A Handbook for Mastering Negotiating Skills

A Political Conference Provides Tips on how to Deal with Adversaries

An eighteen hundred foot high spot, in a wooded grove prone to snow and ice in winter and infested with gnats and mosquitos in summer. seems an unlikely place to learn about the art of negotiation. Yet, as Lawrence Wright makes clear in Thirteen Days in September, a brilliant new work about the 1978 Camp David peace accord between Egypt and Israel, this venue is rich in lessons.

The challenges faced in business negotiations pale compared to those that drew President Jimmy Carter, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to a cluster of wooden cabins in the Catoctin Mountains at the end of the summer of 1978. Yet Thirteen Days in September can also be read as a handbook on how to negotiate. The peace talks, conjured out of thin air by a U.S. President steeped in biblical history, shows what it takes to juggle – an agenda; deeply entrenched protagonists; a collection of acolytes and influencers; a claustrophobic stage; and the prospect of a deadline – and produce, from this hopeless potpourri, a result which, however flawed, has prevented a war between bitter antagonists for almost two generations.

When President Carter issued his invitations to the two Middle Eastern leaders, he had hoped to broker a comprehensive peace settlement in the region that settled a long list of issues – territorial disputes between Egypt and Israel, sovereignty over the West Bank, the future of the Palestinian refugees, the governance of Jerusalem and the fate of the Gaza strip. So much for realistic agenda setting. The first few days, of what turned into a tooth and nail fight lasting almost two weeks, teetered on the edge of failure because the agenda was too ambitious and unrealistic. It was only when it was whittled down to fasten on the differences between Egypt and Israel, that there was any chance of reaching an accord. Then, of course, there was the issue of not only who controlled the agenda but who held the best cards. In the end this was Carter because neither Sadat nor Begin wanted to see the U.S. in the other’s camp.

The virtue of understanding the people around the negotiating table is made stark by this account of the Camp David peace talks. President Carter’s briefing books could not have possibly captured the complete psychological complexion of the two main actors: Sadat and Begin. The first was black, the second son of his father’s sixth wife, who joined the Egyptian military, became a gregarious, crowd-pleaser and, eventually, a haughty, well-groomed autocrat inclined to unpredictable gestures such as his 1977 trip to Israel. Begin, by contrast, had watched his parents slaughtered by the Nazis in Poland, was the leader of one of the groups that helped bomb and terrorize the British out of the Middle East, led an austere, ascetic existence until, in the wake of the 1972 war, he became Israel’s Prime Minister. He was cautious, formal and pedantic, a stickler for details and inclined to hector and lecture. The only things Sadat and Begin had in common was the antipathy they shared towards British rule of the Middle East, stints in jail and a fondness for American movies.

If these two characters were not enough, there were also their traveling companions and the many strains of Middle Eastern historical baggage (nicely captured throughout the book) that they represented. Wright emphasizes the importance of understanding the composition and influence of the circle that surrounds any decision-maker. In this case the coterie of advisors would have provided enough fodder for half a dozen whodunnits. In the Egyptian corner was a Foreign Minister (who, convinced that his leader was selling out to the Americans and Israelis, resigned the day after the conference concluded); a future head of the United Nations (Boutros Boutros-Ghali) and, most astonishingly of all a Sufi mystic who also acted as Sadat’s astrologer. The corner men behind the ropes for the Israelis were the creator of the Israeli air force (the gregarious nephew of one of his country’s first President); a Supreme Court justice; and a former Defense Minister, with a black patch over his left eye, who had a reputation as a formidable womanizer, was an ardent archeologist and, though suffering from cancer, believed the talks a complete waste of time.

As with any negotiation ending in a signed agreement there are always the unintended consequences and, in this case, they still linger. The original list of issues on the Camp David agenda are still with us – barring the armed conflict between Israel faded to black. Within five years Sadat was dead – killed in a hail of machine gun bullets; Begin had become a recluse and retreated into his private nightmares; and Jimmy Carter had been turfed out of office: the victim, among other things, of the Iranian hostage crisis, another ripple from the very region whose differences he sought to settle.