David Kimche

Kimche was born in London on 14 February 1928 into a Zionist family with roots in Switzerland, the youngest of nine children.[1][3] He attended elementary and secondary schools in Switzerland and England before immigrating to Mandatory Palestine at the end of 1946, aged eighteen.[1] He entered on a student certificate to study agriculture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and remained after the permit expired.[5] As a young man, he joined a garin, or founding group, of the Habonim movement associated with the establishment of Kibbutz Kfar Hanasi.[5]

His university studies were interrupted by military service. He was called up in December 1947, served in the Sixth Brigade, and was wounded in the battles for Jerusalem during the War of Independence.[1] He also served in the Haganah’s Moriah student battalion.[5]

Kimche was wounded in the battle for Deir Abu Tor.[5] In a diary passage, he described gunfire coming from several directions, a burning pain in his leg, and evacuation to Talpiot in an armored vehicle.[5] Looking back on the evacuation of three wounded men, he considered himself the fortunate one.[5] Following military service, he returned to the Hebrew University, shifting from agriculture to modern Middle Eastern history, sociology, and political science while also serving as a reserve officer.[1] He received his bachelor’s degree in 1955.[1]

His subsequent education included studies at the Sorbonne and doctoral work at the Hebrew University, where he received his doctorate in 1971.[1][2] He also worked for The Jerusalem Post and wrote mainly on political affairs.[5][2] His later career brought him into both confidential international contacts and the senior leadership of Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

Kimche began civil-service work in the Prime Minister’s Office in 1953 and served there in several capacities, becoming a department head in 1970.[1] He joined the Mossad in the early 1950s and eventually became its deputy director.[3][2] Encyclopedia.com records that he worked in Paris under journalistic cover.[4]

Africa became a particular area of expertise. Kimche maintained a lifelong interest in the continent and in the circumstances of its newly independent peoples.[3] This expertise later informed his role in renewed Israeli engagement with African countries.[6]

Alongside intelligence service, Kimche pursued research and teaching.[1] In 1966 he took unpaid leave to become a research fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Shiloah Institute and lectured at Tel Aviv and Bar-Ilan universities on Africa and the Third World.[1] His doctoral thesis was published as a book by the Shiloah Institute.[1] His writing also included a book on the Afro-Asian movement connected to his studies at the Sorbonne.[2]

After the Six-Day War in 1967, the prime minister personally appointed Kimche to prepare a study of the political leadership and its attitudes in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[1] In the immediate aftermath of the war, Kimche and Dan Bavly also went to Ramallah in connection with restarting the Hashemite Broadcasting Service, known as Radio Ramallah.[5] There they met Palestinian lawyer Aziz Shehadeh, who put forward a proposal for a Palestinian state and peace with Israel.[5]

During these exchanges, Kimche rejected the 1947 partition borders as a basis for negotiations and argued instead that the Green Line, the prewar armistice line, offered the viable negotiating basis.[5] Shehadeh treated his own proposal as a starting point for discussion.[5] Shehadeh and fellow lawyer Muhammad Yahya were prepared to discuss a Palestinian state or independent entity in the West Bank and Gaza in exchange for a formal peace agreement with Israel.[5] Kimche later wrote that Palestinians wanted the freedom to shape their future and were willing to conclude such an agreement.[5]

Kimche, Bavly, and other officials prepared a four-page document dated 14 June 1967 entitled “Proposal for a Settlement of the Palestinian Problem.”[5] Its authors were identified as Lieutenant Colonel Y. Oron, Lieutenant Colonel A. Har-even, Captain D. Bavly, and Lieutenant D. Kimche.[5] Copies were sent to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and ministers Pinhas Sapir, Moshe Dayan, and Yigal Allon.[5] Israel’s leadership favored negotiations with Arab states, while PLO chairman Yasser Arafat rejected Shehadeh’s initiative.[5] Bavly later recalled that the authors themselves had no copy of their document and that its existence became known through press references.[5]

Kimche left the Mossad in 1979 or 1980; sources differ on the precise year.[3][4] His relationship with Mossad director Yitzhak Hofi had become strained, including over policy toward Lebanon, and Hofi suspected Kimche of maneuvering to replace him.[5][4] Kimche subsequently became director-general of the Foreign Ministry and remained in government service until 1987.[3][4] During Yitzhak Shamir’s premiership, American officials dealt frequently with him through his senior Foreign Ministry position.[7]

Kimche told Shamir that he belonged to the peace camp; Shamir’s reported reply was, “Your political views are not my concern.”[5] In the 1980s, Kimche and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon helped lead renewed Israeli engagement with Africa.[6] Most African countries restored relations with Israel during the 1980s and 1990s.[6]

During the First Lebanon War, Kimche met Phalangist leader Bashir Gemayel and encouraged ties with Lebanon’s Christian community.[2] In December 1982 he headed the Israeli delegation at talks with Lebanon and the United States in Khaldeh, south of Beirut.[4] He disputed Lebanese negotiator Antoine Fattal’s account of the events of 1967 and the status of the Israel-Lebanon armistice agreement.[8] Kimche argued that Lebanon had violated the agreement and that Israel regarded it as terminated.[8] He also stated that Israel sought peaceful relations with Lebanon and that its military effort was directed against terrorists rather than the Lebanese people.[8]

The negotiations culminated in the Israel-Lebanon Agreement of 17 May 1983.[9] Arabic and French copies were signed in Khaldeh by Fattal, Kimche, and United States ambassador Morris Draper; Hebrew and English copies were signed later in Kiryat Shmona.[10] Kimche said the negotiations had lasted more than four months and described their purpose as “peace in place of war” and “friendship in place of hostility.”[10]

At Kiryat Shmona, Kimche also set out conditions for Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.[10] He said Israel would leave when its prisoners, missing persons, and the remains of those killed had been returned, and when PLO and Syrian forces had departed Lebanese territory.[10] His role extended from leading the Israeli delegation in the talks to signing the resulting agreement alongside the Lebanese and American representatives.[4][10]

Kimche also relayed an American diplomatic communication during the Sabra and Shatila massacre.[11] Draper called him with reports that IDF soldiers had entered banks and that Palestinians had been massacred; Kimche passed the information to Sharon.[11] The bank-entry report was incorrect.[11] Sharon separately responded that the Phalangist operation had stopped and its forces had been expelled from the camps.[11]

In 1985 Kimche participated in contacts concerning Iran, American hostages in Beirut, and proposed arms transfers that became part of the Iran-Contra affair.[12] On 3 July he met Robert McFarlane at the White House to discuss possible American political discussions with Iranian officials through intermediary Manucher Ghorbanifar.[12] McFarlane recalled Kimche saying that the Iranians would eventually need something tangible from the dialogue, probably weapons, and that they believed they could influence Hezbollah to release hostages in Beirut.[12]

McFarlane briefed President Ronald Reagan and senior officials about the conversation and, on 13 July, conveyed a presidential decision to Kimche by telephone following a request involving 100 TOW antitank missiles.[12] A further White House meeting took place on 2 August.[12] McFarlane recalled that Kimche asked whether the United States would replace weapons Israel sent to Iran and later proposed that an initial shipment of 100 TOW missiles would establish good faith and lead to the release of all the hostages.[12]

Kimche’s work also encompassed proposals for the professional training of senior officials.[1] He and Prime Minister’s Office director-general Avraham Tamir originated a proposal for a national college to train senior civil servants and diplomats.[1] The college was planned for 1987 and was intended to replace the Foreign Ministry’s internal diplomatic-training department; the surviving report does not establish whether or when it opened.[1] After his Foreign Ministry service, Kimche served as a special ambassador to Eastern European countries.[2]

Following retirement from government in 1987, Kimche lectured and wrote books.[4][2] His books included works with his brother Jon on pre-state illegal Jewish immigration and the War of Independence, as well as a book with Dan Bavly on the Six-Day War.[1] The Last Option, published in 1991, addressed the struggle for peace in the Middle East.[5][4] His historical writing also covered the Jewish community in Palestine and the State of Israel.[2]

In 1989 Kimche established the Israel Council on Foreign Relations under the auspices of the World Jewish Congress.[3] He conceived it as a platform for discussing international affairs from Jewish and Israeli perspectives, and during his leadership it hosted international leaders and other prominent guests from dozens of countries.[3] He served as its president and director-general.[3][2] In 2007 he founded the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, of which he was publisher.[3] He was also a co-founder of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism and became a member emeritus of its board of directors.[13]

In his later public life, Kimche advocated peace between Israel and the Palestinians.[5][2] He participated in the Geneva Initiative negotiations and became one of the initiative’s architects.[5][2] He also supported indirect negotiations with Hamas and called for adoption of the Arab League peace initiative.[2] These activities continued his participation in diplomacy outside formal government office.

Kimche died on 8 March 2010, aged eighty-two, and was survived by his wife Ruth and three children.[2] His wife linked his security work and peace efforts directly, explaining: “Because he was for the security of the state, he was for peace initiatives. It was the same reason he went on operations.”[2] Her recollection presented his support for negotiations as an extension of the commitment that had earlier taken him into intelligence work.

The Israel Council on Foreign Relations and the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs were institutions Kimche created after his government career to sustain discussion of Israel’s international position.[3] The council brought Jewish and Israeli perspectives into encounters with visitors from dozens of countries.[3] Kimche believed that Diaspora Jews had an important role in fostering Israel’s relations with the wider world, especially in countries without formal diplomatic ties with Israel.[3]

Colleagues remembered his effectiveness in international contacts and negotiations.[5][7] Yossi Beilin recalled that Kimche brought experience to the Geneva Initiative, argued over its terms, understood where compromises were possible, and persuaded others through a calm manner.[5] Former American diplomat Thomas J. Miller remembered him as “extremely well-connected.”[7] In a different setting, former diplomat David L. Mack recalled the Lebanon negotiations as businesslike and courteous, although “far from cordial.”[9]

His published work preserved another dimension of his public activity: studies of Jewish immigration, Israel’s wars, the Afro-Asian movement, and the search for Middle Eastern peace.[1][2] His teaching at Tel Aviv and Bar-Ilan universities and research at the Shiloah Institute connected those interests to academic life.[1] His council leadership and involvement in the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism maintained his participation in foreign-policy and security institutions after his departure from state service.[3][13]

Kimche’s role in Iran-Contra involved disputed accounts of the approval process for arms transfers.[12] A 1987 congressional biographical profile identified him as an advocate of arms sales to Iran and an intermediary between Iran and the United States and between Israel and the United States; it listed his then-current occupation as arms dealer.[14] The profile also reported an Israeli proposal linking the release of seven American hostages to the delivery of 100 TOW missiles.[14]

The American decision-making surrounding the August 1985 discussions was described as “quite murky”: no analytical paper or formal written record had been prepared, and participants differed in their recollections.[12] McFarlane said Reagan approved replacement arms and that he communicated this approval to Kimche, while other officials recalled opposition to transfers or uncertainty about what Reagan had authorized.[12] These differences limit conclusions about the precise scope of the American commitments conveyed through Kimche.[12]

A further allegation held that Kimche suggested to Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North that the United States overcharge Iran for weapons and direct the profits to Nicaraguan rebels.[14] The congressional profile repeated this as a reported allegation originating in a 9 January 1987 press report, rather than as an independently established finding.[14]

Kimche’s interpretation of the failure of the 1967 Palestinian initiative was also a political judgment rather than an independently established explanation.[5] He wrote that “Hussein, the PLO and Israel acted together—in different ways and for different reasons—to prevent this revolutionary idea of Israeli-Palestinian peace from taking root.”[5] His later support for the Geneva Initiative, indirect negotiations with Hamas, and the Arab League peace initiative reflected positions he advocated after leaving government.[5][2]