The Jarring mission and the Rogers plans, 1967–1971

The challenge

After 1967 Israel held Sinai up to the Suez Canal. Along the canal, Egyptian and Israeli soldiers fought the War of Attrition, with Soviet forces involved.¹

Resolution 242 gave a UN envoy the job of helping the sides reach a settlement, with no power to impose one.² The sides read it differently. Egypt demanded withdrawal from all the territories; Israel wanted talks without preconditions and borders set in a peace agreement.³

The road there

1. December 1967Jarring begins his mission.⁴
2. December 1969The Rogers Plan: Israel returns to the 1949 armistice lines, with insubstantial changes, in exchange for peace. By the end of the month the Soviet Union, Egypt and Israel have all rejected it.¹
3. 7 August 1970Fighting on the canal stops under the second Rogers initiative: a three-month ceasefire and talks through Jarring. Both sides accept it.¹
4. February 1971President Anwar Sadat offers to reopen the Suez Canal if Israel pulls back from its east bank and agrees to a timetable for further withdrawals.¹
5. 26 February 1971Golda Meir's government replies that it will negotiate on every subject, but will not withdraw to the lines that existed before 5 June 1967.³
6. February 1973In a secret channel, Sadat's national security adviser Hafez Ismail tells Kissinger that Egypt is willing to sign a peace agreement with Israel; full normalisation would wait for withdrawal from all the land taken in 1967.¹

The people

Led

Anwar Sadat · Golda Meir

Mediated

Gunnar Jarring · William Rogers

Proposed

William Rogers · Anwar Sadat

What was proposed

• Jarring's memorandum (8 February 1971): Israel would commit to withdraw to the old international border with Egypt, with demilitarised zones and guaranteed passage through the Straits of Tiran and the canal; Egypt would commit to a peace agreement with Israel, ending the state of war.³
• Egypt's reply (15 February): yes to a peace agreement if Israel gives parallel commitments, including withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and from all territories occupied since 5 June 1967, and a just settlement for the refugees.³
• Israel's reply (26 February): it welcomes Egypt's readiness for a peace agreement and will negotiate without preconditions. It will withdraw to secure, recognised and agreed boundaries set in the agreement, not to the lines that existed before 5 June 1967.³
• Sadat's interim idea (February 1971): reopen the canal in return for a partial Israeli pull-back and a timetable for more. He also offered to drop all claims of belligerency if Israel withdrew to the international border.¹

Read the document

The geography

The hard decisions

• Jarring asked Israel to commit to the border before talks began. Israel refused and insisted that borders be set in the negotiations.³ Egypt tied its answer to Gaza, the refugees and every front, not Sinai alone.³
• Washington was split. Rogers pushed for an interim deal, but President Nixon and his adviser Henry Kissinger gave it little backing. Kissinger did not want a Middle East row to endanger détente before the May 1972 Moscow summit, and Nixon wanted no rift with Israel before the 1972 election.¹
• Trust in the ceasefire was damaged at once, when Egyptian and Soviet missiles moved closer to the canal.¹

Where accounts differ

According to Yigal Kipnis, “1973: The Road to War”

The war grew out of a political failure, not only an intelligence one. In the months before it, he argues, Prime Minister Golda Meir turned down Sadat's initiative, for domestic political reasons and because she rejected his territorial condition in Sinai, relying on an understanding with Nixon that the United States would not press Israel. He holds responsible the political conception of Meir and Defence Minister Moshe Dayan.⁵

According to The historian Craig Daigle, reviewing Kipnis's book

Daigle agrees that Israeli diplomacy might have prevented the war and that Meir's refusal was central. But he finds no trace of the “understanding” in American records. The main cause of the deadlock, he argues, was Nixon and Kissinger's own order of priorities: détente, China and Vietnam came before the Middle East.⁵

According to The Israeli government at the time

Israel will negotiate on everything without preconditions, and will not commit in advance to the lines that existed before 5 June 1967. Borders must be secure, recognised and agreed, and set in the peace agreement.³

According to Egypt

Egypt did what Jarring asked and declared itself ready for a peace agreement. It was Israel that did not give the parallel commitment to withdraw.³

What remains open

• In this site's view, the attempt was not wasted. The building blocks of Jarring's 1971 memorandum, the international border, demilitarised zones and free passage through the Straits of Tiran and the canal,³ came back in the 1979 peace treaty. More on the attempts that paved the way: Tried, and tried again.
• After the deadlock, Sadat expelled the Soviet military advisers in July 1972 and opened a secret channel to Kissinger.¹ After the 1973 war the road went on, through the disengagement agreements and Sadat's visit to Jerusalem.

Photos, videos and quotes

1970Watch here: Abba Eban outlines an Israeli peace plan, 1970

Abba Eban outlines an Israeli peace plan, 1970

24 July 1970 · AP Archive

That summer the United States pushed the Rogers initiative, and in August 1970 a ceasefire along the Suez Canal took effect.

1971Watch here: Golda Meir on reopening the Suez Canal, 1971

Golda Meir on reopening the Suez Canal, 1971

28 April 1971 · AP Archive

In 1971 Sadat proposed an interim deal: a partial Israeli pullback from the canal and its reopening to shipping. It came to nothing, and two years later war broke out.

1972Watch here: UN mediator Gunnar Jarring arrives in Amman, 1972

UN mediator Gunnar Jarring arrives in Amman, 1972

24 February 1972 · AP Archive

Jarring was appointed in 1967 to work for a settlement based on Resolution 242. His mission lasted years and produced no agreement.