The peace treaty includes a provision called the Agreed Activities Mechanism, which allows Egypt and Israel to jointly modify the agreements of Egyptian troops in Sinai without having to formally review the treaty itself. Israel has allowed Egypt to send troops to central and eastern Sinai for mutual security reasons, such as the presence of jihadist militant groups in these areas. These changes are coordinated by the MFO. [4] Syrian President Hafez al-Assad severed all relations with Egypt after the signing of the peace agreement, and diplomatic relations did not resume until 2005, when Egypt resumed cordial relations with Syria under the regime of Bashar al-Assad. President Carter and the U.S. government played a leading role in creating the opportunity for this agreement. From the beginning of his term, Carter and his Secretary of State Cyrus Vance conducted intensive negotiations with Arab and Israeli leaders, hoping to reconvene the Geneva Conference, which was established in December 1973 to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. But Ayman Nour, a prominent democratic activist and former Egyptian presidential candidate, adopted an inharmonious tone. After the revolution, he called for a renegotiation of the 1978 Camp David Accords, which formed the basis of the 1979 treaty. According to him, the agreements are “ready” and “Egypt must at least negotiate the terms of the agreement”. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi responded to Israeli concerns on July 31, 2014 and promised to pursue peace with Israel. [26] At a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House presided over by President Jimmy Carter, held that day in 1979, Egypt and Israel, which had fought four wars since 1948, signed a formal peace treaty.
Nevertheless, the Israeli-Egyptian peace is highly qualified. Because it is based on an agreement between two governments and not on two peoples, it remains defensive and without confidence. Countries have no cultural exchanges: Cairo has blacklisted citizens like writer Ali Salem for daring to visit Israel, and Egyptian media is regularly filled with crude anti-Semitism. To explain its lack of efforts at reconciliation among peoples, Egypt has long cited the lack of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, and Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel, met with Jimmy Carter, President of the United States of America, at Camp David from 5 to 17 September 1978, and agreed on the following framework for peace in the Middle East. They call on the other parties to the Arab-Israeli conflict to comply. As noted above, Egypt would incur astronomical costs if it were to terminate the peace treaty with Israel. Its military budget would swell at the expense of economic development and it would have to give up $1.5 billion in U.S. military and economic aid.
According to the International Monetary Fund, Egypt has only $31 billion in foreign exchange reserves, a relatively paltry amount. Abandoning the treaty would also deal a severe blow to Cairo`s military relations with the United States: Egyptian forces appreciate this relationship, and a break would have a crippling effect on them. Overall, the cost of exiting the treaty seems too high for Egypt to bear. In the light of these factors, the parties are determined to achieve a just, comprehensive and lasting settlement of the conflict in the Middle East through the conclusion of peace treaties based on Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 in all its parts. Their goal is to achieve peace and good-neighbourly relations. They recognize that for peace to continue, it must involve all those most affected by the conflict. They therefore agree that this framework, if any, is intended by them to provide a basis for peace not only between Egypt and Israel, but also between Israel and all its other neighbors who are ready to negotiate peace with Israel on that basis. With this goal in mind, they agreed to proceed as follows: President Jimmy Carter (center) congratulates Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat (left) and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in a three-way coup after the signing of the historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. | AFP/Getty Images The Camp David summit, held from 5 to 17 September 1978, was a watershed moment in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and in US diplomacy. Rarely has a U.S.
president given as much sustained attention to a single foreign policy issue as Carter did during the two weeks of the summit. Carter`s ambitious goals for the talks included resolving the blockade of negotiations and drafting a detailed Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement. To this end, U.S. middle east experts prepared a draft treaty text that served as the basis for negotiations and was to be revised several times during the summit. Conversations proved extremely difficult, especially when the trilateral format was impossible to maintain. Instead, Carter and Vance met individually with the Egyptian and Israeli delegations over the next twelve days. In particular, the agreement made Egypt the first Arab state to officially recognize Israel. [1] This treaty was greeted with enormous controversy throughout the Arab world, where it was condemned and seen as a stab in the back. The deal came 16 months after Sadat traveled to Jerusalem — an unprecedented move by an Arab leader that angered much of the Muslim world — to meet with Begin and address the Israeli parliament. In September 1978, under Carter`s auspices, the two leaders met again in the United States, where they negotiated a framework agreement known as the Camp David Accords. While the conclusion of the Camp David Agreement was an important step forward, the process of translating the framework documents into a formal peace treaty proved daunting.
As at the summit, Carter`s hopes for rapid progress were high, and the president hoped that a treaty text would be completed within days. However, the controversy that developed between the Carter administration and the Begin administration over the duration of an agreed freeze on Israeli settlement construction was quickly followed by the government`s failure to secure support from Jordan or Saudi Arabia for the deals. Beginning in October, a series of talks in Washington failed due to Israeli concerns about the timing of their withdrawal and Egyptian reservations about the impact of a peace treaty on their commitments to other Arab states. Other regional developments, particularly the Iranian revolution, distracted U.S. policymakers and expressed Israeli concerns about its oil supply, leading to a stalemate in the winter of 1978-1979. After Begin`s visit to the White House in early March failed to break the deadlock, Carter visited Israel on March 10. Having already received Sadat`s approval for negotiations on behalf of Egypt, the president held three days of intensive talks with the Israelis. Following a series of compromises, including a US guarantee of Israeli oil supplies, the omission of references to Egypt`s “special role” in Gaza, and Israel`s agreement to make a series of unilateral gestures towards the Palestinians, the US and Israeli delegations agreed to a treaty text on March 13. Sadat quickly accepted the agreement and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty was officially signed on March 26. Relations between Egypt and Israel have improved since 2017, when Donald Trump became president and Mohammed bin Salman became crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The United States, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia want the Palestinian Authority and Israel to sign a final peace agreement.
So far, however, this prospect has come up against intransigence and hostility from both sides. .