Camp David: Jimmy Carter’s greatest moment

one of Former President Jimmy Carter‘s defining moments was being the president who managed to negotiate the first peace agreement in the Middle East, successfully inaugurating peace between Israel and Egypt after 30 years of war.

With the Camp David Accords of 1978, Carter was able to stand out from his predecessors by achieving success in an area where they had failed.

The feat became particularly notable amid a presidency known for several economic and foreign affairs shortcomings.

According to Martin Indyk, the distinguished fellow for U.S. diplomacy and the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations, “Arab-Israeli peace has always been kind of the Holy Grail for American diplomacy”.

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“There have been other agreements, but none of them as important as the peace treaty that Jimmy Carter negotiated between Israel and Egypt. It was the first, and it was the most important,” Indyk, who was special envoy for Israel Palestinian negotiations under former President Obama continued.

The Camp David Accords were signed by then-President Carter, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in September 1978 and signaled peace between the two countries. Egypt was considered the largest and most powerful Arab nation at the time.

Negotiations had begun years earlier, in 1973, and were led by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The start of the discussions was prompted by the Yom Kippur War, which had proved a costly conflict for both Israel and Egypt, as well as the Arab countries it led.

Kissinger had managed to negotiate a cease-fire and disengagement pact, which led Israel to withdraw a third of its military forces from the Sinai Peninsula.

Carter first tried to finalize an agreement in November 1977, when Sadat made a historic trip to Jerusalem and made comments about his desire for peace between the countries.

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Indyk described these initial conversations as very difficult and noted that they were ultimately unsuccessful.

“So you had this … moment of great hope created by Sadat’s initiative, to go into the enemy’s den so to speak, in Jerusalem and talk about peace. But it turned out to be very difficult to get an agreement” , he said. “And that’s when Carter made the risky decision to bring the two leaders to Camp David to try to broker a peace deal between them.”

The high-stakes meeting with the two leaders at Camp David was confidential and lasted 12 days.

“They had no certainty that they could bridge the gaps,” Indyk said of the sensitive nature of the meeting.

Carter faced an important question during the meeting: What would happen to the Palestinian people?

“The Palestinian cause was a national cause for the Arabs, and therefore Sadat felt that he could not simply abandon them. That he had to have some understanding of what would happen to the Palestinians once he had made peace with Israel.” Indyk explained.

Indyk attributed Carter’s decision to focus solely on Israel and Egypt to the former president’s “genius.”

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“They had kind of a loose framework for what was going to happen on the Palestinian front, but essentially, the deal that he made, that he convinced President Sadat of Egypt to make, was a separate peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. This is what he achieved by negotiating that Camp David,” he said.

But that outcome was contrary to what Carter and Sadat aides had advised, according to Indyk.

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“That was Carter’s decision. Against the advice of his advisers and against the advice of Sadat’s advisers, it was his decision to go for a separate peace between Israel and Egypt.”

The deal with Sadat became a hallmark of Carter’s foreign policy and also earned him the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.

“He was a president under attack,” Indyk said. “Nothing else was good for him. There were other things he accomplished, but this was the most important.”