Alongside Rabin at the White House

His part: Under Rabin too, Gazit remained Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office and his political adviser, and sat beside him in the meetings with President Ford in 1974 and 1975.

When Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister, Gazit continued as Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office. On 10 September 1974 he sat beside Rabin at the meeting with President Ford at the White House. The discussion concerned disengagement agreements and Israel’s security needs.

On 11 June 1975 the conversation in the Oval Office lasted two hours. Beside Rabin sat Ambassador Simcha Dinitz, Gazit and Mordechai Shalev of the embassy; across from them were President Ford, Kissinger, Joseph Sisco and Brent Scowcroft. Ford opened by stating plainly his disappointment over the stalemate in March, and Rabin set out Israel’s case for an interim agreement with Egypt.

When Kissinger asked how many settlements on the Golan Heights would be affected by a withdrawal of even three kilometres, the memorandum records Gazit’s answer: “At least half. About six or seven.” That was his role in the room: supplying the precise figure at the moment a question turned from principle to practice.

Four days later, in New York, as Kissinger laid out the timetable, Gazit asked the practical question: “On the military supply issue, did you say the figures could be decided within three weeks?”

The White House’s ceremonial papers preserved his presence, too. For the state dinner in Rabin’s honour in September 1974, each guest had a place card and a pronunciation guide; his read gah-ZEET. The Naval Photographic Center’s film catalogue lists Gazit among those present on reels from 12 June 1975, which recorded Rabin’s arrival at the White House and the toasts.

The White House photo logs also list him by name. On 12 September 1974 he is among those photographed in the Cabinet Room, and in colour photographs of the meeting by the fireplace in the Oval Office. On 12 June 1975 he was there again, at the Oval Office meeting and at the farewell on the walkway to the delegation’s cars.

The messages between the Prime Minister and the President also passed through him, as a Foreign Ministry file at the State Archives shows (HZ-5977/2). On 10 August 1974 the text of the message Ambassador Keating had delivered to Rabin from the new President, Gerald Ford, went to Washington over his signature, and on 16 August Rabin’s reply went out over his signature.

A day earlier he sent the ambassador in Washington Rabin’s personal letter to Nixon, who had resigned that month, and suggested that it be delivered to him personally through the Consul-General in Los Angeles. In November, ahead of the Vladivostok summit, he guided a colleague in drafting a further message to Ford: “the message should not be too long” (site translation).

In June 1974, two weeks after Rabin took office, President Nixon came to Israel. Four days before the visit Gazit prepared for Rabin seventeen “Points for the talk with President Nixon”, kept at the State Archives (HZ-5973/11). “It is not enough that only one side wants peace, and it takes two to make peace”, he wrote there.

And on direction: “Israel believes that the next stage of the effort must be towards Egypt, but it should be done with a meticulous examination of all the components” (site translations).10 sources+

All stories from his public service