The Ford administration, primarily through the efforts of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, managed to maintain an uneasy peace between Israel and surrounding Arabic countries through two Egyptian-Israeli Disengagement Treaties. Egypt and Israel signed pacts in 1974 and 1975 that created a twenty-mile buffer near the Suez Canal. The 1975 pact enlarged the U.N. buffer zone between the two nations. Between 1973 and 1975, Kissinger exercised his “shuttle diplomacy” by making eleven trips to the Middle East to work on the Egyptian-Israel Disengagement Treaties.