From diplomatic service to historical research.

1980. After 31 years of service, just as the archives of the state’s first years are beginning to open, Gazit changes rooms: from the rooms where decisions were made to the library.

He wrote books and articles in English and Hebrew on the peace process, Kennedy’s policy, mediation in the conflict, and historical debates over 1948 and 1971.

Why it mattered. Few people both made history and wrote it from the documents. His books and articles are the testimony of an insider who takes care to check himself, and the questions he asked, about 1948 and the years before 1973, still occupy historians.

After the Yom Kippur War, while the grief was still fresh, a hard question was asked: had Golda Meir’s government missed a chance for peace with Egypt in 1969‎–‎1973, one that might have prevented the war? A man who had been in the rooms decided to answer it from the documents.

In those years many initiatives arose: the Rogers plans, named after the American Secretary of State, the UN’s Jarring mission, the idea of a Suez Canal arrangement, and the mission of Hafez Ismail, Sadat’s adviser. None came to fruition.

Why it mattered. This is one of the most painful questions in Israel’s history: could the Yom Kippur War and its more than 2,600 dead have been prevented? Gazit, who had been in the rooms, wrote a whole book to answer it from the documents. His conclusion — that no opportunity was missed — is disputed to this day, and is part of the great debate over Golda Meir and the war.

The 1980s. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live in the West Bank under Israeli rule, many of them Jordanian citizens, and the question of their status is at the centre of the debate. This correspondence ran between two men on opposite sides of that question.

Aziz Shehadeh was a Palestinian lawyer from Ramallah. Gazit, then a researcher at the Truman Institute, corresponded with him in 1982 on a legal question arising in his research.

Why it mattered. A correspondence between a former Israeli diplomat and a Palestinian lawyer from Ramallah, in the 1980s, before the intifada and before Oslo, is a rare moment. It shows that even people on opposite sides of the conflict could conduct a serious argument, letter by letter.

American Jewry is the largest Jewish community in the world outside Israel. In the 1980s Israelis came to understand that it could not be known only as a source of support; they needed to know the life itself: the young leaders, the writers and the schools.

Public institutions built education and leadership programmes to connect the communities. After his years of service, Gazit worked on such programmes with the Institute on American Jewish–Israeli Relations.

Why it mattered. American Jewry is one of Israel’s pillars, politically and economically, but the bond between the two communities cannot be taken for granted. After his years of service, including five in Washington where he came to know American Jewry closely, Gazit worked on building real acquaintance between Israelis and the communities across the ocean.