Witness to War and Peace

Ahmed Aboul Gheit

Description

The son of a fighter pilot, raised in an air force barracks, Ahmed Aboul Gheit was privy to the confidential meetings, undisclosed memoranda, and battle secrets of Egyptian diplomacy for many decades. After a stint at military college, he began his career at the Egyptian embassy in Cyprus before later going on to become permanent representative to the United Nations and eventually, Egypt’s minister of foreign affairs under Hosni Mubarak. In this fascinating memoir, Aboul Gheit looks back on the 1973 October War and the diplomatic efforts that followed it, revealing the secrets of his long career for the first time.
In vivid detail he describes the deliberations of Egypt’s political leadership in the run-up to the war, including the process of articulating Egypt’s war aims, the secret communications between President Sadat and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the role of the Soviet Union during the war, and the unfolding of events on the battlefront in Sinai. He then gives a detailed and deeply personal account of the arduous process of peacemaking that followed, covering the 1973 Geneva Conference, the 1977 Mena House Conference, Sadat’s visit to Israel, the 1978 Camp David Accords, and the subsequent 1979 Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty.
From Sadat’s impassioned address to his cabinet on the eve of the war to delegations ripping out the wiring at their respective hotels, from Jimmy Carter cycling through the bungalows at Camp David to Yitzhak Shamir’s blunt admissions to his Arab counterparts in the 1991 Madrid conference, Aboul Gheit offers an information-packed, first-person account of a turbulent time in Middle Eastern history.

Sujets

• Political
• Lettres et linguistique
• Biography
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: The American University in Cairo Press
• Date de parution: 11 décembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781617978944
• Langue: English

Extrait

WITNESS TO WAR AND PEACE
WITNESS TO WAR AND PEACE
Egypt, the October War, and Beyond




AHMED ABOUL GHEIT







The American University in Cairo Press Cairo New York
This electronic edition published in 2018 by The American University in Cairo Press 113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt 420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018 www.aucpress.com

Original title: A Witness to War and Peace Copyright © 2013 Nahdet Misr Publishing HouseAll rights reserved.

Published in English by AUCP with permission from Nahdet Misr Publishing House 21 Ahemd Orabi St., El-Mohandseen, Cairo, Egypt. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978 977 416 885 7 eISBN: 978 161 797 894 4

Version 1
CONTENTS
Foreword to the English Edition
Foreword to the Arabic Edition
Introduction

Part 1: Witness to War
1. Silent War, Secret War: 1968–73
2. Twenty-Four Decisive Hours in My Life with Hafiz Ismail
3. Egypt and the October Victory
4. American Assessments of the Situation
5. The Battle Approaches
6. The October War: Military and Diplomatic Efforts, Coordinated
7. Accepting the Ceasefire
8. The War’s Final Week
9. The Post-Resolution 338 Crisis
10. Attempts to Extricate the Third Army
11. Kissinger and Reaping the Rewards
12. Back to the Decision to Go to War
13. The War’s Objectives and Outcomes

Part 2: Witness to Peace
14. Sadat’s Visit to Jerusalem
15. The Mena House Conference
16. The Ismailiya Summit
17. The Political Committee and the Visit to Jerusalem
18. Israel’s Arrogance
19. Attempts to Advance the Negotiations
20. Camp David I
21. Building Political Consensus toward a Settlement
22. Leeds Castle
23. The Road to Camp David
24. Camp David II
25. The Egyptian and Palestinian Paths
26. The Madrid Conference
27. The Invasion of Kuwait, the Destruction of Iraq, and the Road to Madrid
28. Peace Talks Begin along All Paths
29. Oslo, Camp David, and Resolution 1515
30. Conclusion
To the memory of my father the pilot, Major-General Ali Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who said, “My son will be foreign minister,” when I was still a young man.
To my mother, Fatima Mohamed al-Messiri, who took good care of me.
To my wife and lifelong companion, Leila Kamal al-Din Salah, who stood staunchly by me in all my many struggles.
To my sons, Kamal and Ali. How sweet it is to have loving and loyal sons.
To all those under whose leadership I have worked and whose advice I have taken.
To all those who have worked with me over the years, with mutual affection and a shared passion for our country, for which we have always been willing to give our all.
Thank you .
The arrogance of power . . . deluded some of us . . . [in]to the belief that they were capable of not only writing history but also rewriting it to alter its facts and ignore its lessons.
—From Ambassador Ahmed Aboul Gheit’s statement before the Fifty-Ninth Session of the United Nations General Assembly, September 24, 2004, describing Israel’s positions throughout its wars and negotiations with the Arabs
FOREWORD to the English Edition
Francis J. Ricciardone President, The American University in Cairo
Ahmed Aboul Gheit is one of the last of the living giants of Egyptian statecraft whose lives have spanned the end of the Egyptian monarchy, the establishment of the modern Republic of Egypt through successive revolutions and elections, the establishment of the State of Israel, and the several wars and still unfolding story of the complex peace between those two modern states and their neighbors. During this period, modern successor states to the Ottoman Empire, from North Africa through the Gulf, have arisen, and some have collapsed. In several cases, most notably that of the Palestinians, people of former Ottoman lands continue to struggle to establish fully independent states or, in the case of the Kurds, more or less autonomous sub-state polities. The dynamics between Egypt and Israel have always proven pivotal and central to the fate of the entire region. The future of Palestine, in particular, certainly hangs in that balance.
The great modern drama of state genesis and failure across MENA has engendered rich scholarly documentation and study, particularly in English. Yet, firsthand memoirs by leading Egyptian players are scarce, even in Arabic. Hence, much of even the most insightful analysis of Egyptian decision-making through Egypt’s succession of modern wars and crises amounts to commentary by keen observers at some distance in time and space from the Egyptian figures themselves. The past great leaders in modern Egyptian–Israeli–Palestinian and broader Arab affairs—Presidents Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak—regrettably have left scholars no published memoirs comparable to the records published by their Israeli or American counterparts and their senior diplomatic and military advisors. As Aboul Gheit has pointed out, other influential statesmen of the inner decision-making circle around Presidents Sadat and Mubarak, such as Osama al-Baz and Ahmed Maher al-Sayed, have each passed away without having recorded their testimonies of this dramatic period in global affairs. Such historical personal diaries or archival official documentation as the presidents and their senior advisors may have generated are not readily available even to the most reputable private scholars, as a matter of Egyptian state policy. Aboul Gheit cites the absence of published memoirs as what compelled him to record his own direct observations.
Hence, Ahmed Aboul Gheit’s Witness to War and Peace would be of unusual importance to Arab and international scholars if only for the scarcity of other documentation, especially as published in English, by Egyptian participants in, and witnesses to, leadership decision-making in the era of war and peace, and in the genesis and failure of post-Ottoman and other foreign imperial-era states and aspirant states. But his work also stands out for its candor and authenticity, based on contemporary personal notes recording his own thinking and reactions to major historical developments.
Aboul Gheit’s record of the personalities and thinking of Egypt’s top decision makers in times of crisis is fascinating for its intimacy and contemporaneity. These influential figures are too little known even to the rising generation of Egyptians, much less to foreigners. But of equally compelling value to the student of modern Egyptian and regional history is Aboul Gheit’s presentation of his own personality and analytical outlooks as a proudly Egyptian nationalist and statesman.
I was a young American student of foreign and regional affairs, and a very junior American diplomat, during most of the period that Aboul Gheit chronicles in Witness to War and Peace. Only later, as I returned to Cairo in 2005 as the U.S. ambassador, did I have the good fortune to meet and work closely with Aboul Gheit, by then several years into what later would extend to a seven-year tenure as foreign minister of Egypt. The rare privilege of observing how his deep erudition and patriotism shaped his dealings with foreign counterparts, particularly of my own country, proved profoundly illuminating.
Aboul Gheit’s lifetime of continuing national service is as exceptional for its distinction as for its length—yet it authentically represents the characteristic Egyptian traits of deep faith, perspicacity, tenacity, and resilience. His close accounts certainly offer important insights for the rising generation of Egyptians and others who can access Aboul Gheit’s original Arabic editions. But those insights will be of particular value to foreign diplomats, business people, scientists, and scholars, who recognize the importance of deep understanding of this unique, pivotally important, and complex country, as the fundamental requirement for successful engagement with it in any sphere of endeavor. In the service of that high purpose, the American University in Cairo Press is proud to make Ahmed Aboul Gheit’s Witness to War and Peace available to a wider global readership through this English edition.
FOREWORD to the Arabic Edition
Ambassador Mohamed Assem Ibrahim Former Egyptian ambassador to Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, and Israel
Dear Reader,
It is a great honor to introduce you to this book, a true achievement. In writing this, I have a threefold responsibility: to the reader, to this profound and multidimensional book, and finally, to the author, a lifelong friend.
I shall start with the author. For seven years, we knew him as the foreign minister of Egypt. Preceding this were four decades of loyal service to the diplomatic corps, a steady rise through the ranks culminating in his position as the most senior ambassador and Egypt’s permanent representative to the United Nations.
I met Ahmed Aboul Gheit more than half a century ago. We started secondary school together, and met regularly at the Armed Forces Officers’ Club—our fathers were both officers, his in the air force and mine in the artillery corps. We shared a passion for public affairs that started in 1958. Like all of our generation in that tumultuous era, which started with the 1952 revolution, then witnessed the British withdrawal, the nationalization of the Suez Canal, followed by the Tripartite Ag