanks, a middle-level official with no Middle East expertise, as his own representative to the autonomy talks in February 1982, downgrading U.S. representation (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 2078-2079).
Related pages
Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Arik Sharon, Neoconservatism