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In his meeting with Reagan, and in a later private talk with Haig, Begin likewise would not budge on anything. At one point, the White House put out word that the Prime Minister had pledged to refrain from a final assault on Beirut. Haig was furious because he regarded the threat of an Israeli attack as essential to induce the remnants of the P.L.O. holed up in Beirut to negotiate with Israel. The Israeli leader had, in fact, made no pledge. As the fighting continued, Clark, Weinberger and others were arguing with Reagan that Haig's soft-on-Israel approach increasingly made it seem that the U.S. was endorsing a military action that much of the free world viewed with considerable alarm. Even State Department subordinates who initially supported Haig's approach were whispering that they wanted a change in policy.
In the meantime, European protests against the pipeline sanctions poured into Washington—including one from Foreign Minister Emilio Colombo of Italy, a country with which the U.S. has no serious foreign policy disputes. As he read the plaints and monitored reports of renewed fighting in Lebanon, Haig grew increasingly morose. By midweek he was again thinking of resigning—not knowing that this was exactly what his adversaries at the White House wanted.
Nor did Haig know that Reagan, who abhors conflict among his subordinates, had pretty much decided to accept his resignation. Until the European trip, Reagan had regarded Haig's volcanic behavior with a kind of uneasy tolerance. But shortly after the presidential party returned to the U.S., Reagan agreed with key aides that the frictions had become insupportable. White House aides insist that there was no plot to get Haig; in fact, they thought that it would be best if the Secretary of State stayed on until after the November congressional elections. So Reagan would not directly ask Haig to quit—but he resolved that the next time Haig threatened to resign, he would take him at his word. Indeed, there are rumors among the White House staff that as long as two weeks ago, Reagan began sounding out Shultz as to whether he would take the job if and when Haig quit.
The last act of the drama began Wednesday evening, when Haig invited Clark to meet with him at the State Department. The Secretary ran through a long list of complaints, citing specifically the private meetings that the National Security Adviser had held with Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to Washington. In Haig's view, those meetings constituted a White House attempt to conduct backchannel dealings and undercut him in foreign policy. He also complained that Vice President George Bush had been sent as head of the U.S. delegation to memorial services for the late King Khalid in Saudi Arabia, and that he had been cut off from cables addressed to the White House from the President's special envoy to the Middle East, Philip Habib. Unless things changed, and he had more influence on such decisions, Haig said, he would have to resign. Clark did nothing to discourage the Secretary, but tipped off Baker, Deaver and the President, with whom Haig had requested a meeting on Thursday morning.