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On May 28, I wrote to Begin and said, in so many words, that I hoped there was no ambiguity on the extent of our concern about possible future Israeli military actions in Lebanon. The President and I wanted to make it very clear that we sincerely hoped that Israel would continue to exercise complete restraint and refrain from any action that would further damage the understanding underlying the cessation of hostilities. Israeli military actions, regardless of size, could have consequences none of us could foresee.
Begin's reply testified to the depth of his feelings: "You advise us to exercise complete restraint and refrain from any action . . . Mr. Secretary, my dear friend, the man has not been born who will ever obtain from me consent to let Jews be killed by a bloodthirsty enemy and allow those who are responsible for the shedding of this blood to enjoy immunity." Reading these phrases, I understood that the U.S. would probably not be able to stop Israel from attacking.
"Dear Al . . ."
On June 1, 1982, aboard Air Force One en route to Europe for a ten-day diplomatic visit, President Reagan broke his reading glasses. I lent him a pair of my own, and he discovered that he could see perfectly well with them. "That proves it, Mr. President—we have the same vision." We laughed, but by the end of the trip I saw with final clarity that however similar our views might be on certain issues, we were hopelessly divided on others, and the confident personal relationship that might have bridged this difference would always be denied to Reagan and me.
In Europe, it became plain that the effort to "write my character out of the script" was under way with a vengeance. As always, all roads led through the press. A telling sign of quarantine was that at Versailles, photographs were banned at my meeting with Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki of Japan. Last-minute changes in seating and other curious breaches of protocol, engineered by Baker, Deaver and their apparat, baffled our European hosts, many of whom had not previously had the experience of a guest's, as it were, shuffling the place cards of other guests.
As the trip started, it appeared certain Israel would invade Lebanon in a matter of hours, days or weeks. On June 3, the casus belli the Israelis had been waiting for materialized. In London, Arab terrorists shot and grievously wounded Shlomo Argov, the Israeli Ambassador to Britain. Israel bombed a P.L.O. ammunition dump in Beirut, and the P.L.O. struck back against northern Israel. On June 5, the Israeli Cabinet approved a large-scale invasion of Lebanon. Begin informed us that the objective was to drive the P.L.O. back 40 km from the Israeli border.
On June 8, Habib was asked by Begin to carry a message to President Hafez Assad of Syria: if P.L.O. artillery in the Syrian lines was pulled back to the 40-km mark, there would be no need for Syria