The Camp David Accords were signed by Egyptian President Anwar Al Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister
Menachem Begin on September 17, 1978, following twelve days of secret negotiations at Camp David. The two
agreements were signed at the White House, and were witnessed by United States President Jimmy Carter. The Accords
led directly to the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty.
Background
Upon assuming office on January 20, 1977, President Carter
moved to rejuvenate the Middle Eastern peace process that had stalled throughout the 1976
presidential campaign in the United States.
Following the advice of a Brookings Institution report, Carter opted to replace
the incremental, bilateral peace talks which had characterized Henry Kissinger's
shuttle diplomacy following the 1973 Yom Kippur
War with a comprehensive, multilateral approach. This new approach called for the reconvening of the 1973 Geneva Conference, this time with a Palestinian
delegation, in hopes of negotiating a final settlement, however this never materialized.
Carter also wasted no time in visiting the heads-of-state on whom he would have to rely to make any peace agreement feasible.
By the end of his first year in office, he had already met with Anwar Al Sadat of
Egypt, King Hussein of Jordan, Hafez al-Assad of Syria, and
Yitzhak Rabin of Israel. Carter's and Vance's
exploratory meetings gave him a basic plan for reinvigorating the peace process based on the Geneva Conference and Israeli
withdrawal on all fronts, including the West Bank. The political situation in Israel underwent
a dramatic upheaval with a devastating electoral loss of the
long-ruling Alignment (the forerunner of the Israeli Labour Party) to Menachem Begin's Likud in May of 1977. While Begin officially favored the reconvention of the conference, perhaps even more vocally
than Rabin, and even accepted the Palestinian presence, in actuality Israel and Sadat were secretly formulating a framework for
bilateral talks. Even earlier, Begin had not been opposed to returning the Sinai, but a
major future obstacle was his firm refusal to consider relinquishing control over the West
Bank.
The Sadat Peace Initiative
President Anwar Al Sadat came to feel that the Geneva track peace process was more
show than substance, and was not progressing, partly due to disagreements with Syria. He also lacked confidence in the United
States to pressure Israel after a meeting with Carter. His frustration boiled over, and after clandestine preparatory meetings
between Egyptian and Israeli officials, unknown even to the Americans, in November 1977 Anwar Al Sadat became the first Arab
leader to visit Israel, thereby implicitly recognizing Israel. In Sadat's Knesset speech he
talked about his views on peace, the status of Israel's occupied
territories, and the Palestinian refugee problem. This tactic went against the intentions of both the United States and
the Soviet Union, which were to revive the Geneva Conference.
The gesture stemmed from an eagerness to enlist the help of the United States in
improving the ailing Egyptian economy, a belief that Egypt should begin to focus more on its own interests than on the interests
of the collective Arab world, and a hope that an agreement with Israel would catalyze similar agreements between Israel and her
other Arab neighbors and help solve the Palestinian problem. Prime Minister Begin's response to Sadat's initiative, though not
what Sadat or Carter had hoped, demonstrated a willingness to engage the Egyptian leader. Like Sadat, Begin also saw many reasons
why bilateral talks would be in his country's best interests. It would afford Israel the opportunity to negotiate only with Egypt
instead of with a larger Arab delegation that might try to use its size to make unwelcome or
unacceptable demands. In addition, the commencement of direct negotiations between leaders – summit diplomacy – would distinguish
Egypt from her Arab neighbors. The basic message of Sadat's speech at the Knesset were the
request for the implementation of Resolutions 242 and
338. Sadat’s visit was the first step to negotiations
such as the preliminary Cairo Conference in December 1977 and ultimately the Camp David Accords.
The talks
Accompanied by their capable negotiating teams and with their respective interests in mind, both leaders converged on Camp
David for thirteen days of tense and dramatic negotiations from September 5-17, 1978. By all accounts, Carter's relentless drive
to achieve peace and his reluctance to allow the two men to leave without reaching an agreement are what played the decisive role
in the success of the talks. Numerous times both the Egyptian and Israeli leaders wanted to scrap negotiations, only to be lured
back into the process by personal appeals from Carter. Begin and Sadat had such mutual antipathy toward one another that they
only seldom had direct contact; thus Carter had to conduct his own microcosmic form of shuttle diplomacy by holding one-on-one
meetings with either Sadat or Begin in one cabin, then returning to the cabin of the third party to relay the substance of his
discussions.
Begin and Brzezinski playing
chess at Camp David.
A particularly difficult situation arose on the tenth stalemated day of the talks. The issues of Israeli settlement withdrawal
from the Sinai and the status of the West Bank created what seemed to be an impasse.
Begin and Sadat were “literally not on speaking terms,” and “claustrophobia was setting in." In response, Carter had the
choice of trying to salvage the agreement by conceding the issue of the West Bank to Begin, while advocating Sadat’s less
controversial position on the removal of all settlements from the Sinai Peninsula. Or he could have refused to continue the
talks, reported the reasons for their failure, and allowed Begin to bear the brunt of the blame. Carter chose to continue and for
three more days negotiated.
Terms of the agreements
There were two 1978 Camp David agreements A Framework for Peace in the Middle East and A Framework for the
Conclusion of a Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel, the second leading towards the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty signed in March, 1979. The agreements and the peace treaty were both
accompanied by "side-letters" of understanding between Egypt and the U.S. and Israel and the U.S.[1]
The first agreement had three parts. The first part was a framework for negotiations to establish an autonomous self-governing authority in the
West Bank and the Gaza strip and to fully implement
SC 242. It was less clear than the agreements concerning
the Sinai, and was later interpreted differently by Israel, Egypt, and the U.S.
The second part dealt with Egyptian-Israeli relations, the real content being in the second agreement. The third part
"Associated Principles" declared principles that should apply to relations between Israel and all of its Arab neighbors.
The second agreement outlined a basis for the peace treaty six months later, in particular deciding the future of the
Sinai peninsula. Israel agreed to withdraw its armed forces from the Sinai, evacuate its
4,500 civilian inhabitants, and restore it to Egypt in return for normal diplomatic relations with Egypt, guarantees of freedom
of passage through the Suez Canal and other nearby waterways (such as the Straits of
Tiran), and a restriction on the forces Egypt could place on the Sinai peninsula, especially within 20-40 km from Israel.
Israel also agreed to limit its forces a smaller distance (3 km) from the Egyptian border, and to guarantee free passage between
Egypt and Jordan. With the withdrawal Israel also lost the Abu-Rudeis oil fields in western Sinai, which contained Israel's only
long term commercially productive wells to date.
The agreement also resulted in the United States committing to several billion dollars worth of annual subsidies to the
governments of both Israel and Egypt, subsidies which continue to this day, and are given as a mixture of grants and aid packages
committed to purchasing U.S. materiel. From 1979 (the year of the peace agreement) to 1997,
Egypt received $1.3 billion annually, which also helped modernize the Egyptian
military, turning it into the largest in the Middle East. Soviet-supplied until 1979, Egypt now received American weaponry such as the M1A1 Abrams Tank, AH-64 Apache gunship and the F-16 fighter jet. In comparison, Israel has received $3 billion annually since 1985 in grants and
military aid packages [2] [3].
Consequences
According to The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East:
"The normalization of relations [between Israel and Egypt] went into effect in January 1980. Ambassadors were exchanged in
February. The boycott laws were repealed by Egypt's National Assembly the same month, and some trade began to develop, albeit
less than Israel had hoped for. In March 1980 regular airline flights were inaugurated. Egypt also began supplying Israel with
crude oil" (Sela, 100).
The time that has elapsed since the Camp David Accords has left no doubt as to their enormous ramifications on Middle Eastern
politics. Most notably, the perception of Egypt within the Arab world changed. With the most powerful of the Arab militaries and
a history of leadership in Arab world under Nasser, Egypt had more leverage than any
of the other Arab states to advance Arab interests. Sadat's alacrity at concluding a peace treaty without demanding greater
concessions for Israeli recognition of the Palestinians' right to self-determination
incited enough hatred in the Arab world to bring about Sadat's assassination in 1981.
Egypt was also suspended from the Arab League from 1979 until 1989.
The Camp David Accords also prompted the disintegration of a united Arab front in opposition to Israel. Egypt's realignment
created a power vacuum that Saddam Hussein of Iraq, at one
time only a secondary power, hoped to fill. Because of the vague language concerning the implementation of Resolution 242, the Palestinian
problem became the primary issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict immediately
following the Camp David Accords (and arguably, until today). Many of the Arab nations blamed Egypt for not putting enough
pressure on Israel to deal with the Palestinian problem in a way that would be satisfactory to them.
Lastly, the biggest consequence of all may be in the psychology of the participants of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The success
of Begin, Sadat, and Carter at Camp David demonstrated to other Arab states and entities that negotiations with Israel were
possible — that progress results only from sustained efforts at communication and cooperation. Despite the disappointing
conclusion of the 1993 Oslo Accords between the PLO and Israel, and even though the 1994
Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace has not fully normalized relations with
Israel, both of these significant developments had little chance of occurring without the precedent set by Camp David.
Criticism of the Accords
For Israel, perhaps the most evident tangible benefit of the agreement with Egypt (other than the subsequent U.S. aid, which
Egypt also received) was the peace along the mutual border, enabling the Israel Defense
Forces to reduce their levels of alert on Israel's southwestern frontier. Although both sides generally abided by the
agreements since 1978, in the following years a common belief emerged in Israel that the peace with Egypt is a "cold peace."
There is widespread disappointment with Egypt, which is seen as adhering only to letter and not the spirit of the agreement,
particularly with the clauses concerning normalization of relations between the two countries. An additional view is that the
Peace agreement was between the Israeli people and Egypt's charismatic
President Anwar Al Sadat, rather than with the Egyptian people, who were not given the
opportunity to accept or reject the agreement with a free vote or a representative majority. While the treaty was approved by a
parliament majority in Israel, which has a multi-candidate, Multi-party electoral system, Egypt has had a semi-presidential system with a single candidate government since 1953.
Further supporting this claim is the fact that although Israeli tourists flocked to Egypt, only few Egyptians return the
gesture: in the peak year 1999, 415,000 Israelis visited Egypt. The highest number of Egyptians visiting Israel was 28,000 in
1995. (While this is undoubtedly attributable to the average Egyptian income being lower, it is also worth noting that Israel's
population is 6 Million while Egypt has 71 Million citizens).
Despite Israel's acceptance of Egypt's territorial demands, notable figures in Egyptian society who visit Israel or publicly
defend the Peace agreement (such as the late writer and Nobel Prize Laureate
Naguib Mahfouz) are rare and do so at their peril; they often suffer sanctions and
outright bans by professional and cultural Egyptian associations and sometimes receive death threats. Anti-Semitic themes and cartoons still appear in the Egyptian media [4] [5]. Egypt is also
seen as not doing enough to halt the flow of arms smuggling from Sinai into the Gaza strip,
where they are used by Palestinian extremist groups for terrorism attacks on Israeli
civilians. (On the other hand, Egypt has mediated several unofficial cease fire understandings between Israel and the
Palestinians). There have been many popular protests in Egypt against peace with Israel (from all levels of society, up to and
including intellectuals, students and Democratization movements such as Kifaya). These typically intensify following Israeli actions in its conflicts with the Palestinians and Lebanon, which Israel views as self defence, but
are seen in Egypt as harsh repression of Arabs.
According to an Egyptian Government 2006 poll of 1000 Egyptians (taken at the time of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict) 92% of Egyptians view Israel as an enemy nation [6], [7]. In Israel, there is lasting support of
the Camp David Peace Accords, which have become a national consensus, supported by 85% of Israelis according to a 2001 poll taken
by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies (Israel based) [8]. Nevertheless, a minority of Israelis believe the price Israel paid for the peace
agreement was too high for its present gains, i.e. having relinquished the entire Sinai Peninsula, with the trauma of evacuating
thousands of its Israeli inhabitants (many resisted, as in the town of Yamit and had to be
forcefully evacuated).
External links
See also
Arab-Israeli peace diplomacy and treaties
References
- Bregman, Ahron Elusive Peace: How the Holy Land Defeated America.
- Eran, Oded. "Arab-Israel Peacemaking." The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East. Ed. Avraham Sela. New York: Continuum, 2002.
- Meital, Yoram. Egypt’s Struggle for Peace: Continuity and Change, 1967-1977.
- Sela, Avraham. "Arab-Israeli Conflict." The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the
Middle East. Ed. Avraham Sela. New York: Continuum, 2002.
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