Within history.

The Southern Periphery: Contacts with Sudan

In the mid-1950s Israel looked for ways to break the isolation imposed by its neighbours. One direction was Sudan, then approaching independence, whose leaders feared Egypt’s ambitions to dominate it. According to a study by the historians Elie Podeh and Andrew Felsenthal, Gazit, then first secretary at the Israeli embassy in London, was involved in the first phase of the secret contacts with members of Sudan’s Umma party. According to the study, on 17 June 1954 he and Michael Arnon met Sudanese representatives in London.

The contacts were meant to lay the groundwork for the southern tier of the “Periphery Alliance”, with Ethiopia and Sudan, against Nasser’s Egypt. According to the study, the British Foreign Office was not enthusiastic about an Israeli–Sudanese connection. The tie lasted until Sudan’s 1958 military coup, which ended it. It is an early appearance of something that would accompany Gazit throughout his career: quiet work in unofficial channels.[PF1]

Coordination on a Sensitive Issue

In spring 1961, Gazit was involved in discussions with the U.S. Department of State ahead of the first visit by American scientists to Dimona. The National Security Archive’s document collection describes his discussions about the timing of the visit and the arrangements for it.

State Department memoranda of conversation, held in the Wilson Center Digital Archive, trace the talks step by step. On 17 April 1961 Assistant Secretary Jones proposed to him that the visit be kept “quiet” rather than “secret”; on 1 May Deputy Assistant Secretary Armin Meyer discussed the visit with him; and on 16 May Philip Farley, the Secretary of State’s Special Assistant for Atomic Energy, reported a conversation with him about the visit and its purposes.

This was another aspect of his work as Minister at the embassy: attending to the practical details of a sensitive issue within the relationship between the Ben-Gurion and Kennedy administrations.[D12][WC1]

Security assurances and the Hawk talks

An American record places Gazit alongside Ambassador Avraham Harman in a February 1961 meeting where Israel’s request for Hawk missiles was discussed. In April 1962, he personally suggested a presidential letter assuring action against an Arab attack, coupled with Israeli restraint. Komer recorded this as Gazit’s own idea, not an authorised government proposal.

Hayim Iserovich’s historical article revisits Kennedy’s 1962 decision and cites Gazit’s telegram analysing its public disclosure. Gazit considered electoral timing while stressing professional advice and American national interests. His assessment looks beyond a single political explanation. These records illuminate his work in security diplomacy; they do not establish that he personally secured the sale.[D13][D14][D15][I2]

Everyday diplomacy in Washington: three documents →

Understanding the relationship with Iran

In a survey quoted by Eitay Mack, Gazit described Israel’s existing economic, military and intelligence ties with Iran as head of the Foreign Ministry’s Middle East Department. Mack places those ties within Israel’s support for the Shah’s dictatorship and awareness of repression. The survey records Gazit’s analytical work.

Historian Uri Bialer also cites this survey: Gazit to the Foreign Ministry, 23 February 1966, Israel State Archives 3998/6.

A confidential channel to Moscow

Yair Even’s study documents Gazit’s participation in secret talks with Soviet representatives, including Yevgeny Primakov, in Vienna in 1971 and 1973, and meetings with Victor Louis in Jerusalem. In March 1973, his instructions excluded opening negotiations over a settlement. Contacts resumed in April 1975. Even records Gazit’s involvement while criticizing Israeli assessments of Soviet intentions and warnings.

A record dated 15 June 1973, a week before the Nixon–Brezhnev summit, documents a meeting between Gazit, then Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Soviet journalist Victor Louis. According to the archive’s description, they discussed the emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union and the low state of Israeli–Soviet relations.[S1][WC1]

Gazit’s own records in the Israel State Archives →

Thinking about Jerusalem, with Teddy Kollek

Amnon Ramon’s study describes a group of senior government officials established by Teddy Kollek and chaired by Gazit. It discussed Meron Benvenisti’s July 1968 proposal for municipal boroughs in Jerusalem and its surrounding area, including local self-government. This records Gazit’s involvement in thinking about the city’s future.[J1]

Kollek was also a personal friend, as the family remembers; the Gazits lived for years in Jerusalem’s Wolfson neighbourhood. Family and home → · Jerusalem, 1948 →

Between Jerusalem and Washington: The War’s Final Days

In the last days of the Yom Kippur War and the week after, Gazit, as Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office, stood at the Israeli end of the cable channel between Golda Meir’s office and the embassy in Washington. The cables of Ambassador Simcha Dinitz and Minister Mordechai Shalev were addressed to him, and through him the office sent out positions, instructions and reports. The historian Hagai Tsoref, who studied the cables opened to the public in 2022, traces this role day by day.

On 19 October, as it became clear that a ceasefire was near and Kissinger was about to fly to Moscow, Gazit set out Israel’s position in a cable to Dinitz: “It is vital in our view that this terrible war should not end merely in a dubious ceasefire. We are striving to enter negotiations and to achieve peace treaties” (in the site’s translation). According to Tsoref, this was the government’s position, and it held something new: a readiness to speak of full peace, not only of step-by-step arrangements. The next day he also reported to Dinitz on the developing oil crisis.

Making sure the message was understood

During the ceasefire talks, Gazit clarified that an American message had arrived garbled. Here is the work of clarification, in the room.[D1]

The Jarring File: His Testimony in Retrospect

At the end of 1970, Golda Meir asked Foreign Minister Abba Eban that Gazit — then the Foreign Ministry’s deputy director-general for North American affairs — coordinate planning teams to prepare Israel for negotiations. That is how he described it in a 1987 interview with the Golda Meir Institute. According to him, the teams included Meir Shamgar on the treaty team, Aharon Yariv heading borders and security, Yaakov Herzog heading Jerusalem, and Moshe Sanbar heading refugee compensation. In those years, he said, “I was then in charge of the Jarring file” (in the site’s translation).

Gazit was sharply critical of the envoy’s method. In his view, the Swedish ambassador Gunnar Jarring was bound to fail because he worked at too low a level: he met neither Egypt’s President nor Israel’s Prime Minister and settled for exchanges of documents, while continuing to serve as his country’s ambassador in Moscow. Gazit proposed bringing Jarring to Jerusalem to talk with Golda Meir, which happened in January 1971. He also proposed a more flexible draft of Israel’s reply; it was rejected by Meir, by Eban and by the Foreign Ministry’s Director-General, Gideon Rafael. He said he warned Eban that the word “agreed”, in “secure, recognised and agreed boundaries”, would be read in Cairo as a territorial claim and rejected.

Facing the American Embassy

In the years between the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War, Gazit was one of the American embassy’s points of contact in the Israeli government. Two telegrams published in the FRUS series show this quiet work: receiving positions, clarifying them, and protecting Israel’s interest in the details of procedure.

On 26 August 1970, a few weeks after the ceasefire that ended the War of Attrition, the embassy’s deputy chief of mission presented Washington’s position to him: Egypt was not entitled to move missile batteries within the standstill zone. In the same conversation he conveyed Egypt’s allegations of Israeli violations, suggesting they be passed to the military authorities for consideration.

On 23 April 1971, days after Golda Meir handed the Americans Israel’s proposal for a Suez Canal arrangement, a written American reply arrived. Gazit gave the U.S. official a short, precise statement: Israel would discuss the matter with the Ambassador the following week, and asked that no document be delivered to Egypt. It is an example of a hand setting the pace — not allowing an unagreed text to go out into the world.[FR70][FR71B]

A near-verbatim record

In October 1971 the United States sought to move Israel and Egypt toward negotiations on an interim Suez Canal agreement, without asking either side to change its positions in advance. The U.S. chargé d’affaires presented the idea to Foreign Minister Abba Eban, and Gazit accompanied him to the meeting.

According to the American telegram, Gazit took down the presentation practically verbatim. Before the meeting he had gone over Yitzhak Rabin’s report from Washington on his talk with Joseph Sisco with the American diplomat, and at the end he added that Murad Ghaleb, mentioned as a possible Egyptian representative, was already known to be coming to New York for the UN General Assembly.[FR71]

Words That Shape an Agreement

After the war, Gazit took part in talks in Washington alongside Golda Meir. The discussion concerned supplies for Egyptian forces, military lines and the possibility of moving towards an agreement. He suggested emphasizing direct talks between the generals, considered alternative wording for redeployment and raised the issue of the wounded.

The record shows professional work that is not always visible in an official photograph: listening to an argument, proposing a different term and bringing an important issue back to the agenda.

The same day, Gazit went into the Oval Office with Golda Meir, Ambassador Simcha Dinitz and General Aharon Yariv for a meeting with President Richard Nixon and Kissinger. Meir thanked the President for the airlift and spoke of the prisoners and of the war’s toll. Nixon described the decisions he had taken during the war and urged her to make the most of the direct talks that had opened between the generals. At the end, the President walked the Prime Minister to the Rose Garden steps for photographs.[D2][FR73N]

The practical questions

In December 1973, as the Geneva Conference was being convened, Henry Kissinger briefed Golda Meir and her ministers at the Prime Minister’s Office on Sadat’s ideas for disengagement in Sinai. Gazit, of the Prime Minister’s Office, was among the Israeli participants, alongside Allon, Eban, Dayan, Dinitz, Elazar and Yariv.

The memorandum records two questions he raised: whether there would be an inspection arrangement, and what the distances and depth of the belts separating the forces would be. These practical questions stood at the heart of the discussion on disengagement.[FR73]

Between the Hot Soup and the Next Draft

One of the more human scenes in the records begins at a working lunch. Yigal Allon suggested getting down to business because the soup was very hot; around the table, the participants discussed disengagement. Later, he remarked that Gazit was still revising the draft, and referred further changes in wording to him.

Alongside the political disagreements, the memorandum also preserves jokes and laughter. Matters of state moved forward through a human encounter, with a constant exchange between political principles and the words that would appear in the document.

A few days before the disengagement agreement was signed on 18 January 1974, Kissinger and the Israeli team went over the final drafts in the Prime Minister’s office. Handed a long list of points for his meeting with Sadat, Kissinger called it “commentary and exegesis” and asked for a simple checklist. He sent Gazit and Harold Saunders of the National Security Council into the next room to draw up an agreed one. When they returned, Kissinger went through the new list item by item, and Gazit added context to a point the Chief of Staff had raised the night before.[D3][FR74B]

Toward the decision on the Syrian agreement

On 28 May 1974 Kissinger returned from Damascus and reported at the Prime Minister’s Office on the final stage of the disengagement negotiations with Syria. Gazit, listed in the memorandum as Director of the Prime Minister’s Office, took part alongside Golda Meir, Prime Minister-designate Yitzhak Rabin, Yigal Allon, Abba Eban, Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres.

The discussion covered the separation line, the Mount Hermon area, the UN observer force and the wording of the American assurance on attacks across the line. It ended with the drafts being taken to the Cabinet for a decision.[FR74]

Continuity in Service, Alongside Rabin

When Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister, Gazit continued as Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office. His role is explicitly recorded in the list of participants at the Rabin–Ford meeting on 10 September 1974. The discussion concerned disengagement agreements and Israel’s security needs.

In June 1975, he again took part in talks with Ford and Kissinger. This time, the participants considered options for an interim agreement and the limits of diplomatic flexibility. His presence in both records documents the continuity of his work at the senior professional level.

▣White House photographers’ contact sheets, 1974–1975

“Too Sensible”: In Kissinger’s Shuttle

In March 1975, Henry Kissinger shuttled between Jerusalem and Aswan in pursuit of a second interim agreement between Israel and Egypt. Gazit sat on the Israeli negotiating team alongside Rabin, Yigal Allon, Shimon Peres, Ambassador Simcha Dinitz, Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur and Foreign Ministry Director-General Avraham Kidron. The memoranda of those meetings, held at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, show him as the keeper of the texts and the facts.

On the morning of 19 March, at the Prime Minister’s Residence, Rabin opened with a question: “Do we have all the formulations, Gazit?” — “Yes, we have it,” he replied. When Dinitz mentioned President Nixon’s letter, Gazit supplied the date at once: July 1971. At the same meeting Kissinger recounted telling Egypt’s Foreign Minister, Ismail Fahmy, that Gazit could draft the clause; Fahmy, he said, replied that Gazit was “too sensible” and that it had to be the legal adviser, Meir Rosenne. The room laughed. Sisco told Gazit it was a real compliment, and Allon added that when you get a compliment from Fahmy, you had better think again.

Turning Agreement into Action

On 4 September 1975, Gazit signed the interim agreement between Israel and Egypt in Geneva, alongside Major General Herzl Shafir. The list of signatories is preserved in the Security Council’s records, and the UN Secretary-General’s report of that day confirms the signing date.

A diplomatic agreement also needs maps, schedules and instructions for implementation. According to the UN Secretary-General’s report, the military working group concluded its discussions on 22 September, when Gazit and Herzl Shafir initialled the implementation protocol and maps on Israel’s behalf. Taha el-Magdoub signed for Egypt.

This directly documents his responsibility during the implementation stage of the interim agreement. The agreement, its implementation protocol and the peace treaty signed in 1979 are distinct documents.[D11][D6]

▶Watch: the signing ceremony in Geneva, 1975

Representing, Protesting — and Continuing the Conversation

During the Entebbe hostage crisis in July 1976, Gazit represented Israel in contacts with the French government. Contemporary JTA reporting records that he conveyed Israel’s request for negotiations to secure the hostages’ release, including discussion of releasing prisoners. This documents his part in the diplomatic channel operating during the crisis.

His time in France included the crisis following Abu Daoud’s release in 1977. Gazit was recalled to Israel for consultations, and after returning to Paris he met Foreign Minister Louis de Guiringaud. JTA reported that they agreed to review the extradition treaty between the two countries.

▶Watch: Gazit and the press in the Abu Daoud affair, 1977

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