“Thus says the Lord God: This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the center of the nations, with countries round-about her.” - Ezekiel 5:5
This is part twenty-three of the FAI Publishing series Center of Nations which examines the history of the modern State of Israel in the midst of an increasingly hostile world.
SIGNALS FOR PEACE
Jimmy Carter pushed his bicycle across the dusty paths of Camp David in mid-September, 1978. For almost two weeks, the president of the United States had played the role of arbiter between the president of Egypt and the prime minister of the State of Israel; first bringing both parties together in negotiations, and when that failed, shuttling between them in separate cabins to broker the terms of a formal peace agreement.
Since the Israeli War of Independence in 1948-49, a state of war had technically existed between the Egyptian regime and the Jewish State. After a stunning victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, during which Israel captured the entire Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 242, demanding that Israel withdraw from the recently occupied territories of the Sinai, West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights, but also demanding that all belligerents recognize the sovereignty of the others over their respective territory. Neither Israel nor their Arab neighbors complied with the terms of this resolution. Then at the end of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 338, which reiterated the terms of 242 while demanding that the opposing parties begin negotiations to resolve their differences.
As early as 1971, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had signaled his willingness to make peace with Israel for the return of the Sinai. Then in 1977, he suggested a diplomatic trip to Israel in order to address the Israeli Knesset. The timing of Sadat’s offer was surprising, as it came after the election of conservative Menachem Begin to the office of Israeli prime minister earlier that year. Begin had been a disciple of Ze’ev Jabotinsky in Betar, the revolutionary Zionist movement that formed in 1930’s Poland. After immigrating to the Land, Begin joined the Irgun militia and participated in the violent insurgency against Palestinian Arabs and British colonial authorities. After the War of Independence, Begin led the conservative Herut Party before forming the Likud Party with Ariel Sharon in 1973.
Capitalizing on the weakness of the Labor Party in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, Likud won parliamentary elections in 1977, breaking Labor’s continuous dominance of the Israeli Knesset since 1948. Begin was appointed prime minister in June of that year. He was an unlikely partner for Sadat in the pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace, but by the late 1970’s, both the Israeli and Egyptian governments were tired of war. At the same time, the peace-minded Carter Administration was keen for a Mideast peace deal. After three decades of war and stalemate, the geopolitical stars had finally aligned for peace.
THE CAMP DAVID MIRACLE
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s address to the Israeli Knesset in November 1977 was a watershed moment. Although his speech did not align with the agenda of the Israeli government, it was nonetheless the first time that an Arab leader had traveled to Israel proper and legitimized the Jewish State by addressing it publicly. A summit in Cairo later that year set the stage for what would become the US sponsored peace negotiations in 1978.
US President Jimmy Carter intuitively understood that public negotiations would place undue pressure on the negotiating parties. Therefore, he arranged for a private summit, secluded from the international press, at the presidential retreat named Camp David, located in the hills of Catoctin Mountain Park in Frederick County, Maryland. The negotiations began on September 5, 1978, with some initially cordial gestures between the two leaders suggesting a smooth process. But it did not take long for the reality of their differences to begin to surface. Carter and his staff watched in dismay as session after session devolved into heated arguments between the Egyptian and Israeli parties. Personal acrimony between Sadat and Begin grew so intense that they could barely speak to each other or be in the same room together. After a few days, Carter decided on a new format for negotiations, separating each side into their respective cabins and shuttling back and forth between them with documents that underwent dozens of revisions. This method of indirect negotiations with Carter as the middleman allowed for both sides to counter each proposal without aggravating the other party. This method made more progress, but both leaders remained intransient on key points, such as the evacuation of Israeli settlements in the Sinai and the acceptance of the terms of UNSC 242 and 338 regarding the establishment of a Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Rather than giving up, Carter redoubled his efforts, taking Begin and Sadat on a field trip to Gettysburg National Park in an attempt to relate the consequences of the American Civil War to the Mideast conflict. Finally, on September 17th, after thirteen long days of talks, Sadat accepted a final draft of a US proposed peace agreement, but Begin refused it. The Egyptian president prepared to leave in frustration, but Carter convinced him to stay. Begin and Carter had earlier agreed to exchange signed photographs of the three leaders together as a present to their grandchildren, and Carter’s recall of this promise gave him an idea. Getting the names of all eight of Begin’s grandchildren in Israel, the US president signed eight personalized copies of the photo to each of them. He brought the signed photos to the Israeli prime minister’s cabin, and a previously angry Begin was suddenly softened by the personal gesture. The grizzled prime minister began to cry, as the pictures of the three leaders with his grandchildren’s names on them caused him to consider their future in in Israel, as well as his present opportunity to shape that future. He offered a compromise to Carter and Sadat whereby he would present the draft agreement to the Israeli Knesset without publicly endorsing it.
After coming to the brink of total failure, the Camp David Accords were suddenly revitalized, and the framework for a peace agreement between the State of Israel and the Egyptian Arab Republic was returned to their respective governments for consideration.
WAR AND PEACE
The Camp David Accords resulted in two framework documents — the first outlining a plan for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the second for a bilateral peace agreement between Egypt and the Jewish State. The first document was produced in accordance with previous UN resolutions 242 and 338, and it was also a means of allowing Sadat to save face with his own people by appearing as the champion of Palestinian Arabs while making peace with Jewish Zionists. This document was curtly rejected by the UN because the international body had not been included in the negotiating process, nor had the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the agreement made no mention of the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees.
The second document provided the key points for relations between Israel and Egypt, including the termination of the state of war and the terms for diplomatic normalization. Israel agreed to withdraw its military from the Sinai Peninsula, to be repositioned behind the internationally recognized border between the two nations. Israeli settlements in the Sinai would be evacuated over a three-year period, and lucrative oil fields in the Sinai returned to Egyptian control. Sadat’s government was already in favor of the treaty proposal, which also had widespread support among the Israeli public. The Israeli Knesset voted overwhelmingly to endorse the framework of the second document in September, 1978.
On March 26, 1979, Sadat and Begin met in Washington, DC for a signing ceremony, and the first Israeli-Arab peace agreement was formally concluded, followed by an iconic handshake between the two leaders with a smiling Carter standing in the middle, a visual metaphor for the process which had brought all three parties to that moment. Anwar Sadat would become the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize later that year, an honor which he shared with Menachem Begin.
The Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement was the first and only such agreement between the State of Israel and an Arab State until the Kingdom of Jordan followed suit fifteen years later. It codified a doctrine in Israeli politics that is commonly referred to in English as “Land for Peace,” which endured for the next 30 years until the failure and subsequent violence the Israeli-Palestinian peace process made it untenable. The evacuation of Israeli settlements in in the Sinai, especially the IDF’s violent confrontation with angry settlers in the largest settlement of Yamit in April 1982, created a messy precedent for the Israeli government’s contention with religious Israeli settlers that would be revisited during the forced evacuation of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip 25 years later.
For Egypt, although bypassing the Palestinian issue set a successful precedent for future negotiations between Israel and Arab nations in the long term, the Camp David Accords nonetheless had unfortunate consequences for Sadat and his country in the short term. Egypt was expelled from the Arab League for ten years. Sadat himself was assassinated two years later in Cairo along with eleven other dignitaries seated around him while they sat for Egypt’s annual “Victory Parade” on October 6, 1981. The assassins were agents of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had opposed the peace agreement. The parade was ironically a celebration of Egypt’s victory against the Israel military at the Suez Canal during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
As with all other Mideast peace initiatives that have followed, the Camp David Accords produced mixed results. As the most populous Arab State with the largest Arab army, Egypt set an example for Mideast peace which endures to the present day. Israel and Egypt have remained partners in security against common enemies for the past 45 years in what has been a critical alliance for both nations. But the underlying causes of the Arab-Israeli conflict were left unresolved, leading to the formation of terrorist groups from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood such as Hamas in the 1980’s. The era of multinational Arab-Israeli wars had ended. A new era of elusive peace and intifada was about to begin.
Gabe Caligiuri is the editor of THE WIRE, as well as an occasional contributor to other FAI digital content on the subjects of history and geopolitics as they relate to the Great Commission. Gabe and his family live in California.