Israeli society is traumatized, just as it was after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which claimed the lives of 2,656 of our sons and daughters. That war, much like the current one, was the result of a colossal intelligence and political failure. Then, as now, Israeli society became more hawkish in the wake of tragedy, and most Israelis perceived those advocating for peace with Egypt as delusional.

One of the outcomes of the Yom Kippur War was the 1977 election victory of Menachem Begin. It was Prime Minister Begin who was most identified with the slogan “no territorial compromise.” Moshe Dayan, who became foreign minister in Begin’s government, reiterated on several occasions in the years after the 1967 Six-Day War that “Sharm el-Sheikh without peace is better than peace without Sharm el-Sheikh.”

And yet, five years after the traumatic 1973 war, Menachem Begin signed a peace agreement with Egypt—the largest and most powerful country in the Arab world, which had been Israel’s number one enemy for many years. Contrary to his declarations of “not one inch,” Begin relinquished Israeli control over the entire Sinai Peninsula and dismantled the settlements there. Significantly, a decisive majority of the Israeli public supported this move.

American diplomatic engagement brought about the most positive and far-reaching strategic shift in Israel’s history, making peace with Egypt possible. This change was initiated by Henry Kissinger, the U.S. secretary of state in a Republican administration who mediated the negotiations to end the war and subsequently reoriented Egypt away from the Soviet Union and toward the United States. Later, it was Democratic President Jimmy Carter who committed himself personally, as well as the full might of America’s governing institutions, to bring about the 1978 agreement between Sadat and Begin at Camp David. For this, Carter was duly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The same was true in the case of Israel’s peace agreement with Jordan, the country with which Israel has the longest border: it could not have been achieved without active American diplomacy. It was again a Republican secretary of state, James Baker, who took advantage of the momentum at the end of the First Gulf War to convene the 1991 Madrid Conference, which for the first time created an official political dialogue between Israel and Jordan that also included Palestinian participation as part of the Jordanian delegation. At that time, a security hawk—Yitzhak Shamir—led the Israeli government, and the Bush administration pressured him to participate in the Madrid peace conference. Somewhat ironically, the deputy foreign minister who was part of the Israeli delegation and its main spokesperson was none other than Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Madrid Conference initiated a process that, four years later, allowed a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, to help bring about the Israel-Jordan peace treaty, signed by Prime Minister Rabin........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)