The Triple Handshake: Prime Minister Menachem Begin, US President Jimmy Carter and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat after the signature of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty in Washington. (Photo: GPO)
“In that day five cities in Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the Lord Almighty.” (Isaiah 19:18)
Last Wednesday, on the 35th anniversary of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, the Israel State Archives declassified and published online 67 documents, 18 of them in English, including telegrams and letters, as well as records of conversations and government meetings.
They tell the tale of Israel’s first set of negotiations with Egypt (perhaps since the Exodus) and the peace treaty signed on the White House lawn by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat on March 26, 1979.
“Let there be no more wars or bloodshed between Arabs and Israelis…. Let no young man waste his life on a conflict from which no one benefits. Let us work together until the day comes when they beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks,” Sadat said.
“What we have achieved up till now is no less than a miracle…. The hand of God is in what has been achieved,” US President Jimmy Carter told Begin.
The online archive publication is divided into the following three parts:
- Part A. Giving Peace Another Chance: Renewing Talks with Egypt, Crisis,
and Invitation to a Summit, July–September 1978
- Part B. Summit at Camp David: “Touch and Go” First Stage: Difficult talks
with Egypt: Carter presents his proposal (September 5–12)Part B. Summit at Camp David: “Touch and Go” Second Stage: Breakthrough and Agreement (September 13–27, 1978)
- Part C. Now or Never: US President Jimmy Carter’s Visit to Jerusalem and Signing the Peace Treaty, March 1979
In their talks, Begin and Sadat settled a dispute between Egypt and Israel over regional oil reserves and uprooted Israeli communities from the Sinai Peninsula.
“With a pained heart, but with head held high, I am submitting this proposal,” Begin told the cabinet when he presented the agreement on September 24, 1979. “Why with a pained heart? Because we fought every possible fight for these [Sinai] settlements… but I concluded that it’s better this way than to leave the settlers, with all the pain in my heart and deep sadness.”
Egypt also placed familiar pressure on Israel to freeze construction in Judea and Samaria (The West Bank). (Israel Hayom)
“No prime minister of Israel could ever agree to such a commitment,” Begin said.
Menachem Begin, Jimmy Carter, and Anwar Sadat
In a piece that compared and contrasted today’s Israel-Palestinian Authority talks with the Israeli-Egyptian peace talks, Al-Monitor columnist Mazal Mualem said that Begin and Sadat dedicated “themselves to the peace process and succeeded in conducting a personal and direct dialogue based on mutual respect.”
According to Mualem, that mutual respect is missing in the current negotiations.
“None of that exists between Netanyahu and Abbas. There is a gaping chasm separating them,” Mualem wrote.
“The current talks between Israel and the Palestinians will not end in a permanent agreement or even a framework agreement, for that matter,” she predicted.
However, there is reason to hope as the Israel State Archives reveal that negotiations between Israel and Egypt did not go smoothly. At one point, Sadat even broke off the talks when he was offended by a public rejection on the part of Israel of his request for a gesture of goodwill in Sinai.
“The ceremony on the White House lawn, broadcast live to the entire world, barely hinted at the dramas of the previous months,” the Israel State Archive website states. “The negotiations overcame many obstacles before they reached their goal. Frequently it seemed that they would fail, and the area would return to the era of conflict and bloodshed its inhabitants knew so well.”
Anwar Sadat, Jimmy Carter and Menachem Begin (left to right) at the Camp David Accords Signing Ceremony.
Meanwhile, a prominent former member of an Egyptian Islamist terrorist group, Al-Gama’a Al-Islamiyya, recently declared that it isn’t Israel that is preventing peace, but the Palestinian leadership.
Dr. Tawfik Hamid, now a Senior Fellow and Chair for the Study of Islamic Radicalism at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, said that the leadership’s “barbaric attitude towards Jews” was responsible for them not responding to Israel’s repeated overtures of peace.
“You have one million Arabs living in Israel with the Jews, and they are not suffering like the Arabs who are actually controlled by Arabs” elsewhere in the Middle East, he said.
“To be honest, you have to say that the suffering of the Palestinians is because of their leadership and the wrong decisions of leaders like Hamas, not Israel,” he stated. “The moment the Palestinian leadership stops its arrogance and its barbaric attitude towards the Jews then you will see that things will change and you will see that no Palestinian will be suffering there.”
Jimmy Carter and Menachem Begin
