Arab-Israeli Conflict - Camp David Accords
The Camp David
Accords were signed by Egyptian President Anwar 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.
Sadat also said he wanted them to be called the Carter Accords.
Background
Upon assuming office in January of 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 Institute report, Carter opted to replace the
incremental, bilateral peace talks which had characterized Kissinger's
“shuttle diplomacy” 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.
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 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 Israeli Labour Party to Menachem
Begin's Likud Party in May of 1977. While Begin officially favored the
reconvention of the conference, perhaps even more than Rabin, and even
accepted the Palestinian presence, Israel and eventually also Sadat
strongly preferred 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 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 American will to
pressure Israel after a meeting with Carter. His frustration boiled
over, and after meetings with Israelis, secret even to the Americans, in
November 1977 he became the first Arab leader to visit Israel, thereby
implicitly recognizing Israel. 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 isolate
Egypt from her Arab neighbors, a long-standing goal of Israel.
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.
A particularly difficult situation arose on day ten 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, arm-twisted, assured, and petitioned until at last an
agreement was possible. The result was the Camp David Accords.
The first agreement dealt with the future of the Sinai peninsula and
peace between Israel and Egypt. This was concluded six months later with
the signing of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty.
The second was a framework for negotiations to establish an autonomous
regime in the West Bank and the Gaza strip .
According to the Israeli-Egyptian portion of the agreement, Israel had
to withdraw both its troops and settlers from the Sinai and restore it
to Egyptian control 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 number of troops Egypt could place on the Sinai peninsula.
The framework agreement regarding the future of the Gaza Strip and the
West Bank was less clear, and was later interpreted differently by
Israel, Egypt, and the US.
Consequences
The time that has elapsed since the Camp David Accords have 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.
Also, the Camp David Accords 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
consideration, hoped to fill. His ambitions became visible in 1980 when
he ordered the invasion of neighboring Iran, starting a chain of events
that would later lead to an invasion of Kuwait in 1990, then ultimately
the toppling of his own regime in 2003.
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 peace treaty has not
fully normalized relations with Israel, both of these significant
developments had little chance of occurring without the precedent set by
Camp David. Who knows how many more successful peace negotiations will
take their inspiration from those thirteen days in September of 1978?
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_David_Accords_%281978%29
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