The man who kept asking.

Experience turned into writing

After his years of service, Gazit continued to research and write about negotiations and foreign policy. His books and articles preserve the questions he pursued in his professional life.[W1][W2][W6]

His bibliography spans peace processes, mediation, relations with the United States and the work of the Foreign Ministry. It offers a way to explore the questions he sought to understand and explain after his years of service.[W1][W2][W3][W6]

The Peace Process, 1969–1973: the question he set himself

Gazit prepared this study in 1982, as a fellow at the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace and the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University. It appeared in English in 1983, and in Hebrew in 1984 through Yad Tabenkin, with help from the Golda Meir Cultural Centre at Revivim. The Hebrew edition can now be read as an e-book, and its opening chapter is open to all.

The book asks one question: did Golda Meir’s government pursue a sound policy for advancing peace between 1969 and 1973? His method was to analyse every proposal raised during her two terms, and how Israel, Egypt and the United States responded to each. He noted why the question is asked of her years far more than of the Eshkol years before them: the assumption that the seeds of the Yom Kippur War were sown then; the view that while Nasser lived the chances of dialogue with Egypt were nil; and Eshkol’s image as a peace-seeker, against the image of Meir as inflexible.

His argument is clear and pointed. He wrote that Israel did not misread Egypt’s positions: in return for a hundred-per-cent withdrawal it could have obtained a “modus vivendi”, but the consensus of the major parties would not settle for that. It was right, he conceded, that clinging to Israel’s positions prevented a settlement before 1973 — but in his words, “what was missed was not a peace treaty, but a vague and hazy arrangement” (in the site’s translation), on the model of the 1957 Sinai arrangement, whose unreliability was proven in 1967. He also rejected Sadat’s later account that in the last year of his life Nasser had decided to make peace, pointing to the missile move of August 1970.

The critics, he argued, overlook that Meir’s government took several decisions that should have improved the chances of peace — first among them accepting the Rogers initiative in July 1970, at the price of breaking up the national unity government — and his book examines why they bore no fruit. It is his reading within a debate that continues; the chapter on the Jarring mission connects directly to the file he himself handled.[W1][PS1]

Exchanging knowledge, even in disagreement

The University of Exeter’s archive holds two letters: one from Gazit to the Palestinian lawyer Aziz Shehadeh, and Shehadeh’s reply. Gazit wrote on Truman Institute letterhead and shared research material about Jordanian citizenship. The reply offered a legal analysis that challenged the argument under examination.

This correspondence shows the work behind the writing: questions, exchanges of material and detailed answers.[W7][W8]

Getting to know Jewish life across the ocean

A report by Gazit for the Institute on American Jewish–Israeli Relations reveals another strand of work after government service: preparations for a young leadership program, hopes of including writers and poets, and developing teaching about American Jewry in Israeli schools.

The report distinguishes preliminary research from cooperation still to be developed with the Education Ministry. It also considers educational television programs and their high costs. It offers a view of practical work connecting communities, education and institutions.

It records work and plans at different stages.

English · archive PDF, about 30 MB. If the file opens at the beginning, enter 129 in the PDF page selector.