270. Transcript of Telephone Conversation Between Secretary of State Kissinger and the Israeli Ambassador (Dinitz)1
D: I had the Prime Minister on the line and she asked me to suggest to you the following course of action. She thinks that maybe the President can suggest to Brezhnev that we will be prepared to exchange the forces and all the forces of Israel that are east of the Canal will be taken back to the west of the Canal and the Egyptian forces which to a large extent are encircled now on the east of the Canal, will all be moving to the west of the Canal; that there would be two demilitarized strips along the Canal on both sides of the Canal throughout the area in which there would be international observers or international supervisors—
K: They’ll never agree to that, I’ll tell you that right away.
D: Well, the Prime Minister—if I may just finish—said that she is proposing it so that the President could say that he will get Israel to do this but she has not even brought it to the Cabinet but she will put her weight behind such a proposal.
K: Okay. Well, let me discuss that with my colleagues.2
D: Fine. And I’ll wait for it.
K: But I am assuming you are not prepared to offer to go back to where you started from.
D: You mean before the ceasefire started? I mean, before the war started?
K: No, no, no.
D: Oh, before the ceasefire started? No, that she said is even impossible to determine. And you see, if I may—if I’m allowed, she said what [pushes Brezhnev]3 is the disconnection of the 3rd Army and therefore any proposal that will open up— That’s why he wants us to return back to the line because that will open up the hole to the 3rd Army.
K: That’s right.
D: That is why she says this proposal will both offer the hole to the 3rd Army; will save all this 3rd Army; and also have an ingredient for normalization.
[Page 744]K: You want them also to withdraw the forces that are in the northern part.
D: All over the Canal of course. We are holding a much bigger territory in Egypt than they do.
K: Well, I don’t think that will do us much good but we will try it.
D: Okay.
K: Good. Thank you.
D: Sure. Bye, bye.
- Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, Kissinger Telephone Conversations, Transcripts (Telcons), Chronological File, Box 23. No classification marking.↩
- Kissinger wrote in his memoirs that the Israeli proposal was in effect a variant of the 1971 Israeli disengagement proposal, and that although he told Dinitz he would discuss it with his colleagues, he knew it would not work. (Years of Upheaval, p. 588)↩
- Brackets in the original.↩