1978 - The Camp David Accords: A flawed path to peace

Arab News

19-04-2025

CHICAGO: When Egypt's President Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem hoping to prevent future wars and resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict through negotiations, he did so believing a comprehensive peace would not only include Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, but most importantly an Israeli agreement to withdraw from the occupied territories and allow for a the establishment of a Palestinian state.
During his lengthy speech to the Knesset, Israel's parliament, Sadat said: 'I have not come here for a separate agreement between Egypt and Israel … Even if peace between all the confrontation states and Israel were achieved, in the absence of a just solution to the Palestinian problem, never will there be that durable and just peace upon which the entire world insists today.'
Sadat did not live to see how right he was about how Israel's refusal to withdraw from the occupied territories would fuel a surge in extremism, create more violence, disrupt his own nation and make regional peace impossible.
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin's sole purpose was to remove the military threat posed by Egypt, divide the Arab 'confrontation states' and block demands for Palestinian statehood.
Sadat was naive to trust Begin, one of the Middle East's most vicious terrorists. Begin had orchestrated some of the most heinous civilian atrocities during the 1947-1948 Arab-Israeli conflict, including the massacre of nearly 100 civilians in the small Palestinian village of Deir Yassin.
That massacre, including pregnant women butchered and their bodies thrown into the village water well, shocked the Arab population of Palestine, prompting a refugee flight of fear. Before his Knesset speech, Sadat visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial which, ironically, is built on the remains of Deir Yassin.
He was wooed by Israel and the US, and treated like a distinguished head of state for making peace with Israel. He toured the US in 1978 and was feted at dinners in several major American cities, including Chicago, where I joined 500 other Arab Americans protesting against his 'surrender.'
The Camp David Accords earned Sadat and Begin the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize but scorn in the Arab world. The Arab League reacted by removing Egypt from its membership and moving the organization's headquarters from Cairo to Tunis.
Israel's strategy was clear to everyone but Sadat. He signed the accords after 12 days of intense negotiations in 1978, between Sept. 5 and 17. But just weeks before this, Begin inaugurated the settlement of Ariel, on seized land in the West Bank more than 16 kilometers east of the Green Line, which became a symbol of Israel's continuing war against Palestinian statehood and the center of Israeli settlement expansion.
Despite the disconcerting reality on the ground, Sadat went ahead and signed a formal peace treaty with Israel at the White House on March 26, 1979, officially ending the conflict between the two countries.
US President Jimmy Carter writes to Egyptian counterpart Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin expressing his commitment to finding 'a lasting peace settlement in the Middle East.'
In a handwritten letter, Carter appeals to Sadat for help: 'The time has now come to move forward, and your early public endorsement of our approach is extremely important — perhaps vital.'
After Sadat announces his intention to visit Israel, the country's new prime minister, Menachem Begin, addresses the Egyptian people from Jerusalem pleading for 'no more wars, no more bloodshed.'
Carter writes private letters to Sadat and Begin, proposing they meet.
Sadat and Begin arrive at Camp David for 10 days of talks.
At 9:37 p.m. Carter, Begin and Sadat board presidential helicopter Marine 1 and fly from Maryland to the White House. At 10:31p.m., Begin and Sadat sign a framework for peace.
Sadat and Begin jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Sadat and Begin sign the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty in Washington.
Sadat assassinated in Cairo by Islamic extremists opposed to the peace treaty.
When you look at the five fundamentals of the accord, only two were actually achieved. Egypt did get the Sinai Peninsula back, under demilitarized conditions, and the two countries ended their state of war and established diplomatic relations.
But three conditions were never met: meetings to resolve the Palestine question, with the involvement of Jordan, stalled; the introduction of Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza within five years failed; and an end to the Israeli settlements never even began.
The accords were never allowed to stand in the way of plans to entrench Israel's hold on the occupied territories. When US President Jimmy Carter lost his reelection bid on Nov. 4, 1980, and Sadat was assassinated while reviewing a military parade on Oct. 6, 1981, Begin was given the green light to close the door on Sadat's 'dream.'
Despite political differences, US President Ronald Reagan attempted to follow up on Carter's Middle East peace vision and in August 1982 proposed a 'freeze' on settlements, urging Israel to grant Palestinians 'autonomy' as a step toward statehood.
Begin's reaction was swift. On Sept. 2, 1982, with Carter and Sadat out of the way, he led a Knesset move to consolidate Israel's hold on the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Golan Heights, increasing the Jewish settler population. Israel, the Cabinet declared, would 'reserve the right to apply sovereignty over the territories at the end of the five-year transition period' toward Palestinian 'autonomy' that was specifically envisioned in the Camp David Accords.
In 1978, the settler population was only 75,000. By 1990, it had tripled to 228,000. Today, in excess of half a million Israeli settlers occupy at least 370 settlements, or 'outposts,' in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
This year, on Jan. 20, the first day of his second term in office, US President Donald Trump lifted the sanctions imposed by the Biden administration on far-right settler groups accused of violence against Palestinians.
Ironically, while the Camp David accords were supposed to create an environment of hope and optimism, the failure to advance them beyond the return of the Sinai created a sense of fatalism that fueled extremism, evidenced most dramatically, and with such shocking consequences, by the fateful attacks by Hamas against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Although the peace between Egypt and Israel remains, the failure to achieve peace with the Palestinians has ensured the accords remain little more than a formal version of an armistice agreement, and relations between the two countries are defined solely by military cooperation.