Carter Recalls Camp David

In a recent interview on the occasion of his new book, "Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President" which includes "fascinating glimpses into behind-the-scenes activity at the White House", we read:

Was there a role for faith when you were brokering peace with Egypt and Israel?

There was. When I was elected President nobody asked me to negotiate between Israel and Egypt. It was not even a question raised in my campaign. But I felt that one of the reasons that I was elected President was to try to bring peace to the Holy Land. And I was blessed with two other deeply religious persons, in fact Menachem Begin was the first religious Prime Minister of Israel. The rest of them were quite secular in their attitudes, particularly Golda Meier, who laughed when I brought that up when I met with her when I was governor.

Anyway, Anwar Sadat was a deeply religious Muslim and Begin was a religious Jew and the first thing we did was to provide a common prayer to the world that we would have peace there. And Sadat brought it up quite often and wanted to build a shrine on Mount Sinai that would be used by all three faiths. We would have done that, but he was assassinated soon after I left office, and the idea was dropped. But we talked about our common worship of God quite frequently while we were negotiating the peace agreement.

Did you actually pray together?

No, we didn't have a chapel at Camp David but we used a little room and the Muslims used it on Friday, the Jews on Saturday and the Christians on Sunday. We were very assiduous in our worship.

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New Documentary To Be Screened

A new film is to be screened on a supposed back-door channel to Israel-Arab contacts:

More info at this site.

NYTimes report:

“Back Door Channels: The Price of Peace” is a well-reported history of the Camp David talks, the events that led to them, and the difficult negotiations that followed to forge the peace treaty that was signed the next spring. Directed by Harry Hunkele and using interviews with more than two dozen involved parties, including Mr. Carter, the film pays particular attention to the behind-the-scenes communications among nongovernment officials who helped the peace process along when official representatives could not. Leon Charney, for example, an American adviser to Ezer Weizman, the Israeli defense minister, practically jump-started the final round of talks when he learned from an Austrian businessman with ties to Egypt that Sadat would approve a deal that simply returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt...

The film also focuses on the interplay among the leaders and the pressures they faced from powerful factions within their camps, and it reminds us what it takes to resolve the seemingly unresolvable: a total commitment from heads of state willing to put themselves at risk...the film is not congratulatory. The treaty, it notes, was supposed to be a first step toward a comprehensive peace settlement for the Middle East. More than 30 years later that larger task remains undone.

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Camp David Accords In the News

In a Washington Post article on Egypt post-Tahrir Square, New Egypt foreign minister likely to be tougher on Israel, we found this:

Egypt on Sunday got its second new government in less than six weeks, including a new foreign minister who is expected to take a tougher line with Israel than the government of the ousted president Hosni Mubarak did...

In one of the most significant shifts, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Egypt's foreign minister since 2004, was replaced by Nabil Elaraby, a career diplomat who won plaudits from demonstrators for joining the crowds in Cairo's Tahrir Square shortly before Mubarak resigned. He was subsequently appointed to the council of "wise men" named by the demonstrators to help steer the country's path to democracy.

As a member of the team that negotiated the Camp David peace treaty with Israel in 1978, he can be expected to abide by all of Egypt's existing commitments to Israel, analysts and former colleagues said. But he is renowned for having voiced reservations about some of the treaty's clauses to then-President Anwar Sadat, and "will not be willing to accept Israeli excesses in the occupied territories," said Mustapha Kamel al-Sayyid, a professor of political science at Cairo University.

"Public opinion in Egypt is in favor of a less soft approach to Israel and I think he shares this feeling," he added. "It will be very difficult for him to make the kind of concessions Hosni Mubarak made to Israel," such as during the 2009 Gaza war, when Egypt closed its border with Gaza.

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Recalling Camp David in Research

From a book review of A World of Trouble The White House and the Middle East - from the Cold War to the War on Terror, by Patrick Tyler | Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 640 pages:

Tyler also gives a good account of the Camp David negotiations that led to Israel's peace treaty with Egypt, and describes how the final late-night session before the agreement was reached would end up haunting Jimmy Carter. The president thought Menachem Begin had pledged to suspend settlement construction in the West Bank indefinitely, whereas Begin afterward said he had agreed only to a fairly insignificant three-month moratorium.

AFP Story on 30 Years Since Camp David Conference

Egypt surveys peace horizon 30 years after Camp David

CAIRO (AFP) — Thirty years after Egypt and Israel signed the Camp David accords, which led to Israel's first peace treaty with an Arab nation, the Egyptian street is divided between forgetfulness and optimism.
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the accords on September 17, 1978, after secret negotiations supervised by US President Jimmy Carter, leading to the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979.
"The what accords?" "No idea." "Sorry, I don't know the details," are some of the responses on Cairo's streets.
Others refuse even to give an answer when asked about Egypt's relations with Israel.
But while poorer Egyptians are generally unaware of the accords' existence, wealthier classes say a horizon empty of war with Israel is good both for humanity and for business.
The absence of war is paramount, says Hisham Abdel Aziz, a 47-year-old civil servant, because "they made too many people suffer."
The two countries fought five wars in 25 years: the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, the Suez Crisis in 1956, the Six Day War of 1967, the War of Attrition which ended in 1970 and lastly the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
More than 20,000 Egyptian soldiers died in the conflicts.
"I think the accords were a good thing because there are no more wars with Israel," says geographer Amr Osman, 44. "The most important thing is for the country to be at peace, for the economy to evolve and for tourism to develop."
Sadat made an unexpected visit to Jerusalem in 1977 to begin negotiations with Israel, becoming the first Arab leader to make an official visit to Israel and to recognise its existence.
"Sadat is the only Egyptian leader to have understood the American and Israeli mentalities. He was far-sighted. We got back all our land," says 26-year-old engineer Ibrahim al-Adli.
Israel had captured and occupied Egypt's Sinai peninsula during the 1967 war, with Israel returning the land to Egypt in 1982, evacuating its soldiers and settlers alike under the terms of the peace deal.
"Nowadays the Arabs have no sense of direction, no identity. They won't get anything back, with or without war," continues Ibrahim. "The Palestinians have missed their opportunity to get their rights back."
Tareq Khalil, 25, says the accords "haven't done anything. Zero."
"The accords didn't get us back Sinai. It was the wars beforehand," says Ahmed Eissa, 58. "The accords simply opened talks with Israel which were a dead letter."
Despite the peace agreement and the subsequent exchange of embassies, normalisation between the two populations is far away, although business possibilities abound, especially in tourism.
"Egypt welcomes Israeli and Jewish tourists. There's no problem because these are business relations. There's no relationship between peace and business," says a young man who declined to give his name.
Nevertheless, Israel frequently warns its citizens against holidaying in Sinai, because of what it says is the possibility of militant attacks or kidnappings.
Despite ongoing distrust on both sides, peace remains the ultimate end, whatever the means.
"We would not be where we are if the wars had continued. The most important thing is peace, with Israel or whomever else," says 25-year-old driver Hani Salem.