Engineer Memoirs
couldn't undertake a three-year commitment unless they, by a certain date, had decided
on everything. And then we would take off.
This was this first step that the agreement provided for, namely, that the Israelis would
prepare this requirement and the two sides would get together and agree. The
requirement would be complete and everything would be listed in there. Then if there
was any change in that, both sides had to agree to it.
It didn't work out because it takes a very tough person with the authority to enforce
a thing like that. If you look at the roles of all the different people involved, no one
person really had the authority.
As the thing evolved, Paul became more of an intermediary between the Corps of
Engineers and the Israelis. The sort of strict regime that the agreement provided for
never came to be.
Q:
But the Israelis who wound up having to work with the program and who referred to
the agreement as a disaster from their point of view understood what the agreement
contained?
A:
That's right. I don't buy that it was a disaster because it was the deal that Weizman had
made at Camp David. When the Israelis came to confront the notion of this offshore
project, they didn't like it.
Of course, things changed. The economy changed. The Israelis turned around and
wanted their industry to participate much more than had originally been contemplated.
And the Americans acceded to this.
One of the early things it produced was some unhappiness because some firms like
TAMS [TippettsAbbettMcCarthyStratton] had gone into this at considerable
sacrifice, anticipating that there would be a big amount of design work. As it unfolded,
the Israelis ended up doing a large share of the design. And the American firms that had
come into these joint ventures to help with the design did not get anywhere near the
work that they had looked forwarded to.
In TAMS' case, they got into a problem with the Arabs. I don't know how severe the
blacklist was. But they definitely were not allowed to participate in certain Arab
work--Saudi work--because they had undertaken this work with Israel, which was not
an uncommon situation. Then, when they didn't get the work in Israel, they were out.
They had given up the Arab work without getting commensurate work from this
source.
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