How wars ended
The Camp David Accords
Thirteen days without an audience, a mediator who would not let the parties leave, and at the end the first peace between Israel and an Arab state
Key points at a glance
- The Camp David Accords consist of two frameworks that Egypt and Israel signed on 17 September 1978 after thirteen days of closed-door negotiation.
- The negotiators were President Anwar Sadat and Prime Minister Menachem Begin, meeting at the US president’s country retreat in Maryland, with Jimmy Carter as mediator.
- The first framework became the peace treaty of 26 March 1979, which ended the state of war that had existed between Egypt and Israel since 1948.
- Israel returned Sinai in April 1982, and a multinational observer force has monitored it ever since. The second framework, on self-government, was never carried out.
In numbers
13
days behind closed doors
5 to 17 September 1978
2
frameworks agreed
one became a treaty, one stayed on paper
3
years to withdrawal
Sinai fully evacuated by 1982
Framework for a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel
- Subject
- Peace between two states
- Intended timeline
- Treaty within three months
- Parties
- Both states concerned signed
- Outcome
- Peace treaty of 26 March 1979
Framework for peace in the Middle East
- Subject
- Transitional arrangements and further talks in the region
- Intended timeline
- Transition of no more than five years
- Parties
- Palestinian representatives did not take part in the talks
- Outcome
- Autonomy talks without result
Sadat in Jerusalem
In November 1977 Sadat travels to Jerusalem and speaks before the Knesset. Without that step there would have been no invitation to Camp David.
Thirteen secluded days
From 5 to 17 September 1978 Sadat and Begin negotiate at the US president’s retreat, without press and without interim reports.
A mediator who shuttles
Carter brings in proposals of his own and shuttles between two houses, because the two leaders at times do not speak to each other.
Two frameworks
On 17 September both sign one framework for peace between their states and one for the remaining questions of the region.
The peace treaty
On 26 March 1979 the first framework becomes the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab state.
The withdrawal
On 25 April 1982 Israel returns the Sinai. A multinational observer force has monitored it ever since.
- Period
- September 1978 to March 1979
- Place
- Camp David, Maryland, and Washington
- Parties
- Egypt under Anwar Sadat and Israel under Menachem Begin, mediated by US President Jimmy Carter
- Outcome
- Two frameworks of 17 September 1978, out of which came the peace treaty of 26 March 1979
- Author
- Johannes Max Harms
What were the Camp David Accords?
From 5 to 17 September 1978 the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and the Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin negotiated at the US presidential retreat in Maryland. The mediator was Jimmy Carter.
Two frameworks came out of it. The first settled peace between Egypt and Israel. The second sketched a framework for the wider questions of the region, including an interim administration for the Palestinian territories.
The first framework became the peace treaty of 26 March 1979, the first ever between Israel and an Arab state. The second was never carried out.
Who negotiated, and how did it run?
The distinctive thing about the procedure was the seclusion. For thirteen days there was no press, no interim reporting and no way to defend a position at home before it had been fully negotiated. Anyone making concessions in such talks does not have to justify them publicly at the same time.
The mediator was not neutral in the sense of uninvolved. Carter had an interest of his own in the outcome, brought in his own proposals and shuttled for days between two cabins, because the two principals were at times not speaking to each other.
One step had prepared the ground: Sadat travelling to Jerusalem in November 1977 and speaking before the Knesset. Without breaking that taboo there would have been no invitation to Camp David.
What was agreed?
Israel committed to a full withdrawal from the Sinai peninsula, occupied since 1967. Egypt recognised Israel, both states guaranteed the inviolability of their borders and opened diplomatic relations. Sinai was demilitarised and is watched to this day by an international observer force.
The second framework provided for a five-year transitional period with self-government for the West Bank and Gaza, at the end of which talks on the final status were to take place.
The difference between the two parts is concreteness. The first names a territory, a deadline and two signatures. The second names a procedure whose subjects were absent from the table: the Palestinian side was not represented at Camp David and did not accept the framework.
How long did the peace hold?
The treaty between Egypt and Israel has held since 1979 and has survived every crisis in the region since. Measured in years it is the most durable settlement in this series after the Peace of Westphalia.
The price was high and paid mainly on one side. Egypt was suspended from the Arab League, the League moved its seat out of Cairo, and Sadat was assassinated in 1981. The treaty survived that too.
The second framework had no effect. The autonomy talks made no progress, and the questions it left open were taken up again fifteen years later in Oslo, again without a conclusion.
What is there to learn from it?
Camp David shows what seclusion achieves. Without an audience both sides could move their positions without defending them at home each day. It is still one of the few procedural features that recurs in many successful mediations.
The same episode also shows the limit. Where those affected by an arrangement are not at the table, the result is text without binding force. The first framework concerned two states that had both signed. The second concerned a third party that was not invited.
Both findings sit in a single pair of documents, signed on the same day by the same people. It is hard to show more plainly that the durability of an agreement depends less on its wording than on who is bound by it.
How did the conflict between Egypt and Israel begin?
The conflict begins with the end of the British Mandate for Palestine. On 14 May 1948 David Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the State of Israel in Tel Aviv, and the first Arab-Israeli war followed from 15 May 1948 to July 1949. From 1948 onwards Egypt and Israel were in a state of war. It lasted more than three decades and was only ended by the peace treaty of March 1979, long after the last war between the two states.
Two further wars deepened the divide. At the end of October 1956 Egypt fought Britain, France and Israel. Between 5 and 10 June 1967 Israel occupied, among other territories, the Sinai Peninsula. On 22 November 1967 the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242. It linked withdrawal from the occupied territories with an end to all states of belligerency and the right of every state in the region to live within secure and recognised boundaries.
In September 1967 the Arab states answered in Khartoum with three refusals: no peace with Israel, no recognition and no negotiations. On 6 October 1973 Egypt and Syria attacked Israeli positions in Sinai and on the Golan Heights. Five years later the Camp David text spoke of four wars in thirty years and expressly named Resolution 242 as the agreed basis for any settlement between the parties in the region.
How was the withdrawal from Sinai carried out?
The Camp David framework aimed to conclude a peace treaty within three months. In the event it took more than six months, until the signing on 26 March 1979. The treaty set out the withdrawal in two steps. Within nine months of the exchange of instruments of ratification, Israel was to pull back behind an interim line from El-Arish to Ras Mohammed, and within three years fully behind the international boundary.
Once the interim withdrawal was complete, the two states were to exchange ambassadors. For the period after that, an annex divided the border area into four zones, three in Sinai and one in Israel, and fixed for each how many troops and what equipment could be stationed there. The United Nations was to supervise this. On 18 May 1981, however, the President of the Security Council announced that the UN could not provide such a force.
Egypt and Israel therefore negotiated, with the help of the United States, a solution outside the United Nations. On 3 August 1981 they signed the protocol that created the Multinational Force and Observers, an observer force headquartered in Rome. Twelve countries provided the first contingents. Its mission began on 25 April 1982, the day on which Israel handed Sinai back to Egypt, and the force remains in place today.
What follows from it
Two agreements on the same day, the same signatures: one held for decades, the other not a month. The difference was not in the text.
Sources
- German Federal Agency for Civic Education: Israel and Egypt, a peace by detours (in German)
- German Federal Agency for Civic Education, Israel dossier: timeline (in German)
- Office of the Historian, US Department of State: The Camp David Accords and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process
- Avalon Project, Yale Law School: Text of the Camp David Accords, 17 September 1978
- Avalon Project, Yale Law School: Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt, 26 March 1979
- Office of the Historian, US Department of State: The 1967 Arab-Israeli War
- Office of the Historian, US Department of State: The 1973 Arab-Israeli War
- Nobel Foundation: The Nobel Peace Prize 1978
- Multinational Force and Observers: Origins
- Multinational Force and Observers: Mission Begins
- White House Historical Association: Camp David, the White House in the Mountains of Maryland
How it unfolded
- October 1973The war of October 1973 changes the situation between Egypt and Israel and makes negotiation thinkable for both.
- November 1977Sadat travels to Jerusalem and speaks before the Knesset. The visit breaks a taboo and makes direct talks possible.
- 5 September 1978Talks begin at Camp David. The parties are sealed off, with no press and no interim statements.
- 17 September 1978Two frameworks are signed: one for peace between the two states, one for settling the wider questions.
- December 1978Sadat and Begin receive the Nobel Peace Prize, before the framework has become a treaty.
- 26 March 1979The peace treaty is signed in Washington. Israel commits to withdrawing from Sinai; both states recognise their borders.
- 1979 to 1989Egypt is suspended from the Arab League. The suspension lasts ten years; the treaty outlasts it.
- April 1982The withdrawal from Sinai is complete. The second framework, meant to settle the question of autonomy, is never carried out.
More in this series
- The Peace of Westphalia1644 to 1648Envoys negotiated in two cities for five years while the war went on. What came out of it is still treated as a model for talks between enemies
- The Good Friday AgreementJune 1996 to May 1998After three decades of violence, two governments and eight parties agreed on an order that the public then voted on
Frequently asked questions
What is Camp David?
Camp David is the US president’s country retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of western Maryland, about sixty miles from Washington. Franklin D. Roosevelt chose the site in 1942 as a retreat and called it “Shangri-La”. Dwight D. Eisenhower later renamed it after his grandson David.
What award did Sadat and Begin receive in 1978?
The 1978 Nobel Peace Prize was shared equally by Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin. The Nobel Committee honoured them for having jointly negotiated peace between Egypt and Israel in 1978. The award came before the framework had become a treaty, as the peace treaty was not signed until March 1979.
Why are the Camp David Accords considered a partial failure?
Only the second part failed. The peace treaty between Egypt and Israel was signed and carried out. The talks on self-government foreseen in the second framework, by contrast, produced little. According to the Office of the Historian at the US Department of State, Palestinian representatives refused to take part, and the Egyptian and Israeli positions proved too far apart.
What did the peace treaty say about the Suez Canal?
Israeli ships, and cargoes bound to or from Israel, gained the right of free passage through the Suez Canal on the basis of the Constantinople Convention of 1888. Both states also recognised the Strait of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as international waterways open to all nations.
How did the Arab states react to the treaty?
Mostly with rejection. Egypt was expelled from the Arab League when the treaty was signed and was only readmitted in 1989. Nor did the United States win Jordan or Saudi Arabia over to support the accords. For ten years Egypt stood alone in the League with its peace, and the treaty remained in force throughout.
From history to a mission of your own
Every one of these treaties was the work of people who thought it could be done. The same stance is what it takes on a small scale: in a neighbourhood, a school, a club.
Find your peace mission