Framework for Peace in the Middle East and Framework for the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel | |
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Type | Bilateral treaty |
Signed | 17 September 1978 [1] |
Location | Washington, D.C., United States |
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Ratifiers | |
Language |
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, [1] following twelve days of secret negotiations at Camp David, the country retreat of the President of the United States in Maryland. [2] 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 the Palestinians and was condemned by the United Nations.
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. [3]
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. [4] 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. [5]
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. [4] 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. [6]
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. [7] 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. [8] Hafez al-Assad, who had no interest in negotiating peace with Israel, [9] also refused to come to the United States.
Sadat first spoke about the possibility of peace with Israel in February 1971; Egypt was the initiator of many moves in the 1970s. [1] 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. [10] The Sadat visit came about after he delivered a speech in Egypt stating that he would travel anywhere, "even Jerusalem," to discuss peace. [11] 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.[ citation needed ]
This section needs additional citations for verification .(September 2017) |
A mechanism had yet to be created for Israel and Egypt to pursue the talks begun by Sadat and Begin in Jerusalem. [12] 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. [12]
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. [13]
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. [14] 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." [15]
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. [16]
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. [17]
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. [18]
The preamble of the "Framework for Peace in the Middle East" starts with the basis of a peaceful settlement of the Arab–Israeli conflict: [19]
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.[ citation needed ]
The Accords recognized the "legitimate rights of the Palestinian people", a process to be implemented guaranteeing the full autonomy of the people within a period of five years. The Israeli Prime Minister Begin insisted on the adjective "full" to ensure that it was the maximum political right attainable; [2] however, Begin also specifically insisted that "on no condition will there be a Palestinian state". [7] This so-called 'full autonomy' was to be discussed with the participation of Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians. The withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank and Gaza was agreed to occur after an election of a self-governing authority to replace Israel's military government. [2] The Accords did not mention the Golan Heights, Syria, or Lebanon. This was not the comprehensive peace that Kissinger, Ford, Carter, or Sadat had in mind during the previous American presidential transition. [20] It was less clear than the agreements concerning the Sinai, and was later interpreted differently by Israel, Egypt, and the United States. The fate of Jerusalem was deliberately excluded from this agreement. [21]
The second part of the framework dealt with Egyptian–Israeli relations, the real content worked out in the second Egypt–Israel framework. The third part, "Associated Principles," declared principles that should apply to relations between Israel and all of its Arab neighbors.
The framework merely concerned autonomy of the inhabitants of West Bank and Gaza. It neither mentions the status of Jerusalem, nor the Palestinian Right of Return. [19]
The French historian, arabist, orientalist and professor Jean-Pierre Filiu, diplomatic adviser to three French ministers between 1990 and 2002, and also U.S.-born (with Palestinian roots) historian and Professor Rashid Khalidi, in the years 2013–2014 criticised the concept of 'autonomy' as used in the Camp David Accords: it is "devoid of meaning and content", it does not facilitate Palestinian's "right to liberty and self-determination" (etc.). [7] [22] The Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, these professors say, had emphatically construed an 'autonomy'-concept that did not include [7] (or according to Begin not even allowed for [22] ) a Palestinian state to be created. This flawing non-sovereignty-concept would be repeated in the 1993 Oslo Accords, Khalidi asserted. [22]
The UN General Assembly rejected the Framework for Peace in the Middle East, because the agreement was concluded without participation of UN and PLO and did not comply with the Palestinian right of return, of self-determination and to national independence and sovereignty. In December 1978, it declared in Resolution 33/28 A that agreements were only valid if they are within the framework of the United Nations and its Charter and its resolutions, include the Palestinian right of return and the right to national independence and sovereignty in Palestine, and concluded with the participation of the PLO. [23] On 6 December 1979, the UN condemned in Resolution 34/70 all partial agreements and separate treaties that did not meet the Palestinian rights and comprehensive solutions to peace; it condemned Israel's continued occupation and demanded withdrawal from all occupied territories. [24] On 12 December, in Resolution 34/65 B, the UN rejected more specific parts of the Camp David Accords and similar agreements, which were not in accordance with mentioned requirements. All such partial agreements and separate treaties were strongly condemned. The part of the Camp David accords regarding the Palestinian future and all similar ones were declared invalid. [25]
The second framework [26] outlined a basis for the peace treaty six months later, in particular deciding the future of the Sinai peninsula. Israel agreed to withdraw its armed forces from the Sinai, gave up its four air bases that had been built there since the Six-Day War (see map to the right), evacuate its 4,500 civilian inhabitants, and restore it to Egypt in return for normal diplomatic relations with Egypt, guarantees of freedom of passage through the Suez Canal and other nearby waterways (such as the Straits of Tiran), and a restriction on the forces Egypt could place on the Sinai peninsula, especially within 20–40 km from Israel. This process would take three years to complete. Israel also agreed to limit its forces a smaller distance (3 km) from the Egyptian border, and to guarantee free passage between Egypt and Jordan. With the withdrawal, Israel also returned Egypt's Abu-Rudeis oil fields in western Sinai, which contained long term, commercially productive wells.
The Camp David accords changed Middle Eastern politics. Notably, the perception of Egypt within the Arab world changed. With the most powerful of the Arab militaries and a history of leadership in the Arab world under Nasser, Egypt had more leverage than any of the other Arab states to advance Arab interests. Egypt was subsequently suspended from the Arab League from 1979 until 1989.
Jordan's King Hussein saw it as a slap to the face when Sadat volunteered Jordan's participation in deciding how functional autonomy for the Palestinians would work. Specifically, Sadat effectively said that Jordan would have a role in how the West Bank would be administered. Like the Rabat Summit Resolution, the Camp David Accords circumscribed Jordan's objective to reassert its control over the West Bank. Focusing as it did on Egypt, the Carter administration accepted Sadat's claim that he could deliver Hussein. However, with Arab world opposition building against Sadat, Jordan could not risk accepting the Accords without the support of powerful Arab neighbours, like Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. [20] Hussein consequently felt diplomatically snubbed. One of Carter's regrets was allowing Sadat to claim that he could speak for Hussein if Jordan refused to join the talks, but by then the damage was done to the Jordanians. [20]
The Camp David Accords also prompted the disintegration of a united Arab front in opposition to Israel. Egypt's realignment created a power vacuum that Saddam Hussein of Iraq, at one time only a secondary power, hoped to fill. Because of the vague language concerning the implementation of Resolution 242, the Palestinian problem became the primary issue in the Arab–Israeli conflict. Many of the Arab nations blamed Egypt for not putting enough pressure on Israel to deal with the Palestinian problem in a way that would be satisfactory to them. Syria also informed Egypt that it would not reconcile with the nation unless it abandoned the peace agreement with Israel. [9]
According to The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East:
The normalization of relations [between Israel and Egypt] went into effect in January 1980. Ambassadors were exchanged in February. The boycott laws were repealed by Egypt's National Assembly the same month, and some trade began to develop, albeit less than Israel had hoped for. In March 1980 regular airline flights were inaugurated. Egypt also began supplying Israel with crude oil". [27]
According to Kenneth Stein in Heroic Diplomacy: Sadat, Kissinger, Carter, Begin, and the Quest for Arab–Israeli Peace:
The Accords were another interim agreement or step, but negotiations that flowed from the Accords slowed for several reasons. These included an inability to bring the Jordanians into the discussions; the controversy over settlements; the inconclusive nature of the subsequent autonomy talks; domestic opposition sustained by both Begin and Sadat and, in Sadat's case, ostracism and anger from the Arab world; the emergence of a what became a cold peace between Egypt and Israel; and changes in foreign policy priorities including discontinuity in personnel committed to sustaining the negotiating process[.] [20]
Historian Jørgen Jensehaugen argues [28] that by the time Carter left office in January 1981, he:
was in an odd position—he had attempted to break with traditional US policy but ended up fulfilling the goals of that tradition, which had been to break up the Arab alliance, side-line the Palestinians, build an alliance with Egypt, weaken the Soviet Union and secure Israel.
Although most Israelis supported the Accords, the Israeli settler movement opposed them because Sadat's refusal to agree to a treaty in which Israel had any presence in the Sinai Peninsula at all meant they had to withdraw from the entire Sinai Peninsula. [29] Israeli settlers tried to prevent the government from dismantling their settlements, but were unsuccessful. [30]
In Israel, there is lasting support of the Camp David Peace Accords, which have become a national consensus, supported by 85% of Israelis according to a 2001 poll taken by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies (Israel-based). [31]
President Sadat's signing of the Camp David Accords on 17 September 1978 and his shared 1978 Nobel Peace Prize with Israeli Prime Minister Begin led to his assassination on 6 October 1981 by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad during the annual victory parade held in Cairo to celebrate Egypt's crossing of the Suez Canal. The president's personal protection was infiltrated by four members of this organization, who were hiding in a truck passing through the military parade with other military vehicles. As the truck approached the president, the leader of the belligerents – Lieutenant Khalid Islambouli – came out of the truck and threw three grenades towards the president; only one of the three exploded. The rest of the team opened fire with automatic assault rifles and struck President Sadat with 37 rounds. He was airlifted to a military hospital, where he died two hours after arriving. [32]
In total, 11 were killed from collateral gunfire and 28 were injured. Among the killed were the Cuban ambassador, an Omani general, and a Coptic Orthodox bishop. Among the wounded were Egyptian Vice-President Hosni Mubarak, Irish Defence Minister James Tully, and four U.S. military liaison officers. One of the assassins was killed and the other three were wounded and taken into custody. The surviving assassins were tried and found guilty of assassinating the president and killing 10 others in the process; they were sentenced to capital punishment, and were executed on 15 April 1982. [33]
Treaties and meetings
General articles
United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 (S/RES/242) was adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council on November 22, 1967, in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. It was adopted under Chapter VI of the UN Charter. The resolution was sponsored by British ambassador Lord Caradon and was one of five drafts under consideration.
Land for peace is a legalistic interpretation of UN Security Council Resolution 242 which has been used as the basis of subsequent Arab-Israeli peace making. The name Land for Peace is derived from the wording of the resolution's first operative paragraph which affirms that peace should include the application of two principles: Withdrawal of Israeli forces, and Termination of all claims or states of belligerency. Since the resolution stipulates that both principles should apply, they can be viewed jointly as giving up land for peace, referred to more concisely as 'land for peace'.
Muhammad Anwar es-Sadat was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the third president of Egypt, from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6 October 1981. Sadat was a senior member of the Free Officers who overthrew King Farouk I in the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and a close confidant of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, under whom he served as Vice President twice and whom he succeeded as president in 1970. In 1978, Sadat and Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel, signed a peace treaty in cooperation with United States President Jimmy Carter, for which they were recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize.
The 2000 Camp David Summit was a summit meeting at Camp David between United States president Bill Clinton, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat. The summit took place between 11 and 25 July 2000 and was an effort to end the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The summit ended without an agreement, largely due to irreconcilable differences between Israelis and Palestinians on the status of Jerusalem. Its failure is considered one of the main triggers of the Second Intifada.
The Egypt–Israel peace treaty was signed in Washington, D.C., United States, on 26 March 1979, following the 1978 Camp David Accords. The Egypt–Israel treaty was signed by Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, and Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel, and witnessed by Jimmy Carter, President of the United States.
The Israel–Jordan peace treaty, sometimes referred to as the Wadi Araba Treaty, is an agreement that ended the state of war that has existed between the two countries since the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and established mutual diplomatic relations. In addition to establishing peace between the two countries, the treaty also settled land and water disputes, provided for broad cooperation in tourism and trade, and obligated both countries to prevent their territory being used as a staging ground for military strikes by a third country.
Intermittent discussions are held by various parties and proposals put forward in an attempt to resolve the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict through a peace process. Since the 1970s, there has been a parallel effort made to find terms upon which peace can be agreed to in both the Arab–Israeli conflict and in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. Notably the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, which included discussions on plans for "Palestinian autonomy", but did not include any Palestinian representatives. The autonomy plan would not be implemented, but its stipulations would to a large extent be represented in the Oslo Accords.
The Arab League was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945 with six members: Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Yemen joined on 5 May 1945. Since its formation the Arab League has promoted the Palestinian Arab cause in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, including by imposing the Arab League boycott of Israel. The Arab League opposed the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947. On 15 May 1948, the then seven Arab League members coordinated an invasion of what was by then the former British Mandate, marking the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
The Madrid peace conference letter of invitation, also known as the Madrid Invitation or Letter of invitation to the Middle East Peace Conference in Madrid, of October 19, 1991, was a formal diplomatic invitation by the United States and the Soviet Union issued to Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians, calling on them to come together and hold a peace conference in Madrid, Spain. The resulting conference came to be known as the Madrid Conference that commenced on October 30, 1991.
The Rogers Plan was a framework proposed by United States Secretary of State William P. Rogers to achieve an end to belligerence in the Arab–Israeli conflict following the Six-Day War and the continuing War of Attrition.
The Steadfastness and Confrontation Front was a political initiative of 4 December 1977 by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the governments of Libya, Algeria, Syria and South Yemen following the visit by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Israel on 19 November 1977, which was widely seen in the Arab world as an abandonment of the previously-agreed principle of withholding recognition of Israel and as breaking the Arab alliance against Israel.
The Arab–Israeli conflict began in the 20th century, evolving from earlier Intercommunal violence in Mandatory Palestine. The conflict became a major international issue with the birth of Israel in 1948. The Arab–Israeli conflict has resulted in at least five major wars and a number of minor conflicts. It has also been the source of two major Palestinian uprisings (intifadas).
Egypt–Israel relations are foreign relations between Egypt and Israel. The state of war between both countries which dated back to the 1948 Arab–Israeli War culminated in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and was followed by the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty a year after the Camp David Accords, mediated by U.S. president Jimmy Carter. Full diplomatic relations were established on January 26, 1980, and the formal exchange of ambassadors took place one month later, on February 26, 1980, with Eliyahu Ben-Elissar serving as the first Israeli Ambassador to Egypt, and Saad Mortada as the first Egyptian Ambassador to Israel. Egypt has an embassy in Tel Aviv and a consulate in Eilat. Israel has an embassy in Cairo and a consulate in Alexandria. Their shared border has two official crossings, one at Taba and one at Nitzana. The crossing at Nitzana is for commercial and tourist traffic only. The two countries' borders also meet at the shoreline of the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea.
The Palestinian autonomy talks was an outgrowth of the Egypt–Israel peace treaty and were designed to lead to a resolution of the Palestinian nationalism in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. According to The Framework for Peace in the Middle East, one part of the 1978 Camp David Accords, Egypt and Israel were to agree within one year on elections for a Palestinian “self-governing authority.” The idea was directly related to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s idea of Palestinian autonomy.
We Can Have Peace In The Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work is a New York Times Best Seller book by Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States (1977–1981) and winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. It was published by Simon & Schuster in February 2009. It came as a sequel to his 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid believing that U.S president Barack Obama said he will make a personal effort for Middle East Peace from the beginning of his administration.
Egypt–Palestine relations are the bilateral relations between the Arab Republic of Egypt and the State of Palestine. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause and he favored self-determination for the Palestinians. Although the Egyptian government has maintained a good relationship with Israel since the Camp David Accords, most Egyptians strongly resent Israel, and disapprove of the close relationship between the Israeli and Egyptian governments.
The history of Egypt under Anwar Sadat covers the eleven year period of Egyptian history from Anwar Sadat's election as President of Egypt on 15 October 1970, following the death of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, to Sadat's assassination by Islamist fundamentalist army officers on 6 October 1981. Though presenting himself as a Nasserist during his predecessor's lifetime, upon becoming President, Sadat broke with many of the core tenets of the domestic and foreign policy ideology that had defined Egyptian politics since the Egyptian Revolution of 1952. In addition to abandoning many of Nasser's economic and political principles via the Infitah policy, Sadat ended Egypt's strategic partnership with the Soviet Union in favor of a new strategic relationship with the United States, initiated the peace process with the State of Israel in exchange for the evacuation of all Israeli military forces and settlers from Egyptian territory, and instituted a form of politics in Egypt that, whilst far removed from Egypt's pre-revolution democratic system, allowed for some multi-party representation in Egyptian politics. Sadat's tenure also witnessed a rise in governmental corruption, and a widening of the gulf between rich and poor, both of which would become hallmarks of the presidency of his successor, Hosni Mubarak.
The Oslo Accords are a pair of interim agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): the Oslo I Accord, signed in Washington, D.C., in 1993; and the Oslo II Accord, signed in Taba, Egypt, in 1995. They marked the start of the Oslo process, a peace process aimed at achieving a peace treaty based on Resolution 242 and Resolution 338 of the United Nations Security Council. The Oslo process began after secret negotiations in Oslo, Norway, resulting in both the recognition of Israel by the PLO and the recognition by Israel of the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and as a partner in bilateral negotiations.
Arab–Israeli relations refers to relations between Israel and Arab nations. Israel's relations with the Arab world are overshadowed by the Arab–Israeli conflict and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Israel has been at war with Arab states on several occasions. Furthermore, a large majority of states within the Arab League do not recognize Israel, and Israelis and Jews in general are considered a frequent target of antisemitism in the Arab world. After several Arab-Israeli wars, Egypt was the first Arab state to recognize Israel diplomatically in 1979 with the signing of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. It was followed by Jordan with the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty in 1994. In 2020, four more Arab states normalized relations. There have also been talks of an emerging Arab–Israeli alliance against Iran.
[Carter] outlined to Begin his program, which consisted of five points: (1) achieve a comprehensive peace affecting all of Israel's neighbors: (2) peace to be based on UN Resolution 242: (3) peace would involve open borders and free trade; (4) peace would call for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories to secure borders; (5) a Palestinian entity (but not an independent nation) should be created. Begin responded that he could accept all of these points except the Palestinian entity.
Even though Yitzhak Rabin was the first Israeli prime minister to accept formally the idea that the Palestinians were a people, he never officially conceded that this people had the right of national self-determination and statehood. These terms consequently occur nowhere in the 1993 agreements. Thus, although they nominally accepted that the Palestinians were a people, the Oslo accords in fact did no more than formally consecrate Begin's scheme: we have seen that the canny Polish-born lawyer understood that the terms he had obdurately insisted on at Camp David in 1978 "'guarantee that under no condition' can a Palestinian state be created."