The Camp David Accord

The Camp David Accord

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By 1978 the thirty-year war that had been fought between Egypt and Israel had come to a point where there was a chance for peace. The area that had been at the center of the turmoil was the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip. The problem was that both countries believed that they had the rights to this land: Israel, biblically and Egypt, politically. So an invitation by President Jimmy Carter to President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel was extended. The invitation was for a meeting in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland at the presidential retreat, Camp David. The meeting was so that the framework of a peace agreement, known as the Camp David Accord, could be laid out between Sadat and Begin, with Carter as the mediator. Both Sadat and Begin had their reputations and their countries’ futures on the line, not to mention the future of the Middle East. All of the countries neighboring Egypt and Israel would be affected by an Egyptian/Israeli agreement of any kind and maybe encouraged to come to an agreement of some sort for that region.

A lot of problems had to be overcome for this summit to be a success. One of them was that the hatred and suspicions between President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin ran very deep. Another problem was that the outside pressures were too strong to permit an easy and early resolve for issues that had a long and ancient history (Mideast 26). The last problem was the hope that President Carter could put out of his mind the psychological profiles done by the CIA on both Begin and Sadat, which could have adversely affected his ability to mediate the proceedings.

The long-standing hatred between Sadat and Begin was not one of a personal nature. It had more to do with the political differences of their two countries. Israel has held that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were theirs because of the establishment of the State of Israel, out of what was Palestine in 1948 and by right of heredity. This was the land that God had told Moses was the Jewish Promised Land. The Egyptians, on the other hand, claimed that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were theirs. They based their claim on the fact that there were Egyptian citizens living in these areas at the time, the State of Israel was established, so therefore it must be Egyptian land.

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...reaty between them within three months of the signing of this agreement (Camp 43). So by the close of the summit, Begin had accepted the new “words,” which he once had considered improbable (Blitzer 48). For someone like Begin, who holds a lot of value in the power of words, this agreement was not easy to come by. What all the men involved wanted to know was how the meaning of the words would be translated on the ground in the months and years to come (Blitzer 48).

In the final analysis of the meetings at Camp David, it’s important not to focus on what was not accomplished, but on what was. The agreement that these two leaders came to was much more than a “framework for peace;” it was a first step in a long process. A process that many people here and abroad thought would never come. In the years that followed this summit, there were more and more talks that have lead to the relative peace in that part of the world today. So, what Camp David did more than anything else was to set the groundwork to get people talking to each other in a positive direction. The three men had progressed from an agreement to pray together to an agreement to try and make a lasting peace (Blitzer 48).