Historical context and questions to explore
December 1973. The war is over, but the armies still face each other, locked together on both banks of the canal. On the 21st a peace conference opened in Geneva, and ten days later Israel went to the polls in the shadow of the war.
Henry KissingerU.S. National Security Adviser and Secretary of State.What they wanted: To push the Soviet Union out of the Middle East and make the United States the only broker, through step-by-step agreements.More on Henry Kissinger in “People and events” → sought to use the conference as a framework while achieving separate, step-by-step disengagement agreements in practice.
Why it mattered. The Geneva Conference was the first time Israel and Arab states sat around one peace table. It met only briefly, but it opened the way to the disengagement agreements. The practical questions Gazit raised — supervision and distances — are exactly what made such agreements possible.
A question to think about
How do you turn a general idea of “disengagement” into lines, troop numbers, supervision and timetables?
Why it was hard. Israel feared a conference where the Soviet Union and the Arab world would coordinate against it; there were open questions about Syria’s participation and the Israeli prisoners it held.
His part: Ahead of the Geneva Conference, in December 1973, Gazit coordinated the expert teams preparing a “menu” of options on every subject for the government, and in the discussion with Kissinger raised the practical questions: supervision, distances and the depth of the zones between the forces.
What exactly is a “think tank”? A group of experts whose job is to think, not to decide. In December 1973, weeks after the war, Israel was preparing for the Geneva Conference, the first time it would sit with its neighbours around a single peace table.
There, questions would come up such as where the line between the armies in Sinai should run, what security arrangements to demand, and what Israel was ready to give and what it would ask in return.
On 10 December JTA reported that several such teams had been set up to prepare: senior officials of the Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office and military intelligence officers, who also called in outside experts. Each team laid out before the government every option on its subject, with the data, like a menu.
The teams did not recommend; the choice was the government’s. Their work was coordinated by Gazit. The target was early January 1974, because before Israel’s elections on 31 December no real negotiation was expected at Geneva.
In December 1973, as the Geneva Conference was being convened, Henry KissingerU.S. National Security Adviser and Secretary of State.What they wanted: To push the Soviet Union out of the Middle East and make the United States the only broker, through step-by-step agreements.More on Henry Kissinger in “People and events” → briefed Golda MeirPrime Minister, 1969–1974. Gazit headed her office twice: when she was Foreign Minister in the late 1950s, and as Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office from 1973.What they wanted: Security for Israel, and peace through direct negotiation, without a return to the 1967 lines.More on Golda Meir in “People and events” → and her ministers at the Prime Minister’s Office on Anwar SadatPresident of Egypt, 1970–1981.What they wanted: To get Sinai back for Egypt, and move Egypt from Soviet to American patronage.More on Anwar Sadat in “People and events” →’s ideas for disengagement in Sinai. Gazit represented the Prime Minister’s Office in the discussion, alongside Yigal AllonDeputy Prime Minister, and Foreign Minister in Rabin’s government.What they wanted: Defensible borders, and a territorial compromise with Jordan (the “Allon Plan”).More on Yigal Allon in “People and events” →, Abba EbanForeign Minister, 1966–1974.What they wanted: To present Israel to the world as a country seeking peace, and to win support for it.More on Abba Eban in “People and events” →, Moshe DayanDefence Minister, 1967–1974, and Foreign Minister, 1977–1979.What they wanted: Defensible borders; and after 1977, as foreign minister, peace with Egypt.More on Moshe Dayan in “People and events” →, Simcha DinitzIsrael’s ambassador in Washington from 1973.What they wanted: American arms and support, during the war and after it.More on Simcha Dinitz in “People and events” →, 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. Questions that sound technical, yet the agreement itself was built from them: zones where forces and weapons were limited, with UN supervision between them.
His team’s binder at the State Archives (A-4183/10) holds the paper on the conference’s rules of procedure. The slip attached to it reads: “The document was prepared by an interministerial committee (headed by M. Gazit) in January 1974” (site translation).
Of the senior team Gazit wrote to the Prime Minister, Yitzhak RabinPrime Minister, 1974–1977; earlier Deputy Chief of Staff and ambassador in Washington.What they wanted: To move step by step, through interim agreements, in return for American guarantees and arms.More on Yitzhak Rabin in “People and events” →, in September 1974, in a letter kept at the State Archives (HZ-5977/7): “A senior team has existed since December 1973 (the eve of the convening of the Geneva Conference) under my chairmanship”, with the Attorney-General, generals, the Director-General of the Treasury and the Director-General of the Foreign Ministry on it.
The team prepared several staff papers, and Gazit proposed reconvening it before the next round with Egypt. And in a postscript: “the very existence of the team was kept secret at the time with great success” (site translations).Diplomatic recordMeir and Kissinger on disengagement, December 1973Diplomatic recordJTA — “Think Tanks” Set Up to Prepare Israel for Geneva Peace Talks, 10 December 1973Diplomatic recordState Archives — file A-4183/10: Director-General Mordechai Gazit, political contacts with Egypt, the Gazit team (Hebrew)Diplomatic recordState Archives — file HZ-5977/7: Mordechai Gazit, the working team, November 1973 (Hebrew)
Sources and reading notes (4)
The lead source
State Archives — file HZ-5977/7: Mordechai Gazit, the working team, November 1973 (Hebrew) ↗A Foreign Ministry file, 166 scanned pages, read in full for this site. Staff papers of the senior team Gazit headed from December 1973: his signed letters to the Prime Minister of 15 February and 22 September 1974, and a record of his talk with the IDF’s planners on 27 May 1971. The team’s unsigned papers are not attributed to him.
- Diplomatic Records[ISA418310] State Archives — file A-4183/10: Director-General Mordechai Gazit, political contacts with Egypt, the Gazit team (Hebrew) ↗
A file of the Prime Minister’s Office, 169 scanned pages, 1973–1975, read in full for this site. It is the working binder of the team Gazit headed in the spring of 1975: drafts, memoranda and legal opinions prepared for a possible comprehensive settlement and a reconvened Geneva Conference, with cover slips naming each paper’s author. Among them is the six-page “Proposal for a comprehensive settlement” of 25 May 1975, marked as drafted by M. Gazit and not yet discussed in the team. The file holds no list of the team’s members and no minutes.
- Diplomatic Records[ISA59777] State Archives — file HZ-5977/7: Mordechai Gazit, the working team, November 1973 (Hebrew) ↗
A Foreign Ministry file, 166 scanned pages, read in full for this site. Staff papers of the senior team Gazit headed from December 1973: his signed letters to the Prime Minister of 15 February and 22 September 1974, and a record of his talk with the IDF’s planners on 27 May 1971. The team’s unsigned papers are not attributed to him.
- Diplomatic Records[FR73] Meir and Kissinger on disengagement, December 1973 ↗
FRUS 1969–1976, Volume XXV, Document 401. Memorandum of conversation at the Prime Minister’s Office.
- Diplomatic Records[JTA73G] JTA — “Think Tanks” Set Up to Prepare Israel for Geneva Peace Talks, 10 December 1973 ↗
A contemporary report. The teams present the options; the government works out the positions; “Their work is being coordinated by Mordechai Gazit, director general of the Prime Minister’s Office” (last paragraph).