BROOKINGS REPORT (1975)

study that encouraged u.s. mediation in arab–israeli peace process.

In December 1975 a study group at the Brookings Institution, a liberal Washington, D.C., think tank, issued a report endorsing five principles for an Arab–Israeli peace. The intent of the report was to be more precise than the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 had been in directing U.S. policymakers on the degree of mutual recognition that would be necessary, and it urged U.S. acceptance of Israel's 1967 borders and Palestinian national aspirations.

The sixteen-member Middle East Study Group met monthly from June 1974, particularly encouraged by Princeton University sociologist Morrow Berger and former diplomat Charles Yost, who argued that the outcome of the 1967 and 1973 Arab–Israel wars favored a U.S. peace initiative. The group balanced pro-Arab and pro-Israeli perspectives, and included academics and former U.S. officials and ambassadors from Republican and Democrat administrations, including Robert Bowie, Philip Klutznick, and Najeeb Halaby (father of the future Queen Noor of Jordan).

The report's deliberately general compromises were widely taken as an indication that solid grounds existed for a phased settlement between Israel and its neighbors. Moreover, two key study-group members—Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's National Security Adviser, and William Quandt, National Security Council Director for Middle Eastern Affairs—subsequently helped to guide Jimmy Carter's administration to the Camp David Accords (1978). The report complemented Brzezinski's work with Carter on a wider security "architecture" at the Trilateral Commission (a non-governmental organization established in 1973 to promote coordination between North American, Western European, and Japanese foreign policies), encouraged the administration's inclusion of the 1967 borders and Palestinian autonomy in U.S. policy, and directly informed the Camp David discussions, at which Brzezinski and Quandt played active roles.

see also camp david accords (1978); carter, jimmy.

Bibliography

Brookings Institution. Toward Peace in the Middle East: Report of a Study Group. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1975.

Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1983.

Quandt, William. Decade of Decisions: American Foreign Policy Toward the Arab–Israeli Conflict, 1967–1976. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.

George R. Wilkes