Peace in the Middle East

HISTORY A PICTURE AND ITS STORY
U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said,
“The president [Carter] described Begin as rigid, unimaginative, preoccupied with the meaning of words, and unwilling to look at the subject in a broader perspective. He
sounded really discouraged. He kept shaking his head and
expressing his disappointment.”
Sadat wanted an agreement, and he was prepared to speak
alone for Egypt; his advisers tried unsuccessfully to hold
him back. Begin was at first not prepared to compromise,
but his advisers, especially Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan,
pushed him to do so.
After ten days, negotiations almost fell apart. Sadat and
Begin were frustrated and had stopped talking to each other.
Carter pleaded with them individually and would not let
them leave the area. Carter then began to draft his own
handwritten proposals, which on the 13th day turned into
a framework for a peace treaty. Begin and Sadat signed
Carter’s document, and for their efforts, shared the Nobel
Peace Prize only two months later.
Unresolved details threatened the proposed peace treaty,
however, and Begin even announced that more Israeli set-
Peace in the Middle East
A sign of hope:
Anwar Sadat,
Jimmy Carter
and Menachem
Begin (from left)
at the White
House in 1979
Carter personally
begged the two men
to talk to each other
Sipa
istory often contains unlikely moments — situations that seem impossible or that are difficult to
explain. At such moments, though, a group of individuals who believe in something can bring
about major change. So it was 30 years ago this
month, on March 26, 1979, when U.S. President Jimmy
Carter helped Egypt and Israel make peace with each other.
Israel and its neighbors had been in a constant state of war
since Israel’s declaration of statehood in 1948. Four major
episodes of combat took place, in 1948, 1956, 1967 and
1973 — all of them involving battle in or for the strategic
Sinai Peninsula. Historically part of Egypt, the peninsula
was conquered by the Israelis in 1967 and defended by them
in 1973.
To the west of the peninsula lies the Suez Canal, a critical
supply route during both world wars and a major conduit of
the world’s oil. To the east lies the Gaza Strip, where much
of the Arab Palestinian population is concentrated. Egypt
governed the Gaza Strip from 1948 to 1967, before Israel
took control of the area and began building Jewish settlements there as a strategic measure.
Both Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli President Menachem Begin saw these issues as problematic in
the late 1970s. In 1977, in a speech in Egypt, Sadat said he
would be willing to travel to Israel to discuss peace. Begin
H
38 Spotlight
difficult
US
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responded with an invitation to come to Israel and speak
to the parliament in that country. Sadat then invited Begin
to come to Egypt.
Alone, the two men were doing what the international
community had not been able to do. U.S. President Jimmy
Carter saw the potential in leaving other Arab states out of
the discussion and invited Sadat and Begin to the United
States the following year.
Carter chose to meet them at a wooded retreat in the
mountains of northern Maryland known as Camp David.
For 35 years, American presidents had gone there to collect
their thoughts. The media would be shut out, and no one
would be present except the three leaders and a handful of
their key advisers. The minimum goal was a peace treaty
between the two Mediterranean nations.
On September 5, the discussion began with a proposal
made by Sadat. “No one spoke for a while, and I tried to
break the tension by telling Begin that if he would sign the
document as written, it would save all of us a lot of time,”
Carter later told PBS television.
“It was soon to be obvious that Sadat seemed to trust me
too much, and Begin not enough,” Carter said. “[Sadat] emphasized that he was eager to conclude a total settlement
of the issues, and not merely establish procedures for future
negotiations.”
3/09
www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/campdavid/
adversary ['{dvərseri]
aid [ed]
benefit from sth. ['benft frÃm]
Gegner(in), Feind
(Finanz)Hilfe(n)
einen Vorteil von einer
Sache haben
billion ['bljən]
Milliarde(n)
combat ['kɑ:mb{t]
Kampfhandlungen
conclude sth. [kən'klu:d]
etw. be-/abschließen
conduit ['kɑ:nduət]
Leitung; hier:
Transportweg
conquer sth. ['kɑ:ŋkər]
etw. einnehmen
draft sth. [dr{ft]
etw. entwerfen, aufsetzen
embassy staff ['embəsi "st{f]
Botschaftspersonal
equation [i'kweZən]
Gleichung; hier:
Kalkulation, Problematik
fall apart ["fɔ:l ə'pɑ:rt]
kaputt gehen; hier:
scheitern
in perpetuity [n "p«:pə'tu:əti]
auf unbestimmte Zeit
issue ['ʃu:]
Frage, Angelegenheit
league [li:g]
Liga
measure ['meZər]
Maßnahme
merely ['mrli]
lediglich
negotiation [n"goυʃi'eʃən]
Verhandlung
peninsula [pə'nnsjυlə]
Halbinsel
plead with sb. ['pli:d wθ]
jmdn. anflehen
pollster ['poυlstər]
Meinungsforscher(in)
preoccupied with: be ~ sth.
vor allem mit einer Sache
[pri'ɑ:kjəpad wθ]
beschäftigt sein
retreat [ri'tri:t]
Rückzugsort
rigid ['rdZd]
unnachgiebig
scold sb. [skoυld]
jmdn. schelten; hier:
jmdn. rügen
self-administering ["self əd'mnstərŋ] sich selbst verwaltend
shut sb. out ["ʃÃt 'aυt]
jmdn. ausschließen
tension ['tenʃən]
Spannung
treaty ['tri:ti]
Vertrag
unimaginative ["Ãn'm{dZnətv]
fantasielos
unresolved ["Ãnri'zɑ:lvd]
ungelöst, noch zu
entscheidend
wooded ['wυdd]
von Wald umgeben
tlements would be built in occupied territories. Carter flew
to Israel and Egypt and scolded the two presidents. He
also had one more thing to offer them: a promise of U.S. aid
to both sides in perpetuity — more than $1 billion a year
to Egypt and $2 billion a year to Israel.
Soon, both sides were in agreement: Egypt was given
back the Sinai Peninsula, but was not allowed to station
large numbers of troops there. Israel had to remove its settlers from Sinai, but was allowed to control the Gaza Strip.
Begin and Sadat signed the treaty at the White House (see
the picture on the left) in front of 1,600 guests.
Ironically, none of the three presidents benefited from this
historic moment. “It wasn’t relevant to most people’s lives
[in the United States],” Carter’s pollster, Patrick Caddell,
explained. “People were proud of it. They were happy
with it, [but] it got us nothing in the polls, because it wasn’t
part of the agenda of the American politics at that time.”
Later that year, Carter had to deal with the continuing energy crisis and the kidnapping of the
American embassy staff in Iran. His
helplessness in both situations made
him one of the least popular presidents in modern times, and he lost
the next election in 1980.
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Egypt’s actions angered other
vor Ort bitten um Spenden unter dem Stichwort
„Palästina“, auch online.
Arab states, which shut it out of the
www.medico.de
Arab League for 10 years. A jihadi
in the Egyptian military shot and
killed Sadat in 1981. Begin lost the
trust of his voters and was forced to
step down in 1983.
Der Friede zwischen Israel und Ägypten war ein Meilenstein in der Geschichte der Region. Wie
kam es dazu? Welche Vorteile brachte er? MIKE PILEWSKI berichtet.
Over time, however, the positive effects of the treaty became clear. It opened the way to trade and tourism between
Egypt and Israel, and the massive wars on a national level
that had threatened Israel’s existence were reduced to minor
conflicts on its northern border. Following Carter’s example, President Bill Clinton got Israel and Jordan to sign a
peace treaty in 1994.
With Egypt and Jordan no longer in the equation, the
question of the Arab Palestinians had to be resolved by the
Palestinians themselves. Gaza became self-administering in
1994, but paramilitary actions against Israel, and Israel’s responses to those actions, have made progress a distant hope.
For his life’s work in bringing adversaries together, Jimmy
Carter was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
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