Jimmy Carter aimed to restart the Middle East peace process by revisiting the 1973 Geneva Accords. The Camp David Accords resulted in a flawed treaty but had positive consequences. Carter visited leaders in the region, but Menachem Begin’s opposition to Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank complicated negotiations. Egyptian President Sadat offered to discuss terms, leading to the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. The treaty included an autonomous self-governing authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, and substantial economic, military, and agricultural aid. The Camp David Accords led to lasting peace between Israel and Egypt, but also had consequences such as the rise of Saddam Hussein’s regime and Sadat’s assassination.
As one of his major foreign policy initiatives, then US President Jimmy Carter was determined to restart the Middle East peace process. The first approach was to revisit the 1973 Geneva Accords, a flawed agreement that came in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Carter’s hopes were for a comprehensive, multilateral agreement involving a Palestinian delegation in the talks. While the Camp David Accords resulted in yet another flawed treaty, there were also lasting positive consequences.
To lay the groundwork for the talks, Carter visited Anwar Sadat of Egypt, King Hussein of Jordan, Hafez al-Assad of Syria and Yitzhak Rabin of Israel. The playing field took a turn with the election of Menachem Begin’s alignment party in Israel. While Begin was a strong supporter of the Camp David Accords, he was also adamantly opposed to any Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. The Israeli prime minister was willing to negotiate many more concessions, including returning the Sinai to the Palestinians, but he remained stuck in the West Bank.
One of the first initiatives came from Egyptian President Sadat, who broke with his Arab neighbors and Communist sponsors by offering to travel anywhere, “even to Jerusalem,” to discuss terms. His decision was driven by efforts by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to help Egypt’s struggling economy, as well as a desire to put Egypt’s personal interests ahead of those of neighboring Arab states. Among the American negotiating teams, much of the burden fell on Carter himself to act as go-between and help broker much of the deal between Sadat and Begin, who weren’t even on speaking terms. After 13 days of sometimes tense negotiations, the framework for the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty was in place.
The final agreement had three parts where the first part called for an autonomous self-governing authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In the second part, the withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula was included: Israel returned the land to Egypt in exchange for normalized diplomatic relations between the countries. The third part of the agreement included substantial economic, military and agricultural aid to both Egypt and Israel. The military aid was a coup as it took Russia out of the picture when it came to Egyptian armaments.
In general, the Camp David Accords have led to a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt and a completely different perception of Egypt in the Arab world; Egypt was expelled from the Arab League from 1979 to 1989. It disintegrated the United Arab Front by taking a key player out of the picture. Furthermore, it has led to a vacuum in the region that gave rise to Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq and made the Palestinian question the centerpiece of any future Arab/Israeli policy. The Camp David Accords made Sadat such a pariah that he was assassinated in 1981.
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