Summary
President of the United States (1969-1974) who, in Christison’s account, came to office intending an impartial, evenhanded policy but knew little about the Palestinians, came over to Kissinger’s Soviet-centered strategy, and mentioned the Palestinians more than twice nowhere in his 1,100-page memoir, and then as guerrillas or extremists (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 1302-1376).
Details
- As a private citizen during the 1967 war he wrote to Secretary of State Dean Rusk that the Soviet Union had blocked all previous attempts at a peaceful solution, and came to office believing the Arab world had aligned with Moscow because the United States had not been impartial (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 1322-1342).
- He initially assigned Middle East policy to the State Department under Rogers, in part because he thought Kissinger’s Jewishness might stand in the way of better Arab relations (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 1322-1342).
- He read the September 1970 Jordan crisis purely as a confrontation with Moscow and recalled fearing the United States would be drawn in because it “could not stand idly by and watch Israel being driven into the sea”, although Israel was not in danger during that crisis (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 1360-1376).
- Having received only about 15 percent of the Jewish vote in 1968, he had no sense of indebtedness to the pro-Israel lobby, whose pressures he criticized, while admiring the Israelis’ patriotism and “guts” and “moxie” (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 1360-1376).
- In 1971 he promised Israel not to press it to withdraw to the pre-1967 borders, not to force it to participate in negotiations for a comprehensive peace settlement, and not to force it to accept the Arab version of a refugee settlement (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 1394-1406).
Related pages
Perceptions of Palestine, Henry Kissinger, Gerald Ford, United States