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Essay on The 1978 Camp David Negotiations between Israel & Egypt
Peace has come," said Carter. "We have won, at last, the first step of peace--a first step on a long and difficult road."Hardly had the Camp David accords been signed on September 17, 1978, when the participants began to argue about what they had agreed to during the 13 days they had spent together at the presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains. On Sept. 18, President Jimmy Carter told Congress that Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin had agreed to a freeze on the building of new Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip until an autonomy agreement for those territories had been negotiated--a process that could take several years. For his part, Begin insisted that the freeze applied only to the three months that would be required to work out the final details of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.
It is widely believed that Sadat's decision to visit Israel was a spontaneous inspiration, Begin had already offered to return the Sinai in secret negotiations between Israel's Foreign Minister, Moshe Dayan, and Egypt's Deputy Prime Minister, Hassan Touhemi. Begin's initial plan, however, called for Israel to retain the Etzion air base in northern Sinai and for the Sinai settlements, of which Yamit was the most important, to remain, although both would be formally under Egyptian sovereignty. But faced with Sadat's fierce rejection--"Even if Israel comes three-quarters of the way, or 99.9 percent of the way, part of our land will still remain in Israel's hand"--Begin relinquished both air base and settlements. (Ross, 2004)
Israel, then, gave more for the treaty with Egypt than it had originally intended. Worse yet, in the end Israel also received much less than it had every right to expect it would get. The bargain struck by the treaty with Egypt was clear.....
