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.S.ambassador to Israel, said it was impossible to decide in the abstract whether Begin’s firmness was that of “an intransigent hardliner” or just “a tough bargainer,”128but the White House preferred to assume the latter.Indeed it was only on that assumption that he was invited to Camp David.In fact Begin proved both “an intransigent hardliner” and “atough bargainer.” Harold Saunders, the U.S.assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, admitted later that they underestimated “the difficulty of moving Begin.We were persuaded that we could work with him, and that we would not necessarily have to expect to meet an ideological stone wall.” Begin’s legalism, his obsession with terminology, his lengthy lectures on biblical history and his emotional hyperbole all made it very unpleasant at times to do business with him.The president was unusually patient but at considerable cost in time and energy.“You cannot imagine howdifficult, how agonizing, it was to deal with Begin,” Saunders said later.“Carter dreaded having to deal with him.” This telling comment, in Saunders’ view, helps explain why the president failed to pin Begin down on the settlements freeze.129If Begin had been unremittingly obnoxious, that would havebeen counterproductive.But on other occasions he could be339reynolds_02.qxd 8/31/07 10:29 AM Page 340sum m i t sfriendly and studiously courteous: some detected here traditional Polish manners, others the influence of his idol, Jabotinsky.Cyrus Vance, the American who got on best with Begin, saw him as “acombination of Old Testament prophet and courtly European.an odd mixture of iron will and emotionalism.harsh and acerbic at one moment and warm and gracious the next.” Begin’s intransigence was in part a matter of calculation: Brzezinski was struck that the Israeli leader, despite all the rhetoric about his right hand falling off, eventually signed an agreement on the Sinai settlements.130 But Begin’s conduct was also rooted deep in his personality and his past, in the insecurity, even paranoia, engendered by the war and the Holocaust.He could turn the emotion on or off, but the pressure was always there, pent up, just beneath the surface.And so during the second half of Camp David, Begin and the Is-raelis wore down the Americans who in turn won over Sadat.Time was also on Israel’s side.The president’s strategy of removing his guests from Washington and isolating them at Camp David, which initially paid dividends, eventually boomeranged because he could not afford to stay out of the capital for a third week.At the start of the summit Begin and Sadat were held hostage at Camp David; by the end it was Carter.And so the president allowed his sights to slip: some kind ofagreement was better than none and it had to be achieved soon.With the obdurate Begin’s bottom line unclear and the amenable Sadat’s largely disclosed, the Egyptian leader could be pushed harder than the Israeli—an example of how it is often easier politically to squeeze your “friend” than your adversary.And with Begin making a far bigger fuss than expected about the Sinai settlements, Carter increasingly softened the larger framework for regional peace to buy agreement on Sinai.So, in a fraught and convoluted way, Begin ended up with something close to what he reallywanted: peace with Egypt and minimal concessions to the larger Arab agenda.Even so he was genuinely worried about how his surrender ofthe Sinai settlements would be regarded by Likud supporters.His foot-dragging about the treaty after he got back home was partly a 340reynolds_02.qxd 8/31/07 10:29 AM Page 341cam p dav i d 197 8sign of how different the atmosphere is when one descends from the summit—domestic politics return with a vengeance—but itprobably also reflected diplomatic calculation.As William Quandt has noted, by 1979 Carter was becoming preoccupied by his bid for reelection: the longer Begin dragged out negotiations on the treaty with Egypt, the less chance there was that Carter would do much on the more intractable issues of the West Bank, Gaza and the Palestinians [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]