Office of the Historian

55. Handwritten Note Prepared by the Ambassador to Israel (Lewis)1

Camp David, September 17, 1978, 10:55 a.m.

Dayan, Barak, Dinitz, Vance, Saunders, Lewis, Rosenne, Rubenstein

—Discussion of El Arish as place for Sinai negotiations—Dayan will accept Egyptian flag over their quarters, & UN flag over meeting place—as gesture to Sadat. Vance very grateful.

—Barak: agrees to text of 1–c. But it is their interpretation that words “these negotiations. . . shall be based” applies to negotiation for peace treaty, not status agreement. Wants this recorded formally for the record.

—CV—OK. And I will say for the record that we interpret it as applying to both.

—Barak & Dayan: Argue very strongly against inclusion of the sentence from the Vienna fallback formula.

Lengthy debate.

Vance goes off to see Pres.

Vance meets privately with Dayan.

More discussion of detail on language of 1–c and hammering out of agreement—slowly.

  1. Source: Department of State, U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv, Principal Officers Program Files, Lot 85F104, Personal for Ambassador Lewis—Sensitive Notes 1978. No classification marking. See footnote 87, Document 28.↩