The origin of the acquaintance and decades-long friendship between Yugoslav President Tito and the President of the World Jewish Congress, Nahum Goldman, is not easy to determine. Tito came into contact with the leaders of Jewish organizations very early, back in 1944, when partisan units provided enormous help in rescuing Hungarian Jews. After that, Yugoslavia helped emigrate Jews to Palestine through Yugoslav ports, despite the British ban. Tito also militarily aided the nascent Israel.
When the relations between Israel and the Arab states escalated into a confrontation, the Yugoslav president and Nahum Goldman, who at the time was the president of the World Jewish Congress and the World Zionist Organization, led one of the most interesting Cold War attempts to open a channel for dialogue between the Arab countries and Israel. The proposals and initiatives they launched were part of their Middle East peace plan, which, with numerous challenges and rejections, lasted for three decades.
THE PRECURSOR OF THE CAMPS DAVID AGREEMENT
It is paradoxical that after the "six-day war" in which Israel won and conquered Sinai, the Golan Heights and Jerusalem, Yugoslavia broke diplomatic relations with Israel, but Tito did not stop actively working on his peace plan. It can be said that his and Goldman's initiative was a forerunner of the solution that was negotiated by the Camp David peace of 1978 between Egypt and Israel. That solution was a unilateral agreement between the two countries with the mutual recognition of Egypt and Israel, the return of the demilitarized Sinai under Egyptian sovereignty, while the Golan Heights and Jerusalem remained outside of this agreement.
In late 1971, Goldman asked Tito to propose to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat that he negotiate a separate peace based on an Israeli withdrawal from all of Sinai, except the Golan Heights, in exchange for the demilitarization of the vacated territory. Sadat accepted exactly that at Camp David, but only after the "Yom Kippur War" on October 6, 1973. The agreement included the recognition of Israel, which was also a point of the Tito-Goldman peace plan.
Tito managed to convince Egyptian President Gamal Nasser of the need for such a step. Thus, during the meeting in 1975, he recounted his conversation with Nasser in Egypt in 1967 to US President Gerald Ford: "I told Nasser that Israel is a reality and that it should be recognized." He is a member of the United Nations. I told him that the Arabs had no way of pushing Israel into the sea, as they wanted. Not only the US, but all other countries with which Israel has diplomatic relations will not allow Israel to be thrown into the sea. They didn't like it. They were silent. But the next day Nasser said: 'You are right'".
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF A SPECIAL KIND
Tito tried to conceal the essence of his relations with the leader of the World Jewish Organization even from his associates, although he did not hide the contact itself. World media also wrote about Tito's and Goldman's closeness. The former Minister of Foreign Affairs Živadin Jovanović, who as a young diplomat worked in Tito's cabinet, testifies to how much discretion was used in these meetings. When Goldman arrived, Tito's car would wait for the guest on the runway and drive straight to the marshal without any passport or customs formalities. He returned in the same way.
In the first stage, Tito spent two decades trying to arrange Goldman's meeting with the Egyptian president and start Middle Eastern negotiations, even at the time when Yugoslavia officially broke diplomatic relations with Israel after the "Six Day War" in 1967. The first initiative for a meeting between Goldman and Nasser Tito was launched between May and July 1956.
When the "father of the Israeli nation" David Ben Gurion approached Goldman for help in raising $400 million to finance the Dimona project, or Israel's nuclear program, Goldman, who was not his supporter, passed on the details in November 1958 to Tito and Ben Gurion's request. Goldman told Tito that it would be difficult for the Jews of the world to refuse such a demand concerning the survival of the Jewish state. He added that he and his supporters could more easily reject Ben Gurion if Nasser and other Arab statesmen agreed to talk with Israel.
Immediately after the meeting with Goldman, Tito sent a letter to Nasser. In it, he recommended that the Egyptian president start "some kind of dialogue" with Israel, adding that Goldman should not be "left empty-handed." He included Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in his persuasion, but Nasser remained adamant.
PERSUASION OF COMMUNIST LEADERS
Tito met Nasser and Nehru again exactly 60 years ago, at the First Non-Aligned Conference in Belgrade in 1961. He passed on Goldman's proposal that the first step in reducing hostility between the two countries be talks with the World Jewish Congress instead of Israel. Nasser was adamant again.
Goldman presented Tito with his ideas for a peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict that would include mutual recognition of Egypt and Israel and asked him to convey them to other Communist and Arab leaders. Tito did this at a meeting of Eastern European leaders in Moscow in November 1967. At that time, he first reported that there is no longer any danger that Nasser and the Arabs will choose war as a solution to the problem, although such tendencies existed after the bombing of Suez and the oil refineries, and emphasized that Nasser is in favor of a political solution. With Cairo receiving electricity from Aswan, Nasser was in a much better mood.
Tito then recounted his conversation with Goldman, but he did not find the slightest understanding of the Eastern Bloc party leaders. The Soviet delegate at the meeting, then-Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin, quipped ironically: "A big thing is brewing." Polish leader Ladislav Gomulka said: "It doesn't make the slightest sense."
In the late 21s, Tito and Goldman met twice and continued to work on the meeting between Goldman and Nasser. After the second meeting, on May 1969, XNUMX, Goldman came to Israel and informed surveyor Levi Eshkol, Moshe Dayan and Abu Eban. Goldman's notes do not mention a discussion about the possibility of meeting with Nasser. But, ahead of Goldman's report, Dayan sent him a letter in which he discussed the issues from his meeting with Tito on Briony. In that letter, he wrote, without specifying with whom, that he would accept a "meeting" if the Israeli government discussed it, but not if the government did not approve it. Eshkol replied that the issue of the meeting "is not simple" and he did not believe that the initiative was serious.
photo: Museum of YugoslaviaAPPRECIATED IN THE WORLD: JB Tito in conversation with American generals...
TITO'S INITIATIVE
The possibility of a meeting between Goldman and Nasser was brought up at a casual meeting following an interview Nasser gave to French Monde journalist Eric Rollo in February 1970. The initiative, dubbed the "Tito Initiative" by the London Observer, was discussed by a disgruntled and angry Israeli government. twice - in March and April 1970. At the government meeting, Shimon Peres requested a written invitation from "an authorized source - Egyptian or Yugoslav". There was also a vote in the Knesset, where the government's position received an overwhelming majority of 61:5.
Egyptian President Nasser had a change of heart in early 1970 and agreed to meet with Goldman. Goldman discussed a possible meeting with Nasser on March 24 with then Prime Minister Golda Meir. He informed her that a few days earlier he had met with three people in Paris: a Yugoslav, a "Monda" correspondent and an Egyptian, Ahmed Hamroush, who told him that Egyptian President Nasser was planning to invite him to visit Egypt. At that moment, a big international affair started.
PEACE IS NOT FOR PACIFISTS
On April 5, the Israeli government issued a statement saying it did not agree to Goldman's visit to Cairo. Then the whole issue came up for discussion in the Knesset. In a long article published in Mond on April 8 at the height of the Knesset debate, Eric Rollo detailed the Egyptian conditions for the meeting, the two most important of which were that it be public and that it be approved by the Israeli government. The article added fuel to the fire because it gave the impression that the call really existed and that Egypt was finally ready for peace.
Egyptian government spokesman Ahmed Abdel Magid denied on April 6 that the invitation even existed. A similar denial, almost simultaneously, was published in Belgrade. The question arose as to why Golda Meir did not keep this information to herself, but informed the Government and then the Knesset. She said that she does not have the authority to decide on matters important to national security. In addition, if the decision was made in favor of the visit, then the minister without portfolio and leading hawk, Likud head Menachem Begin, would have been very unhappy that the cabinet was not consulted about such a contact.
The whole affair started to get out of hand. Some Jewish circles threatened to cut off all contact with Israel if there was a meeting between Goldman and Nasser, as did the influential London banker Sigmund Warburg. The Israeli government issued an official statement that the whole affair was "fabricated and baseless". The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs believed that on the international level, the main danger would be if Goldman's ideology were to gain support because, allegedly, he proposes to turn Israel into a protectorate for the sake of some illusory peace agreement, give up sovereignty over Jerusalem and completely withdraw from the territories conquered in 1967. Abu Eban assessed Goldman's views as "radically pro-Arab". Eliazar Livne concluded: "Peace is too serious a matter to be allowed to be handled by pacifists."
TITO AND NIXON
At the first official meeting between US President Richard Nixon and Tito, held on October 1, 1970, the Middle East was discussed at length, and the entire delegations of both countries participated. Tito informed Nixon that he had received twice in recent months the president of the World Jewish Congress, Nahum Goldman, who is "flexible" and views the Middle East problem "realistically" agreeing to the withdrawal of Israel from all occupied territories, "with the possible exception of the Golan Heights". The American president assessed that the Golan Heights, together with Jerusalem, represents the most complex problem in the region, which is still true today.
In another visit, Goldman mentioned the need to resettle a number of Palestinians in Israel and financial compensation for others.
photo: Museum of Yugoslavia...and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
NOBEL PRIZE FOR KISSINGER
Tito received German Chancellor Willy Brandt in Brioni on April 18, 1973. It was a private conversation. On that occasion, he handed him a letter for the Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir. Unlike American President Nixon, Golda Meir paid no attention to Tito's message. When Brandt mentioned to her Tito's warning about growing Arab military strength, Yugoslav mediation efforts and his concern for Israel, her reaction was "sarcastic." Brandt noted: “Tito! Awesome! But Tito has not spoken to any Israeli since 1967." Brandt then said that Tito had spoken to Goldman, but Golda Meir replied that, with all due respect, Goldman was not speaking for Israel.
Despite this, Tito was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for his role in the Middle East peace process. He lost in the final to American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with 3:2.
On November 4, 1974, Kissinger came to Belgrade in the company of the American banker and then one of the richest men in the world, David Rockefeller. During the conversation held in the White House library, Tito again informed Kissinger that Goldman had visited him and said he was very concerned about the situation in the Middle East. Goldman begged Tito to intercede with President Assad and Sadat to receive him. Goldman emphasized that it was not his personal action.
Kissinger commented that he doubted it, "but that it was not a sin to meet with Sadat and Assad." "Goldman does not represent the Israeli government." The United States is the factor that drives Israel and that is why the Arabs are looking for us, and the Arabs should help the US action. One must go step by step and the Arabs must remain silent for a while. Sadat understands this American point of view. Assad would also understand if Israel behaved differently," Kissinger said, noting that the US is "ready to put pressure on Israel, but it is clear that we can only succeed in this if we proceed gradually."
The US Secretary of State agreed that Israel will have to adapt. "For now, Israel wants peace, but it is not ready to pay for it." If there is another explosion, the US would have to support Israel, and the USSR would have to support Syria. That would lead to a new confrontation, but we have to take care of our internal situation," Kissinger said.
INCLUDING ROMANIA
In a conversation with Gerald Ford on August 5, 1975 in Belgrade, Tito pointed out that he "had several conversations with Nahum Goldman" who "looks ahead", and that in ten to fifteen years 150 million armed Arabs could come to the temptation to "push" five to six million Israelis with all of Israel into the sea, as they had previously threatened. By the way, Tito himself coined the phrase "pushing Israel into the sea", which some attributed to Nasser.
Then Tito included another country in the Middle East negotiations - Romania, which was the only socialist country to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel. The president of the World Jewish Congress assumed that Tito and Ceausescu were looking for a new opportunity for a mediating role in the Middle East conflict. He noted that both leaders had previously tried to arrange an unofficial meeting for him, first with Nasser in 1970 and then with Sadat in 1975. Those attempts were unsuccessful due to the Israeli government's reluctance to use this channel.
Goldman assumed on this basis that future Yugoslav and Romanian initiatives may revolve around attempts to organize "informal, discreet contacts" between Israel on the one hand and the PLO and Syria on the other. Israeli leaders were particularly interested in the possibility of restoring diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia and Tito's influence on the radical Arabs to lessen the attacks on Sadat and the interim agreement that had just been concluded. Goldman discussed with Tito the possibility of restoring diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia, Poland and Hungary.
Bucharest was visited by Menachem Begin, and then by Egyptian President Sadat, who decided to make a historic visit to Jerusalem in November 1977.
APPOINTED MEETING
All of Tito's and Goldman's decades-long efforts finally came to fruition a month earlier, in October 1977, when Sadat told Tito that he accepted a meeting with Goldman. Sadat sent a message through Tito, requesting that the World Jewish Congress appoint a representative to come to Egypt to jointly prepare a visit by a high-level Jewish delegation. The Egyptian ambassador confirmed, as Goldman reported, that he was anxiously waiting for President Sadat to set a date for the meeting. Four Jewish leaders were scheduled to be at the meeting - two from the US, one from Great Britain and one from France.
Goldman finally met with Egyptian President Sadat in July 1978 in Salzburg, at a conference organized by the Socialist International, just before the upcoming Camp David talks that concluded the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Speaking about the meeting with the president of the World Jewish Congress, Sadat said Goldman represented "100 percent of his views." He was against Begin and against Israeli settlement building activities in the occupied territories.
Goldman proposed "to end Begin, but in a constitutional way." He met with the American ambassador, Ehrlich, and asked him why he had not taken steps to get rid of Begin. Ehrlich reportedly said the U.S. government did not initiate pressure with that goal in mind. If the US government were to do this, then all elements inside and outside the government who are concerned about Begin's hard line could act to get rid of him.
Begin and Sadat nevertheless signed a peace agreement on September 17, 1978. Tito died in 1980, and Goldman two years later at the age of 87. In the obituary published in the "New York Times", among numerous actions and merits, his two "interrupted" diplomatic initiatives were also described: the first for a private meeting with President Nasser that was prevented by the Israeli invasion of Sinai and when Golda Meir in 1970. torpedoed" another possible meeting with the Egyptian president.
