The Camp David Accords were a pair of political agreements signed by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin on 17 September 1978, following twelve days of secret negotiations at Camp David, the country retreat of the president of the United States in Maryland. The two framework agreements were signed at the White House and were witnessed by President Jimmy Carter. The second of these frameworks (A Framework for the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty Between Egypt and Israel) led directly to the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty. Due to the agreement, Sadat and Begin received the shared 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. The first framework (A Framework for Peace in the Middle East), which dealt with the Palestinian territories, was written without participation of any Palestinians and was condemned by the United Nations.
The agreement sparked broad discontent throughout much of the Arab world, as it was perceived as a unilateral peace initiative that neglected the establishment of a Palestinian state, ultimately seen as weakening the cohesion of the Arab position.
Preceding diplomacy
Carter Initiative
Carter's and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's exploratory meetings gave a basic plan for reinvigorating the peace process based on a Geneva Peace Conference and had presented three main objectives for Arab–Israeli peace: Arab recognition of Israel's right to exist in peace, Israel's withdrawal from occupied territories gained in the Six-Day War through negotiating efforts with neighboring Arab nations to ensure that Israel's security would not be threatened, and securing an undivided Jerusalem.
The Camp David Accords were the result of 14 months of diplomatic efforts by Egypt, Israel, and the United States that began after Jimmy Carter became president. The efforts initially focused on a comprehensive resolution of disputes between Israel and the Arab countries, gradually evolving into a search for a bilateral agreement between Israel and Egypt.
Upon assuming office on 20 January 1977, President Carter moved to rejuvenate the Middle East 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. The Yom Kippur War further complicated efforts to achieve the objectives written in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242.
Israel's prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and his successor, Menachem Begin, were both skeptical of an international conference. While Begin, who took office in May 1977, officially favored the reconvening of the conference, perhaps even more vocally than Rabin, and even accepted the Palestinian presence, in actuality the Israelis and the Egyptians 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.
Participating parties
Carter visited the heads of government on whom he would have to rely to make any peace agreement feasible. By the end of his first year (1977) in office, Carter had met with Anwar El Sadat of Egypt, Hussein of Jordan, Hafez al-Assad of Syria, and Yitzhak Rabin of Israel. The new Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin however, taking over the office from Yitzhak Rabin in June 1977, specifically demanded that the PLO would be excluded from peace talks. Despite the fact that Jordan’s King Hussein supported Sadat's peace initiative, Hussein refused to take part in the peace talks; Menachem Begin offered Jordan little to gain and Hussein also feared he would isolate Jordan from the Arab world and provoke Syria and the PLO if he engaged in the peace talks as well. Hafez al-Assad, who had no interest in negotiating peace with Israel, also refused to come to the United States.
Sadat Initiative
Sadat first spoke about the possibility of peace with Israel in February 1971; Egypt was the initiator of many moves in the 1970s. On 9 November 1977, he startled the world by announcing his intention to go to Jerusalem and speak before the Knesset. Shortly afterward, the Israeli government cordially invited him to address the Knesset in a message passed to Sadat via the US ambassador to Egypt. Ten days after his speech, Sadat arrived for the groundbreaking three-day visit, which launched the first peace process between Israel and an Arab state. As would be the case with later Israeli–Arab peace initiatives, Washington was taken by surprise; the White House and State Department were particularly concerned that Sadat was merely reaching out to reacquire Sinai as quickly as possible, putting aside the Palestinian problem. Considered as a man with strong political convictions who kept his eye on the main objective, Sadat had no ideological base, which made him politically inconsistent. The Sadat visit came about after he delivered a speech in Egypt stating that he would travel anywhere, "even Jerusalem," to discuss peace. That speech led the Begin government to declare that, if Israel thought that Sadat would accept an invitation, Israel would invite him. 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 West and the East, which were to revive the Geneva Conference.
The gesture stemmed from an eagerness to enlist the help of the NATO countries 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 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. Israel felt Egypt could help protect Israel from other Arabs and Eastern communists. In addition, the commencement of direct negotiations between leaders – summit diplomacy – would distinguish Egypt from her Arab neighbors. Carter's people apparently had no inkling of the secret talks in Morocco between Dayan and Sadat's representative, Hassan Tuhami, that paved the way for Sadat's initiative. Indeed, in a sense Egypt and Israel were ganging up to push Carter off his Geneva track. 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.
Searching a negotiation modus
A mechanism had yet to be created for Israel and Egypt to pursue the talks begun by Sadat and Begin in Jerusalem. The Egyptian president suggested to Begin that Israel place a secret representative in the American embassy in Cairo. With American "cover," the true identity of the Israeli, who would liaise between the Egyptian and Israeli leaders, would be known only to the American ambassador in Cairo.
Carter's acceptance of the proposed liaison scheme would have signaled American backing for Sadat's unprecedented peace initiative, but Carter rejected the proposal. However, Carter could not thwart the Israeli–Egyptian peace push. Within days Israeli journalists were allowed into Cairo, breaking a symbolic barrier, and from there the peace process quickly gained momentum. An Israeli–Egyptian working summit was scheduled for 25 December in Ismailiya, near the Suez Canal.
Proceedings of the Camp David meeting
Accompanied by their capable negotiating teams and with their respective interests in mind, the Israeli and Egyptian leaders Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat converged on Camp David for 13 days of tense and dramatic negotiations from 5 to 17 September 1978.
Carter's advisers insisted on the establishment of an Egyptian–Israeli agreement which would lead to an eventual solution to the Palestine issue. They believed in a short, loose, and overt linkage between the two countries amplified by the establishment of a coherent basis for a settlement. However, Carter felt they were not "aiming high enough" and was interested in the establishment of a written "land for peace" agreement with Israel returning the Sinai Peninsula and West Bank. 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 Sadat were "literally not on speaking terms," and "claustrophobia was setting in."
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. 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. During this time, Carter even took the two leaders to the nearby Gettysburg National Military Park in the hopes of using the American Civil War as a simile to their own struggle.
Consequently, the 13 days marking the Camp David Accords were considered a success, in part due to Carter's determination in obtaining an Israeli–Egyptian agreement, which represented considerable time focused on a singular international problem. Additionally, Carter was beneficiary to a fully pledged American foreign team. Likewise, the Israeli delegation had a stable of excellent talent in Ministers Dayan and Weizman and legal experts Dr. Meir Rosenne and Aharon Barak. Furthermore, the absence of the media contributed to the Accord's successes: there were no possibilities provided to either leader to reassure his political body or be driven to conclusions by members of his opposition. An eventual scrap of negotiations by either leader would have proven disastrous, resulting in taking the blame for the summit's failure as well as a disassociation from the White House. Ultimately, neither Begin nor Sadat was willing to risk those eventualities. Both of them had invested enormous amounts of political capital and time to reach an agreement.
Partial agreements
The Camp David Accords comprise two separate 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 Egypt–Israel 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.
Framework for Peace in the Middle East
The preamble of the "Framework for Peace in the Middle East" starts with the basis of a peaceful settlement of the Arab–Israeli conflict:
The agreed basis for a peaceful settlement of the conflict between Israel and its neighbors is United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, in all its parts.
The framework itself consists of 3 parts. The first part of the framework was to establish an autonomous self-governing authority in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and to fully implement Resolution 242.