Lecture on the Camp David Accords
1. why did Sadat
go to Jerusalem?
2. Camp David
3. why no Arab
state support for Camp David
4. consequences
of Camp David
Through the 1970’s, Arab-Israeli negotiations
continued to dominate the agenda of Middle East international politics (even
though other important things were certainly happening).
The United States, seeing the effects that Arab-Israeli conflict could
have on the world economy, pressed for some solution to the conflict.
Anwar Sadat needed some type of political arrangement with Israel to
complete his strategy of alignment with the West and economic liberalization at
home. It was these two impetuses
which pushed the peace process along through the numerous setbacks and
sidetracks it experienced.
I am not going to go into much detail about the twists
and turns on the road to Camp David and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.
That information is important, but you can find it in the Quandt, and to
a lesser extent Bickerton and Klausner, books. Rather, I want to concentrate
today on some of the major questions and puzzles that emerge from the process,
evaluating not so much the whens and the hows of this process, but the whys.
The first, most interesting, and in many ways the
simplest question is: why did Sadat
go to Jerusalem in November 1977? It
was really that unprecedented act that opened up the possibility of real peace
between Egypt and Israel. I would argue that the Jerusalem trip was part and
parcel of an political-economic strategy that Sadat devised to make the Egyptian
regime better able to provide the economic goods that were part of the social
contract undertaken by the Nasser government in the 1950's and 1960's; a social
contract upon which the stability of the regime rested.
It is indisputable that the Egyptian economy had by
the end of the 1960's/beginning of the 1970's run up against the limits of the
state-led growth, import substitution strategy of Nasser. US food aid through
PL480 ended in 1965; revenue from the Suez Canal and the Sinai oil fields ended
in 1967, as did much of the economic activity in the Canal cities; there was
nothing left to nationalize after the nationalizations of the 1950's and 1960's.
Capital sources were drying up, and the Soviets, while good at supplying
military hardware and helping on big projects like Aswan, could not provide the
capital necessary for food imports and other products.
Pricing policies on agricultural products that were meant to keep prices
down and allow the state to skim off the rural surplus depressed the
agricultural sector.
Meanwhile, efficiency in state enterprises was
decreasing, both as a result of capital shortages and the burden of extra labor
forced on the concerns by the state commitment to full employment.
A growing population was increasing the burden of state services --
education, employment and subsidies. This
was not a regime that was going to balance the budget on the backs of the poor,
or the middle class, for that matter.
On top of the crisis in Egypt's state-led, populist
economic strategy came the extra military expenditures that the defeat in 1967
added to the state budget: the cost
of the War of Attrition, of Soviet arms, of military preparedness in general.
Sadat reported in his memoirs that on the eve of the 1973 War he told his
advisors that the Egyptian economy had "fallen below zero."
He subsequently told an interviewer that "securing a loaf of bread
in 1974 was not on the horizon" because of Egypt's inability to acquire
hard currency.
One of the windfalls of Sadat's 1973 war decision was
a vast increase in Arab aid, the result of the 1973 oil revolution, and new
employment opportunities for Egyptians abroad.
While both were helpful, Sadat wanted to change the Egyptian economy in
such a way that more of that oil money, as well as other foreign private
capital, would come into the country, relieving the state of the burden of
having to employ the growing population and creating export industries that
would provide a steady source of hard currency.
The 1974 and 1977 investment laws were an effort to do just this.
However, the political costs of converting the Egyptian economy were
substantial. Foreign investors
wanted guarantees about the repatriation of profits and tax holidays, along with
political guarantees. Most initial
foreign investment went into the tourism sector, an important part of the
Egyptian economy but not one that would generate an enormous number of jobs.
International lenders, both official and private, wanted a number of
changes in Egyptian economic policy that were sure to hit the poor and the
middle classes hard: the gradual
reduction of subsidies on consumer goods, devaluation of the exchange rate
(importing inflation), reorganization of the inefficient public sector (cutting
state employment).
Sadat moved slowly on these questions, fearing the
consequences for political stability. When
in January 1977 he tried to institute reductions in bread subsidies, as urged by
the international agencies, there were riots in Cairo that lasted three days.
Sadat felt forced to rescind the price increases.
By 1977 two things were clear: 1)
while there were increases in foreign investment in Egypt, they had not met
either Sadat's expectations or the needs of the economy; and 2) to maintain
political stability while pursuing these changes in the economy, Sadat had to
increase the amount of money coming directly to the Egyptian government,
so it could continue to support, at least partially, the social contract that
maintained political stability with the lower middle and urban poor classes.
To both these things, he needed the whole-hearted support of the United
States -- to encourage Western investment and to receive foreign aid.
To get the whole-hearted support of the United States, he had to make
peace with Israel.
Sadat knew this from at least 1974, when his formal
relations with the United States were renewed.
But the pace of progress on the peace process was excrutiatingly slow,
when he needed fast movement to deal with his domestic political economic
agenda. It was in this atmosphere
that he announced his willingness to visit Jerusalem.
That
particular tactic was of course not determined by the Egyptian political
economy; it came out of the particulars of the diplomatic picture and Sadat's
own personality. But the decision
for peace that underlay it was driven by economic strategy on which Sadat was
basing regime security.
What was that diplomatic picture?
In the Arab-Israeli arena itself, the peace process had slowed to a halt.
The bitter and protracted negotiations that had led to the second Sinai
disengagement agreement in September 1975 -- which after all involved secondary
issues when compared to the big questions of peace treaties and complete
territorial withdrawals -- were not an encouraging precedent.
The new US Administration of Jimmy Carter had decided to pursue a Middle
East strategy based on formal negotiations at a Geneva conference.
Such a conference would put pressure on Sadat to coordinate his positions
with the other Arab parties, thus giving the most intransigent participants
(like Syria and PLO) an effective veto over Egyptian policy. From Sadat's point
of view, the peace process, as it had come to be called, was heading in an
unproductive and dangerous direction.
Moreover, domestic changes in Israel made the prospect
of successful negotiations in a Geneva context less likely.
The coming to power of Menachem Begin and the Likud bloc in May 1977
meant that Sadat faced an Israeli government even more committed than its
predecessors to holding on to the occupied territories.
Faced with Arab demands at Geneva, Begin would undoubtedly dig in his
heels and appeal for US support, repolarizing the Middle East and cutting off
Sadat's US option. Just as Sadat
needed to make an end-run around the other Arabs to get some freedom for
maneuver, he needed to make an end-run around Begin and Likud direct to the
Israeli public to loosen up solidified positions on the Israel side.
Given all these factors, then, why did I say that
Sadat's decision to go to Jerusalem was in the end simple to explain?
Because, in the final analysis, Sadat had predicated his whole
economic/political strategy, both in domestic and foreign policy, on peace with
Israel. He could have changed the
strategy, but his other options were not very promising.
Once the strategic decision was made, the psychological bloc about
dealing with Israel was removed, at least for him, opening up all sorts of new
possibilities. He did, personally,
love the grand, dramatic gesture, so undoubtedly the trip appealed to him on
that level, as well. But the trip to
Jerusalem, for all its drama and unpredictability, was a very natural and
logical extension of Sadat's overall strategy.
[not to denigrate its importance by any means -- vision of the statesman
and all that]
After many disappointments and setbacks, the path that
Sadat had blazed to Jerusalem led to the top of a small mountain in Maryland,
where US Presidents have a resort hideaway called Camp David [originally
Shangri-La, but renamed by Ike after his grandson David].
For all three participants, Camp David was an enormous gamble.
Carter was faced with an increasing public perception that his presidency
was a failure [this even before Iran]. He
desperately wanted some kind of diplomatic success to revive his political
fortunes, and to get something out of the enormous amount of time and political
capital his administration had spent on the Middle East.
For Sadat, the domestic and inter-Arab pressures that had influenced his
decision to go to Jerusalem were still operative.
Finally, Begin was also in a very difficult position.
If Begin was seen to have blocked the chance for Egyptian-Israeli peace,
US-Israeli relations might be severely damaged.
Moreover, Begin was being pulled two ways by his own domestic coalition.
One part of it was adamant about hanging on to the occupied territories
and feared a sell-out at Camp David; another saw an historic opportunity to
neutralize the Egyptian threat to Israel through real peace, and would blame
Begin if that opportunity was squandered.
In the end, it was Sadat who moved the most.
He got back all of Sinai in exchange for contractual peace with Israel,
and cemented his close political, economic and military ties with the United
States. However, the price was
agreeing to a decoupling of the Egyptian and Palestinian questions.
The framework for solving the Palestinian question agreed to at Camp
David -- based on the principle of negotiations for Palestinian
"autonomy" -- had no
formal link to the separate Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, and gave no
guarantees of what the end result of Palestinian autonomy would be.
In effect, Sadat chose the path of separate peace and had to face the
prospect of isolation within the Arab world and opposition at home [so many of
his own staff resigned after the agreements].
Begin agreed to withdraw from Sinai, a move which
alienated many of his hard-core supporters and led to the painful sight, for a
triumphalist Zionist like Begin, of Israeli soldiers forcibly removing Israeli
settlers from homes in Sinai. He
also agreed to an ambiguously phrased plan for West Bank autonomy that had to be
unsettling to him and his supporters. However,
Begin had won the neutralization of Egypt without making any specific promises
on the ultimate future of the West Bank, greatly freeing Israel's hand in the
future. Through his moves to
increase Israeli settlements in the West Bank immediately after the signing of
the peace treaty, Begin made it clear that he had no intention of giving up
Israel sovereignty and control over the areas he called Judea and Samaria.
Carter won a spectacular political victory that achieved a long-standing
goal of US policy -- a breakthrough peace agreement between Israel and its
largest Arab neighbor.
The cost in terms of US political, military and
financial commitments was very large. The
US committed itself to provide Egypt with between $2 billion and $2.5 billion in
annual aid; and to increase the Israeli aid package to about $3.5 billion
annually, with no end point set. The
agreement caused serious strains in US relations with Arab allies like Jordan
and Saudi Arabia. However, Camp
David and the subsequent treaty dramatically changed the strategic picture of
the Middle East, and by fundamentally altering the balance of power between
Israel and the Arab states opened up the road that other Arab parties have
subsequently traveled.
Despite the important changes in the
strategic-diplomatic balance wrought by the Camp David accords, the other Arab
states (including the PLO) did not rush to follow the Egyptian lead.
This is another interesting puzzle, particularly given the history of
Egyptian leadership in Arab-Israeli matters and the detriment to Arab military
power Egypt's separate deal with Israel caused.
To understand why, it is necessary for us to look at a number of factors:
objections raised by some Arabs to the terms of the agreements
themselves, the domestic situations of the various Arab parties, and the changed
nature of the inter-Arab political balance in early 1979.
All are very important for coming up with a satisfactory answer to this
puzzle.
Let us start with Syria.
For Hafiz al-Asad, Camp David was confirmation of all the suspicions and
doubts that he had harbored about Sadat and Egyptian policy since the end of the
1973 War. Asad's rejection of the
Camp David framework was not only because the Golan issue was never mentioned in
any of the documents coming out of Camp David.
It reflected the fact that for Syria, return of the Golan was not the
central issue in its confrontation with Israel.
Golan did not justify the sacrifices Syria had made, nor would return of
this modest piece territory accord with the goals of Arab leadership which
motivated Asad and his Bacth government.
A Syrian acceptance of peace would have to come in a framework that
recognized Syrian predominance over the rest of the Arab East, including Lebanon
and whatever Palestinian entity would emerge.
The fact that a Lebanese settlement was not part of the Camp David
framework, and that Jordan was given the pre-eminent role in the proposed
Palestinian autonomy negotiations, made Camp David a completely unacceptable
basis for Syrian participation in negotiations.
To some extent Asad felt that he still had strategic
options for confronting Israel and getting the deal he wanted, even with Egypt
out of the picture. He adopted a
strategy of isolating Egypt in the Arab world, turning to the Soviets for
military support, and (briefly) composing his differences with Iraq in efforts
to form a united "Eastern Front" to make up for the loss of Egypt.
Asad did face domestic problems, of a different variety than Sadat's.
His problems were more political than economic.
The Syrian economy, buoyed by the oil boom and some efforts in the early
1970's to privatize agriculture and open up to Arab investment, was doing pretty
well. It was the political challenge
of the Muslim Brotherhood to regime security that was top on Asad's list, and
making peace with Israel is not going to help him there.
The PLO position on Camp David was also very negative.
The PLO had been engaged in essentially fruitless negotiations, through
intermediaries, with the United States before Sadat's trip to Jerusalem about a
basis for PLO participation in the Geneva Conference.
Arafat immediately condemned Sadat's trip to Israel, and offered no
indication that he would be willing to follow a similar strategy.
With that in mind, the Camp David parties had assigned the primary role
for Palestinian autonomy talks to Jordan, which further solidified PLO
opposition to any peace process based on Camp David.
In an effort to sabotage the process, PLO forces in southern Lebanon
increased their forays into Israel, eventually provoking the Israeli military
incursion into southern Lebanon in March 1978.
It is the Jordanian and Saudi cases that are the most
puzzling. Both these states were and
still are very close to the United States, both in political and in
military-strategic terms. Riyad
especially had benefitted from Sadat's rule in Egypt, and was thought to be in
step with Sadat on almost all issues. Everyone
had always said that while Jordan could not be the first country to sign a peace
treaty with Israel, it would certainly be the second, because of King
Hussein’s pro-Western orientation and what he stood to gain, in terms of
return of West Bank territory, from peace. President
Carter was reportedly so confident of his ability to bring them both along on
the Camp David initiative that he told Sadat not to worry about either Jordan or
Saudi Arabia; that he would handle them. To
explain their refusal to accept the Camp David frameworks as a basis for peace
talks, it is necessary to look not only at their domestic situations, but also
at the increasingly important strategic role Iraq was playing in Arab politics
at the time.
To fully appreciate Iraq's strategic role, it is
necessary to recall that the Iranian revolution began to gain momentum at about
the same time that the Camp David negotiations were occurring; and that by the
time that the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty was signed (March 1979) Khomeini had
come to power in Teheran. Iran was
in chaos, and it appeared to outside observers that it would be a long time
before it could reassert its political-military dominance in the Gulf area.
The Revolution opened up a window of opportunity for Iraq, which now
appeared to the Saudis and the other Gulf Arabs to be the dominant regional
power in the Gulf. The Iraqis moved
quickly to exploit the void left in Arab politics by Egypt's peace treaty by
organizing an Arab front opposed to Camp David.
Syria, in need of a new strategic partner with Egypt out of the picture,
even agreed to a unity plan with Iraq [despite many years of hostility].
Given what appeared to be Iraq's new, major role in both the Gulf and in
the Arab East, both Saudi Arabia and Jordan had to give considerable weight to
Iraqi reactions in their policy decisions.
In this new strategic context, neither Saudi Arabia
nor Jordan were willing to risk the certain wrath of the Syrian-PLO-Iraqi
alignment for the uncertainties of US-sponsored negotiations.
The Saudis were already upset at what they saw as American unwillingness
to consider their delicate position, and uncertain about American assurances in
light of Washington's inability to save its major Persian Gulf client, the Shah.
Saudi strategic vulnerability at this time was further heightened by the
outbreak of border clashes between the two Yemens, in which the Marxist South
Yemenis had the upper hand. The
Yemen conflict ended in the March 1979 with an agreement on unity, something
that the Saudis seek to avoid. While
the US, in an effort to demonstrate the value of its strategic tie to the
Saudis, rushed to provide North Yemen with military aid, it was Arab League
intervention, led by Syria and Iraq, which actually brought the fighting to an
end. Given all these facts, the
Saudis temporized [domestic splits in the Family], but in the end opted to go
with the anti-Sadat Arab bloc. At
the Baghdad summit in March 1979, Saudi Arabia agreed with the other Arab states
to break diplomatic and economic relations with Egypt.
The risk of alienating Egypt and the US was seen as a lesser evil than
standing against the Iraqi-Syrian alignment.
In the case of Jordan, King Husayn faced the same
strategic situation -- a Syrian-Iraqi-PLO alignment that could do him real harm,
and the prospects of negotiations with Israel the end result of which he did not
know. Adnan Abu Odeh said that it
was the Syrian position that was the most important in the final deliberations
in Jordan. Like the Saudis, the King
opted for caution rather than daring [not everybody is Sadat].
So what were the consequences of the Camp David
agreements and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty?
First, lets look at what did not happen.
Camp David did not become the basis for a comprehensive settlement of the
Arab-Israeli conflict. This failure
is partially attributable to the agreement itself [Palestinian issue, Syrian
role], but was also the result of the particular Arab and Gulf political
configuration that emerged in early 1979. Upheaval
in the Gulf and the emergence of Iraq as a major Arab player in both the Gulf
and Arab-Israeli arenas made those Arab states who might have supported Camp
David hold back.
What Camp David did do, and this was its most
important consequence, was to radically alter the strategic balance in the
Arab-Israeli conflict. With the most
powerful Arab state removed from the military equation, the credibility of an
Arab war option against Israel radically decreased.
Syria attempted to redress this imbalance first through alliance with
Iraq, then through a commitment to achieve "strategic parity" with
Israel on its own, through the Soviet alliance.
Neither strategy had proven successful.
What is true of the strategic problems for the other
Arab states associated with Egypt's peace with Israel is also true for Israel,
but in reverse. As the credibility
of an Arab war option decreased, Israeli freedom of movement increased.
With Egypt out of the war picture, Israeli governments in the 1980’s
did not feel constrained to alter their policies on the West Bank.
Moreover, in the early 1980's the Likud government felt free to conduct a
very aggressive military policy in Lebanon, since Israel's southern flank was
secured. So the strategic
consequences of Camp David have a certain ironic twist to them.
Just when some Arab parties are coming around to the realization that
there is no credible Arab military option, and that negotiation is the only
practical path, the incentives for Israel to come to terms have been reduced.
Camp David had important consequences in the other
arenas of Middle Eastern politics. It
led directly to Egypt's ostracism from Arab politics, even if only for a few
years. But those were crucial years
– Iranian Revolution. In terms of
the superpowers, Camp David cemented the US-Egyptian strategic relationship and
basically isolated the Soviet Union within the Middle East. Moscow
and Syria were pushed closer together, each needing the other and having nowhere
else to turn. US-Israeli relations
were also strengthened by the agreements. The
US made a number of commitments to Israel in the negotiations, and the negative
reaction of other Arab states to Camp David served to unite the US and Israel in
pursuit of that policy line.
It is harder to say what the domestic implications of
Camp David were. That Anwar Sadat
was assassinated by a group opposed to Camp David is true, but one cannot say
from that that Camp David led to Sadat's death.
The political circumstances in Egypt at the time of the assassination
were much more complicated than that simple assertion comprehends.
Camp David might have helped to solidify the new strength of Likud in the
Israeli electoral picture, but it seems to me that the balance between Likud and
Labour had been reached with the 1977 election, before Camp David.