Not Since Eban

Not since Lyndon Johnson's Meeting with Abba Eban on 26 May 1967 (see article on it referenced here) has a meeting between Israel and the U.S. carried such import.

What meeting?

This one:-

Israel's foreign minister has arrived in the United States amid worries that the Jewish state's main ally could shift course after a report urged Washington to redouble Mideast peacemeaking efforts. Tzipi Livni will meet with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other officials during her visit, which will focus on the repercussions of a report released Wednesday by the Iraq Study Group, her office said.

"This trip will be an occasion to review with her counterparts the report and to discuss its meaning," a foreign ministry spokesman said.

That report said progress towards Arab-Israeli peace was key to saving Iraq. It also called for direct US talks with two of Israel's most fearsome foes, Syria and Iran, the latter of which is believed to be steaming ahead in its bid for nuclear weapons.

A day after receiving the top-level commission's report, the United States and Britain signalled the start of a renewed diplomatic push in the region.

Here are Eban's reminisces:

I made what turned out to be a very crucial visit to the United States; also to France and to the United Kingdom. In the month of May, ahead of the Six-Day War, the objective was to examine whether the powers were willing to carry out what had been their commitment to support Israel if we were blockaded again by the stoppage of our traffic in the Gulf of Aqaba and in the Suez Canal. And when it was obvious that that was going to be the Arab attitude, we could see that there was a casus belli in every sense of the word. Now, in France I received a douche of cold water from President de Gaulle.

I hardly had time to sit down, let alone to exchange any pleasantries, before he bellowed at me, "Ne faites pas la guerre!" - "Don't make war," or in any case, "Don't be the first to make war." And he then said, "My solution is this: it's important that the four great powers should get together" - "Il faut que les quatre se concertent." When I said that to President Johnson, who asked me what President de Gaulle had said to me, he said, rather irritably, "What did he mean by 'the four great powers'? Who the hell are the other two?" So that was the reaction of the United States to the idea that there were four great powers.

In Britain, surprisingly... I expected a colder response, but the response was very warm, and Prime Minister Harold Wilson gave me a very gossip-ridden account of how his ministers had voted that morning, saying he... I would be astonished if he [sic] knew how people voted: that my friend Crossman was actually against us, and that his friend George Brown was for us. But it was quite clear that their attitude would be totally dependent upon whether they were with or without American cover; and therefore everything now depended on President Johnson. He expressed to me a sense of his own impotence, that I never heard either before or since from an American leader. He said that he was actually confined, contained and frustrated by the Vietnam War. He said, "Without the Congress, I am nothing but a 6-foot-4 Texan. And unless you people move your anatomies up on the Hill and start getting some votes, I will not be able to carry out..." what was then his policy of forcing the straits with American power.

That could have been done: the United States only had to send one ship through, and I believe that Nasser could have capitulated. He was not able to do that, and he kept talking about the limitations of his own power in words which almost made me compassionate towards him. And he then said, in a kind of Delphic oratory [sic] sort of mood: "Israel will not be alone unless it decides to be alone." And we in Israel started trying to solve that particular acronym so far as we could.

It didn't seem to me very much; but there was a period when he really thought of forcing the straits, then a period in which he recognized his own limitations; and a third, a sense of intense relief when Israel solved the problem itself, not only by surviving but by winning the war. And when I went back after the war had been won, he didn't even try to conceal his relief at what had happened. He said, "Of course, our generals always said that you would win the war in any case, either in seven days if you had the first strike, or in 12 days if the Egyptians had the first strike." But Johnson went on, "My generals are always right about other people's wars."

What will Tzippi tell us a few years hence?