Heroic Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter

Egypt and Israel had been engaged in four major military conflicts since the establishment of Israel in 1948, and tens­ions had been particularly high after the Six-Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973). Also the Israelis had taken control of the Sinai Penin­sula, which had been under Egyptian control, during the 1967 war.

Egyptian President A Sadat, President J Carter, Israeli Prime Minister M Begin 

Camp David Accords ceremony, White House, 1978. 

Wikimedia Commons (top image)

Hope emerged when Jimmy Carter became US Pres­ident in 1977. Carter was very inter­ested in Israeli-Egypt conflicts, spending time & political capital pushing Egyptian President Anwar Sadat & Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin  to­ a mutually beneficial deal. At first Carter tried to inc­lude all the war­ring Mid­­dle Eastern parties in negotiati­ons, including Jordan, Syr­ia and the Pal­estinians. Plus the Soviet Union. But Egypt and Israel prefer­red dealing just with each other, and Carter was int­uit­ive enough to support them.

The ultimate goal was to establish a framework for Middle Eastern peace by a] formalising Arab recog­nit­ion of Israel’s right to exist securely and b] creating a procedure for the with­drawal of Israeli forces and citizens from the West Bank’s Occupied Territories (to enable the establishment of a Palestinian state).

While the Camp David Accords were negotiated in summer 1978, they were actually the result of months of diplom­at­­ic efforts that began under Jimmy Carter. Resolution of Arab-Israeli conflict had been a holy grail of international diplom­acy since the passage of United Nat­ions Security Council Resolution 242 in 1967. This resolution crit­icised the acquisition of territory by the Six-Day War of 1967 and cited the rights of Palestinians with regard to statehood.

In its role as a world power, and Israel’s biggest ally, the U.S ultimately played a central role in achieving these aims. In doing so, it became a linchpin of Carter’s policies before the 1976 pres­idential election. But leaders in both Israel and Egypt had been slow to get together, UNTIL Sad­­at agreed to speak before the Is­rael’s Knesset parliament in Nov 1977 – he made a famous and brave speech of reconciliation! Just days later, both sides began inform­al peace talks that ul­tim­ately resulted in the Camp David Accords. 

Sadat may have agreed to talk to his rival Israel to gain favour with USA. Egypt’s ec­on­omy had been stagnant for years, esp since the blockade of the Suez Canal, an action taken by Egypt in response to Israel’s incursion into the Sinai Peninsula and the West Bank during the Six-Day War.

Acrimony betw­een Egypt and Israel heading into the Camp David talks led Car­ter to speak with each of the leaders separately, in their cabins. The two men were very different and their negotiations were painstaking - Sadat was an Axis sympathiser in WW2 whilst Begin’s parents and brother were murdered by the Nazis! Nonetheless, Egypt and Israel did agree on a number of prev­ious­ly controversial matters.

Camp David Treaty, Gallery of History display

Historyforsale

The resulting Camp David Accords contained 2 agreements. 1] A Framework for Peace in the Middle East sought the estab­lish­ment of a self-governing authority in the Israeli Occupied Ter­rit­or­ies of Gaza and the West Bank, as a step toward Palestinian statehood. Full implementation of U.N Resolution 242 included the withdrawal of Israeli forces and civilians from West Bank lands and the Sinai Peninsula. There was also recognition of the legitimate rights of the Pal­es­t­inian people to eventually seek full autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza.

The accords restored full diplomatic rel­at­­ions between the two nations! And Egypt allowed Israeli ships to use the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran, linking Israel to the Red Sea.

2] A Framework for the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel outlined the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty rat­ified by the two nations 6 months later, in March 1979 at the White House. 

The contentious future of Jerusalem, which both the Israelis and Palestinians wanted as their capital, was intentionally left out of this agree­ment.

The treaty also called for the U.S to provide both countries with military aid: $1.3 billion annually in military aid for Egypt, and $3 billion for Israel. In subsequent years, this financial assist­ance was given on top of other aid packages and investments involving both countries.

So the Camp David Accords were a series of agreements signed by the Egyptian President and the Israeli Prime Minister following a fortnight of secret negotiations at the Presid­ential retreat, Camp David. President Jimmy Carter brought the two sides together, and the acc­ords were signed 17th Sept 1978.

Although the accords were an historic agreement between 2 warring sides, and both Sadat and Begin shared the Nobel Peace Prize for 1978 in recognition of the achievement, their long term sig­nific­an­ce was arguable. Tragically, in Armed Forces Day 1981, Sadat was assassinated by his own Muslim extremists during Cairo’s military parade.

And many other Arab nations disagreed with the details of the Camp David Accords. Seeing Egypt’s formal recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a betrayal, the Arab League alliance of nations in the region sus­pended Egypt from its membership for the next 10 years. Egypt wasn’t fully reinstated until 1989.

NB the U.N never formally accept­ed the first agreement of the accords, the Framework for Peace in the Middle East, because it was written without Palestinian representation.

Though the Camp David Accords didn’t reach peace in the region, they did stabilise relations between the Middle East’s biggest powers. Israel and Egypt never came to blows even once, even when tensions between them remained high. And these accords laid the groundwork for the Oslo Accords, agree­ments signed by Israel and Palestine Liberation Organis­ation leaders in 1993-5 that resolved sig­nific­ant issues to move the reg­ion a step closer to a lasting peace.

The Nobel Peace Prize 1994 was awarded jointly to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East. But why did Jimmy Cart­er not win a Nobel Peace Prize until 2002 for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to inter­national conflicts?