We will sap our stature as national leaders.”. (It would, for example, take years of international arbitration to resolve a boundary dispute.). New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983. All Rights Reserved. It soon became clear, however, that Egypt and Israel preferred dealing solely with each other, and Carter adjusted his expectations accordingly. His efforts came to fruition on September 17, when he, Sadat and Begin signed two framework agreements at the White House. In the three decades following modern Israel’s founding in 1948, the two countries waged four major wars against one another, plus a so-called War of Attrition in which they traded artillery fire along the Suez Canal. With tempers flaring, the summit nearly collapsed on several occasions. terrorist attack along Israel’s Coastal Highway. Former President Jimmy Carter Thursday criticized the new US plan for the Mideast unveiled earlier this week, saying the plan will harm future … “After just a couple of days,” Kurtzer says, “Sadat and Begin basically didn’t want to talk to each other anymore.”. Carter’s popularity was suffering from rising inflation, unemployment and energy prices, and his advisers worried that a failure at Camp David would make him look weak. A well-known Middle East scholar, and until recently a fellow of Emory University's Carter Center, Stein resigned his position because of strenuous objections to the content of Carter's book. Israel and Egypt did not make good neighbors. Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Complicating matters was a devastating terrorist attack along Israel’s Coastal Highway, followed by a bloody Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, a stronghold for Palestinian militants. Their historic enmity notwithstanding, the two countries actually faced similar national security challenges. Begin, whose conservative Likud Party historically opposed trading land for peace, was reportedly reluctant to even use the word “Palestinian,” and he insisted on calling the West Bank by its biblical names: Judea and Samaria.
As president, the Georgia-born Carter initially tried to incorporate all the warring Middle Eastern parties in negotiations, including Jordan, Syria and the Palestinians. Born in Plains, Georgia, on October 1, 1924, James Earle Carter Jr. attended the U.S. How Jimmy Carter Brokered a Hard-Won Peace Deal Between Israel and Egypt The 1978 Camp David Accords secured a lasting peace between two longtime enemies in the Middle East. One called for Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, which it had conquered from Egypt in the 1967 Six-Day War, in exchange for the establishment of full diplomatic relations, whereas the other, more vaguely worded document, called for a “self-governing” Palestinian authority in the West Bank and Gaza, along with recognition of “the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”, Though met with great fanfare—Sadat and Begin shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize, and Carter would get his own Nobel Prize years later—the Camp David Accords did not bring an immediate end to hostilities. Sadat, on the other hand, was coping with attempts by Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi to topple him from power. Although the peace these three leaders forged at Camp David was “partial and incomplete,” Wright writes, it “nonetheless stands as one of the great diplomatic triumphs of the 20th century.”. Naval Academy at Annapolis, graduating in 1946. “Let history record that deep and ancient antagonism can be settled without bloodshed and without staggering waste of precious lives,” Carter said at the time. Carter was determined to bring about peace in the Middle East, despite the seeming impossibility of the challenge. In the White House, Carter's closest advisers cautioned him against being drawn into a hopeless situation that could create even more political problems for his administration. “In all sincerity, I tell you, we welcome you among us, with full security and safety.”, Begin reciprocated by flying to Ismailia, Egypt, where peace talks got underway. Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-1981. Also see Stuart E. Eizenstat, “Jimmy Carter’s Unheralded Legacy,” New York Times, August 25, 2015, A19. Shortly thereafter he married Rosalynn Smith, a fellow native of Plains; the couple would have four children. Prime Minister Menachem Begin meeting with Egyptian president Anwar al Sadat at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, during Sadat's visit to Israel on November 19, 1977. From day one of his presidency, Carter showed great interest in the conflict, spending much time and political capital cajoling Egypt’s and Israel’s leaders toward what he believed would be a mutually beneficial deal.
HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. ISBN 0-374-23663-1. pg. The 1978 Camp David Accords secured a lasting peace between two longtime enemies in the Middle East. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Ibid., 317-320. At one point, Carter took Sadat and Begin to the site of the Battle of Gettysburg, an implicit warning about what could happen should negotiations fail. The treaty has held ever since and includes provisions that the United States provide both countries with billions of dollars in military and economic aid. As Wright notes, though, unresolved issues abound, particularly regarding the Palestinians, who did not participate in the Camp David summit. Taking his own copious notes, he would rush back and forth between the two camps, often negotiating far into the night. Moreover, Daigle explains, Sadat “feared that the Ethiopian Revolution would spill into neighboring Sudan, which could bring a hostile government to power there and threaten the supply of Nile River water, the lifeblood of the Egyptian economy.”, Despite high hopes triggered by Sadat’s visit, a negotiating breakthrough proved elusive. Perhaps not surprisingly, subsequent negotiations between Israel and Egypt proved difficult, prompting Carter to visit both countries in March 1979 to tackle remaining differences. Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and President Jimmy Carter during their peace talks on September 6, 1978 at the presidential retreat of Camp David in Maryland. In 1980, Carter was crushed in his bid for re-election. Undeterred, Carter pushed ahead, scheduling the Camp David summit for September 5, 1978. “Egypt and Israel simply could not make peace without the presence of a trusted third party,” Wright states. ^ Brzezinski, Zbigniew. By the summer of 1978, with peace tantalizingly close, negotiations stalled. Steven L. Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict: Making America’s Middle East Policy, from Truman to Reagan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 376, 379-380. Finally, on March 26, 1979, Egypt and Israel signed an official peace treaty.
“While Carter had good intentions in wanting to help the Palestinians, his policies and support for the Camp David agreements actually set them back quite a bit,” Daigle says, pointing out that, among other things, he never backed the creation of an independent Palestinian state. “[They] had a shared interest in fighting the rise of Islamic radicalism,” Daigle points out, plus “they both wanted to prevent Soviet intervention in the region, and they both sought U.S. weapons and financial assistance.”, Both Sadat and Begin also felt themselves surrounded by enemies. To break the impasse, Carter invited Egypt’s President Anwar el-Sadat and Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin to a summit at Camp David, sequestering them for nearly two weeks as the terms of a peace agreement were painstakingly hammered out. In addition to drawing up a U.S. peace proposal, which would undergo many draft revisions, he threatened to withdraw U.S. aid and friendship, which both countries desperately needed. © 2020 A&E Television Networks, LLC. “One of Carter’s achievements is that he was smart enough…and agile enough to support what Sadat and Begin were doing in essentially a bilateral process,” Daniel C. Kurtzer, a professor of Middle East policy studies at Princeton University and a former U.S. ambassador to both Egypt and Israel, tells HISTORY. “The Israeli approach was very legalistic and focused on details,” Kurtzer says, “while the Egyptian approach was focused on the big picture.”. “For Carter a comprehensive peace agreement was not just the right thing to do, but he believed it would improve U.S.-Soviet relations and strengthen the U.S. position in the Arab world,” says Craig Daigle, an associate professor of history at the City College of New York, who is currently writing a book entitled Camp David and the Remaking of the Middle East. As frustrations mounted, Carter, who stayed involved in negotiations every step of the way, looked to stop the talks from collapsing. From the very beginning, Sadat and Begin clashed, wasting no opportunity to dredge up past grievances and showcasing their very different personalities. Since then, Israel and Egypt have not once come to blows, even as tensions between them remain high.
For 13 days, far longer than he had expected the summit to last, Carter put aside his other presidential duties to work on Middle Eastern peace. In 1953, he was preparing to serve as an engineering officer on the submarine Seawolf when his father died. Carter realized that the two leaders would never come to terms on their own and that he needed to take on a more active role. Mostly, though, he began meeting with the Israeli and Egyptian teams separately. Carter also employed a strategy of leaving the two leaders out of it as much as possible, preferring instead to deal with certain advisers and only coming to Begin and Sadat for final approval. In his book, Thirteen Days in September: The Dramatic Story of the Struggle for Peace, author Lawrence Wright credits Carter’s “unswerving commitment” to resolving the conflict. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. Glimmers of hope began to appear, however, around the time Jimmy Carter took office in 1977. Author: Taking the advice of his wife, Rosalynn, he eventually settled on inviting Sadat and Begin to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, believing the bucolic setting might soften the acrimony on all sides.
Carter’s seven-year career in the Navy included five years on submarine duty.