The diplomacy of the Middle East conflict has once again taken the world by surprise. At a time when the hopes and expectations aroused by the Sadat peace initiative had reached a very low ebb, when the optimists of the past winter had been transformed into the pessimists of late summer, the results of Camp David startled the world as perhaps no other event had done since the Egyptian President’s dramatic trip to Jerusalem.
The expectations entertained of Camp David had differed only in degree of pessimism. At best, the mini-summit was seen as staving off a complete breakdown of the peace negotiations. Even then, it was argued that the result would be largely cosmetic, since the basis for real progress in the negotiations had presumably disappeared (or, as many argued, had never existed in the first place). At worst, Camp David was seen as turning a stalemate into an open rupture, thereby enhancing the prospects of heightened tensions that might well lead to another round of war. Instead, the outcome has been agreement on a separate peace between Egypt and Israel. Though by no means the only result of Camp David, the solid promise of a separate peace between the two principal parties to the Middle East conflict is clearly the most important consequence of the September summit. Once consummated, a separate peace, should it endure, will put an end to this conflict in the form we have known it for thirty years.
Camp David should also put an end to the intense speculation and controversy over the meaning of the Egyptian President’s initiative in going to Jerusalem. From this perspective, the meaning of Camp David is the meaning of the Sadat initiative: Camp David is, for all practical purposes, a return to the beginning. It is not, of course, a return in the literal sense. Few returns ever are. The agreements the parties have now reached differ in a number of respects from the agreements they appear initially to have sought. Particularly on the Egyptian side, there is room for argument over whether Sadat got less or more than he had originally bargained for. But in one respect, and it is all important, there appears to be little reason for further debate. In making a separate peace with Israel at Camp David, Sadat realized the principal aim that had prompted his peace initiative from the start.
If Camp David is a return to the beginning, the question persists why the beginning was missed. Why did the efforts of last December and January fail to yield the results that were harvested only in September? The answer cannot simply be left to the historians, though it is only the historians who one day may provide a definitive answer. An understanding of the success of Camp David in achieving Egyptian-Israeli accord depends in substantial measure on understanding why earlier efforts failed. And beyond Camp David, an answer affords a partial basis for estimating whether the results of the September summit will be consolidated and further improved upon in the years ahead.
There is an obvious explanation of why the negotiations of last winter proved abortive. It is that the initial positions taken by Egypt and Israel were simply too divergent to permit reconciliation. Negotiations fail when the parties cannot agree. And when negotiations concern peace or war, it is generally assumed that failure to agree reflects the persistence of profound and, at least for the time, unbridgeable differences. That this has been the prevailing explanation of the case at hand is not surprising. It seems only reasonable. Equally, it seems only reasonable to add that the negotiations of last winter were badly handled, in part because of the very different negotiating styles of the parties and in part because of the numerous misunderstandings that resulted when these different styles suddenly had to reach across formidable political and cultural barriers.
This explanation is unexceptionable as far as it goes. But it does not go very far as an account of the beginning that was missed. Clearly, there is a sense in which it is true to say that the initial failure of the parties to reach agreement reflected their divergent positions, whether over the Sinai or over the West Bank and Gaza. But might these differences not have been bridged at the time? With respect to the Sinai, it was generally acknowledged almost from the outset that the issues in contention were capable of compromise. The problems posed by the Palestinians were admittedly of a different order. But here it was apparent that there could be no “solution” in the sense that there could be a solution of the issues raised by a Sinai settlement, and the demand for one would simply lead to deadlock. If a prerequisite for a separate peace between Egypt and Israel was agreement on the disposition of the Palestinians, it would have to be agreement of a particular kind. At best, it could only contain the broad principles on which a final settlement would be based together with initial, though limited, measures of implementation. The principles were apparent. One would have to reiterate or follow the formulation of relevant United Nations resolutions, which would leave the parties quite as free to give their respective interpretations as did the resolutions. A second would have to hold out the promise of self-determination for the Palestinian Arabs. This second principle might be attended by qualifications precluding the emergence of an independent Palestinian state for an indefinite period while also permitting for an indefinite period the continued presence of Israeli security forces in the West Bank and Gaza. Even so, Israel’s agreement to the principle of self-determination was indispensable, however delphic the manner in which it might be formulated and whatever the specific conditions attending its implementation. Finally, the matter of principles apart, any agreement on the Palestinians, even one limited to Egypt and Israel, would have to make some provisions for the manner and stages by which the Palestinians would begin a process of political evolution.
There was always a strong case for believing that the position Sadat stated before the Israeli Knesset did not reflect his real position, that he went to Jerusalem to take Egypt out of the conflict, and that, to achieve this end, he was prepared to make a separate peace with Israel if the above conditions were met.1 In the light of Camp David, this interpretation of the Sadat initiative appears more persuasive than ever. It is quite true that the conditions for a separate peace were not met in December and January; instead, differences emerged not only with respect to a Sinai settlement but also, and primarily, with respect to a disposition of the Palestinian issue. Yet whether taken separately or as a whole, in retrospect these differences scarcely appear insurmountable. On at least two occasions Egypt and Israel came very close to an agreement in principle over the framework of a comprehensive settlement. Had such an agreement been reached, it is difficult to believe that the parties would have been unable to agree as well on initial measures of implementation. It is equally difficult to believe that had the differences over the Palestinian issue been resolved, the persisting differences over the settlements in the Sinai would have been allowed to block a separate peace.
Nor does it seem plausible to find the failure to reach agreement in the methods by which the early negotiations were conducted. There is no dispute over the point that the negotiations between Egypt and Israel were badly handled in the initial period. On this, both the Egyptians and Israelis concur. Still, diplomatic ineptitude, though always significant, is not the key to the course of the negotiations. At any rate, there was an alternative to the diplomatic framework in the period that followed the Sadat trip, an alternative that was finally employed to full effect only in September.
These considerations suggest that the explanation of why the beginning was missed must focus very largely on the role and position of the United States. If it is the case that the success registered at Camp David cannot be understood without an appreciation of the critical role played by this country, a point on which virtually all observers appear to agree, there seems to be no valid reason for exonerating the Carter administration from substantial responsibility for the earlier failure. Unless, that is, it can be shown that what was finally done in September could not have been done in the preceding December. Yet the administration might have given Sadat the support in December that it finally gave him in September, support without which it was impossible for him to conclude a separate peace. More generally, it might have intervened during the early stage of the negotiations in roughly the manner it finally did at Camp David. The failure to have done so reflected the Carter administration’s disapproval of the strategy of a separate peace and its continued obsession with the goal of a comprehensive settlement. Although the Sadat initiative was a political earthquake that had suddenly altered the Middle East landscape, the administration persisted in acting as though little had happened to change the basic assumptions of policy.
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II
In the long months that followed the breakdown of negotiations in January, Washington gave little sign of any major change in policy. Throughout the winter and spring the major American effort was directed to Jerusalem. At issue in the increasingly acrimonious exchanges between the two countries was the American insistence that the Israeli government go beyond the Begin plan of December as a condition for the renewal of negotiations. The Begin plan for the West Bank and Gaza had proposed the abolition of military government in the areas and, in its place, the establishment of administrative autonomy for the residents who would elect an administrative council. Save for security and public order, functions of local government would be placed under the control of the council. Although subject to review after a period of five years, when residents would be accorded the option of choosing between Israeli and Jordanian citizenship, the plan contained no commitment to further change in the status of the territories. Instead, in the words of the plan, Israel stood by “its right and its claim to sovereignty to Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza district,” while proposing that, since other claims existed, “for the sake of the agreement and the peace, . . . the question of sovereignty be left open.”
These features of the Begin plan must be kept in mind when considering the agreement reached at Camp David. At the time the plan was put forth, Washington was not on record as objecting to the provision respecting the question of sovereignty. Nor did it insist that the Israeli government indicate what further steps it was prepared to commit itself to in the West Bank and Gaza after the initial five-year period. It was only after the interested Arab states had rejected the plan that the Carter administration also found the proposal inadequate as a basis for negotiation (though it is only fair to add that Washington had never been happy with the Begin plan and at the time it was put forth had sought to persuade the Israeli Prime Minister to defer its presentation). The Begin government was subsequently pressed to reconcile its position on sovereignty with UN Security Council Resolution 242, which in Washington’s view required the abandonment of any Israeli claims to sovereignty over the areas, and to be more forthcoming—and specific—on the future status of the territories and the inhabitants once the five-year period had elapsed. In the absence of renewal of negotiations with Egypt, the Israeli government refused to do either.
Did the administration’s position not only encourage but perhaps even force Sadat to harden his position? Certainly the stance taken by Washington did not, and could not, serve to moderate the Egyptian price for an agreement. Sadat could scarcely afford to be seen as asking for less than Washington was asking in the name of a comprehensive settlement. Thus the apparent result of a policy of pressuring Israel into making further concessions on the Palestinian issue was to lead to a hardening of the Egyptian position on the West Bank and Gaza.
At the same time, the Carter administration remained reluctant to assure Sadat that it was prepared to protect him from the consequences of failure should the Begin government refuse to give way to American pressure. Earlier, Washington had refused to underwrite Sadat’s initiative and had thus exposed his vulnerability to an Arab world that ranged from the skeptical to the openly hostile. Having once forced him to harden his terms, thereby markedly diminishing the prospects of an agreement with Israel, Washington still refused to commit itself to the protection of Sadat.
In the absence of such a commitment, the Egyptian President found himself in a position that must have seemed even worse than the position that had initially prompted him to go to Jerusalem. The failure of his policy, quite apart from being a personal humiliation, would leave him more isolated and vulnerable than ever. The improved American relationship, assuming that it would persist, could not compensate for the dangers likely to ensue. Nor did Sadat have a viable policy alternative. Certainly he could not seriously have considered another round of war, a war in which the glory of 1973 might well be replaced by the shame experienced in earlier conflicts.
Sadat could hardly have missed the bitter irony of the predicament in which he was being increasingly placed by his American patron. It accounts for his growing sense of frustration. It also accounts for his growing insistence that America must not only be a mediator but a “full partner” in the negotiations. That insistence cannot simply be seen as an attempt to use Washington as a means of pressuring the Israelis into further concessions. Though this was clearly one purpose, another was to get Washington to commit itself to full support of a separate peace and to do so whatever the agreement reached by Egypt and Israel on the West Bank and Gaza. It may well be that the second purpose was all along the more important one for Sadat. The two were, in any event, never really contradictory, as the negotiations at Camp David were to demonstrate. Nor does the achievement of a separate peace render obsolete the strategy of pursuing both. Sadat may be expected to continue the attempt to transmit pressure to Israel through the Americans. Even so, the critical importance of Washington’s role as a “full partner” to the peace settlement will also remain for a considerable period to come one of supporting Sadat on his Arab flank.
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The key, then, was the change in American policy. What led the Carter administration to this change? What prompted Washington to abandon, in substance if not in form, its commitment to a comprehensive settlement and to accept the strategy of a separate peace as a goal desirable in itself, though one that also provides an indispensable first step toward achieving a more comprehensive settlement? Had the administration been in the process of changing its policy for some time?
On one post-Camp David account, a move away from the Geneva conference format and, more significantly, the comprehensive approach, had begun almost in the immediate wake of the Sadat trip to Jerusalem. It was reflected in the Brzezinski concept of “concentric circles,” the first circle providing for strong support of the Sadat initiative and for a separate Egyptian-Israeli agreement. If this account is true, seldom has a policy been so well disguised. Far more plausible is the version that a change in policy occurred in the course of the spring and summer, and that it resulted from the belated realization that the old policy simply was not working. The Begin government could be pushed only so far by Washington. Beyond a point that was reasonably well defined by late spring, it would not yield. Nor could it be unseated.
Moreover, the attempt to exact greater concessions from Jerusalem was not improving Sadat’s position. Having staked very nearly all on his initiative, he had little to show for it apart from the improved American relationship, and that was not enough. A complete breakdown of negotiations, in Washington’s view, would, at the least, heighten tensions considerably and, at worst, set the stage for another round of war. It was also likely to present the Soviet Union with new opportunities. The position the United States had gained in the Middle East since the 1973 war had not gone without Russian challenge. In the Red Sea region, Moscow had made, and was continuing to make, a serious effort to expand its influence. Whether this effort might be contained was not unrelated to the outcome of the negotiations between Egypt and Israel. No one could say with any real assurance what would happen should Sadat’s initiative end in open failure. But failure might well lead once again to a very fluid and possibly even to an uncontrollable situation. If so, who could tell what the Russians might be tempted to do and, indeed, perhaps succeed in doing?
These were, in brief, the considerations that presumably led the Carter administration to change its policy. There was yet another, though it does not belong to the realm of high policy. Mr. Carter badly needed a success in order to reverse an already strong, though still growing, public conviction that he was incompetent. By the summer of 1978, talk of a one-term President no longer seemed to be idle speculation but represented a very solid prospect. A prospect like this can, and very possibly did, do wonders to concentrate the presidential mind. If so, the President had at hand all the evidence he needed, and more, to conclude that his Middle East policy was headed for disaster. He also had at hand more than a little evidence for concluding that a change in policy, one which pushed first and foremost for a separate peace, might very well succeed. If Sadat had no really credible alternative to his initiative, and if the Begin government still very much wanted to take Egypt out of the conflict, the basis for an agreement needed only a little give by the two parties. This might be accomplished by the direct hand of the President at a summit conference, a conference that if it were to succeed would also require a presidential commitment to the parties—and particularly to Egypt—which Carter had previously been unwilling to make.
Thus the stage for Camp David was set. The decision to call a summit and to place the President’s prestige on the line as never before was not a large gamble—and clearly not a desperate gamble. Though no certainty could be attached to the outcome, the architects of the summit knew it had a reasonable chance of success, else they would not have taken this route. And as between a reasonable chance of success and the near certainty of failure, the instinct for political survival does not permit of much doubt and hesitation.
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There is no gainsaying the plausibility, even the persuasiveness, of this account. A lingering doubt persists, however, whether it is also true. The commitment to the previous policy had been quite strong. Though it had run into a dead end, there was no outward indication the administration was ready to abandon it. The decision to go to the summit might simply have been born of the conviction that something had to be done to break the deadlock, though what this something was might also have remained unclear until the last moment. The gloom that marked Washington officialdom before the summit might of course have been as feigned as the surprised delight at the results. If so, it was a marvelous and altogether unusual performance for this or any administration. The same must be said of the remarks by key American officials, made in the immediate aftermath of the conference, that they had been quite unprepard for the parties to go the route of a separate peace. On the other hand, they may have been telling the truth in that they had failed to foresee this result not only because they had failed to appreciate that the basis for a separate peace was already largely laid out but because the American strategy for the conference was not to push for a separate peace, let alone to make such a peace its first objective. If so, it was only after the American delegation discovered that the materials for a separate Egyptian-Israeli agreement were near at hand, and that, once realized, they would open the way to a broader agreement, that a clear change in policy occurred.
If the latter account is substantially accurate, it suggests that the administration stumbled into its success and that the results of Camp David were, in the first place, plain luck. To say this is not to detract from the American accomplishment at Camp David and, particularly, the efforts of the President. Even with the basis for an agreement already apparent, the Americans played, and had to play, a vital role if the negotiations were to be successfully consummated. Given complete American commitment to the outcome, the parties could make concessions which otherwise, as experience had shown, would have proven very difficult and perhaps impossible. The Americans finally played the role that from the start had been theirs for the asking, though a role which until Camp David they had neither asked for nor been willing to accept. Nor does it matter that one reason this role was finally undertaken was the President’s need for a striking foreign-policy success to restore a badly tarnished political image. What does matter is Carter’s ability to appreciate the meaning of his victory and to act consistently on it in the period ahead.
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III
It is not a mere raking over of old coals to insist that Camp David is, for the most part, a return to the beginning. Although concessions were made at the September conference that the parties were unwilling to make nine months earlier, what is striking is the similarity between the Camp David agreements and the initial—as distinguished from the declaratory—positions of Israel and Egypt. In the Sinai, the changes made in earlier positions were almost all in the form of Israeli concessions. These changes, it is true, were not insignificant. In the case of the airfields and Sharm-el-Sheikh, Israel has surrendered strategic assets which cannot adequately be compensated for either by the Egyptian promise not to make military use of the abandoned air bases or by the American promise to help Israel build two air bases in the Negev. The dramatic constriction of usable airspace that the Sinai agreement imposes will in itself raise considerable problems for Israeli military planners. In the Western world these problems have commonly gone unappreciated, just as the problems arising from the abandonment of the settlements have been viewed with little understanding or sympathy. As the strategic functions served by the settlements have been largely dismissed, the political and psychological significance of abandoning settlements has been met with indifference, if not with hostility. Even so, this does not alter the fact that in the light of Israel’s history of state-building, the abandonment of settlements must touch on one of the most sensitive of nerves. When to these considerations is added the unavoidable suspicion that a government which abandons settlements anywhere may, whatever its protestations to the contrary, abandon them everywhere—that what is done in the Sinai may also be done in the West Bank—the difficulties attending the decision made by the Begin government should be apparent. After all, it was Begin who told the Knesset last December that in any treaty with Egypt “Israeli settlements will remain where they are. . . . They will be defended by an Israeli military force.” If nine months later the Israeli Prime Minister could argue before the Knesset that, for the sake of peace with Egypt, the Sinai settlements must be removed, how can the prospect be ruled out that one day he or his successor will insist that for the sake of peace the West Bank settlements must also be removed?
At issue here, however, is not so much the significance of the concession Israel made in the Sinai as whether these concessions were possible only in September and not in the preceding December or January. It is difficult to believe that they could not have been made before. No doubt, the Begin government was from the start extremely loath to give up the Sinai settlements.2 Still, there is a vast difference between saying this and saying that the Israeli Prime Minister had determined to hold the settlements even at the price of a separate peace with Egypt. And almost from the outset, there was little question that this would indeed be the price for holding the Sinai settlements. Begin’s refusal to yield them in December and January was not the expression of an unalterable position, else it is difficult to understand his yielding them in September. Instead, his refusal may be understood as an attempt to use the settlements issue in order to moderate what Jerusalem saw, rightly or wrongly, as a rising Egyptian price on the West Bank.
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What may be said of the Camp David framework for a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel may equally be said of the broader agreement on the framework of peace in the Middle East. The latter agreement consists essentially of two parts: a statement of the general principles that are to provide the basis for a comprehensive settlement and a set of provisions that outline the manner and stages for dealing with the West Bank and Gaza. Not unexpectedly, UN Security Council Resolution 242 is to provide the “agreed basis” for a peaceful settlement of the Middle East conflict. Also not unexpectedly, the general principles contained in the document, if taken at all seriously, hold out the promise of self-determination for the Palestinian people. In doing so, they follow almost verbatim the statement of general principles to govern the resolution of the Palestinian problem agreed to by Presidents Sadat and Carter at Aswan in January. The Aswan declaration stipulated, and the Camp David framework repeats, that “there must be a resolution of the Palestinian problem in all its aspects,” that such a resolution “must recognize the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people,” and that it must enable the Palestinians “to participate in the determination of their own future.”
It may be argued that the Camp David framework clearly differs in at least one important respect from any declaration of principles Israel was prepared to accept last winter, and this is in the central position given to Resolution 242 as a basis for negotiating a final settlement of the West Bank and Gaza. But the significance of 242 in relation to the West Bank and Gaza must largely be seen in relation to claims of the Begin government to sovereignty over these areas. That these claims are not advanced in the Camp David document does not mean the Begin government has abandoned them. What it does mean is that Begin agreed not to press such claims at Camp David, and, in effect, to leave the issue of sovereignty open. Despite all the talk that this represents a new departure for Jerusalem, such is in fact not the case. As earlier noted, the Begin plan of last December proposed that for the sake of agreement and peace the question of sovereignty be left open. In this respect, then, the difference between December and September is only that what was made explicit then—and served no doubt as an irritant—is left implicit now.
More significant than the very modest movement on the sovereignty issue is the Israeli acceptance of the Aswan principles. Yet here as well the change from last winter is easily exaggerated. It is necessary to recall that first at Ismailia in December and then at Jerusalem in January, Egypt and Israel were very close to an agreement on a declaration of principles. From what we know of these near-misses, they did not duplicate the Aswan formulation. In many respects, however, their substance seems not to have been very dissimilar. Moreover, it is a matter of record that the Begin government in effect accepted most of the Aswan formulation in the course of the winter. It appeared to draw the line, and then not without some ambiguity, only at the principle that the Palestinian problem must be resolved “in all its aspects.” But this was scarcely an uncrossable line and agreeing to its inclusion in the Camp David accord represented no very momentous shift in the Israeli position.
These remarks ought not to be construed as implying that the agreement on principles reached at Camp David is itself without importance, only that a not very different agreement was within reach much earlier. The principles, it is true, are subject to varying interpretations. But this is not to say that they have no meaning. Menachem Begin is an example par excellence of the man who believes that words change reality. He may persuade himself that in the present case this will not be so; nevertheless he has agreed to principles which, though admittedly vague, hold out, and will be seen as holding out, the eventual promise of self-determination for the Palestinians.
This promise is implicit as well in the manner and stages by which negotiations on the Palestinian problem are to proceed according to the Camp David framework. But then the same promise was also implicit in the much criticized Begin plan of last December. What the Camp David agreement has done is to take the Begin plan, strip it of those provisions that served little purpose other than to arouse Arab sensibilities,3 grant a greater measure of local autonomy to the Palestinians during a five-year transitional period,4 and, most importantly, provide for a more explicit, while at the same time a more open-ended, process by which the final status of the West Bank and Gaza may be sought. Put in different terms, the Camp David framework, in contrast to the Begin plan, is much less concerned with the definition of rights and much more concerned with the elaboration of process. One might say that the Camp David agreement has taken the Begin plan, loosened it up, added to it the Aswan principles, and given those principles a procedural meaning that they otherwise lacked when standing alone.
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Above all, it is the emphasis on process that marks the Camp David framework. The Begin plan did not altogether ignore this vital element. Still, in the earlier proposal, recognition of the significance and, indeed, of the centrality of a process that still leaves the future quite open was kept to a minimum. At the time, this was seen by many observers, including Israelis, as a major defect. In the September agreement this defect has been largely remedied. A close reading of the framework relating to the West Bank and Gaza prompts the conclusion that it is mainly process. It is with the provision for the progression of stages that the framework is principally concerned rather than with the substantive results emerging from each stage.
There are, to be sure, the general principles that are to govern negotiations at any stage. There are also certain substantive results that must emerge from the negotiating process. Thus the transitional arrangements, to extend for a period not exceeding five years, must provide for the full autonomy of the inhabitants. So, too, the creation of a self-governing authority for the West Bank and Gaza with defined powers and responsibilities is to be attended by a general withdrawal of Israeli armed forces and the redeployment of those remaining forces into specified security locations. But these, and still other, provisions are no more than roughly indicative of the results to which the negotiating process may lead. They are almost entirely applicable to the transitional period. Beyond this period there is scarcely any indication at all, the general principles apart, of what is expected to emerge in the way of a permanent regime for the West Bank and Gaza. All that is stipulated is that as soon as possible, though no later than the third year after the beginning of the transition period, “negotiations will take place to determine the final status of the West Bank and Gaza, and its relationship with its neighbors,” and that “these negotiations will be conducted among Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and the elected representatives of the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza.” The parties are to reach a solution that “recognizes the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and their just requirements.” But they are also enjoined “to take all necessary measures . . . and provisions . . . to assure the security of Israel and its neighbors.” Are these stipulations reconcilable? The framework provides no apparent answer apart from the negotiating process itself—and time.
It is this emphasis on process to which critics of the Camp David framework mainly take objection. The inadequacy of the agreement on the West Bank and Gaza, the criticism runs, must be found precisely in the fact that it is little more than an agreement on process. For that process to work satisfactorily, however, there must be a substantial measure of assurance that the parties will use it reasonably and in good faith. This in turn requires a broad area of agreement on the ends to which the process will lead. Yet it is precisely the absence of such agreement that led to the emphasis on the process for achieving a final settlement rather than on the substantive terms of settlement. In the absence of agreement on ends, it is argued, process, particularly one that reserves a right of veto to the principal parties, merely serves to cover over the persistence of fundamental disagreements while providing an instrument to sustain the status quo.
The criticism is not without some merit. It is transparently clear that the emphasis on process in the Camp David framework largely reflects the deep and persistent disagreements on the disposition of the Palestinian problem. This being the case, the framework embodies the paradox characteristic of all such agreements in conflicts. Agreement cannot be obtained save by concentrating on process and by setting difficult issues aside or dealing with them in ambiguous fashion. Yet once obtained, no agreement on process, however ingenious, can be made to work unless the parties to it eventually demonstrate a willingness to accept outcomes they had previously been unwilling to accept.
The weakness of this criticism, on the other hand, is that there was no viable alternative to the emphasis on process characterizing the Camp David framework—at least, there was no viable alternative that held out the prospect of agreement. Moreover, the process itself will place a considerable political onus on the party which does not appear to apply it reasonably and in good faith. And since it is Israel that by failing to act in good faith would presumably stand the most to gain, it is upon Israel that this onus must principally rest. Given the circumstances, perhaps there was no way to avoid this asymmetry. Even so, it is clearly there, and critics are either obtuse or disingenuous in refusing to acknowledge it. The process established at Camp David will not be without substantive outcome.
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IV
In the aftermath of Camp David it has been rather fashionable to pass over the matter of relative gain and loss. The euphoria that has followed the summit has somehow seemed to make asking the eternal question of politics an act of bad taste. To its supporters, the outcome of the conference was a gain for all parties. This assessment is obviously not shared by those, particularly in the Arab world, who have received the summit results with suspicion or hostility. But even if the outcome of Camp David is accepted as a gain for all parties, including the disaffected, there is still the question of who gained most—just as there is the corollary question of who has assumed the greatest risks. These questions are not of a peripheral character. In considering the meaning of Camp David, they are quite central.
What has Sadat gained by the Camp David agreements? One gain, at least, will not be disputed. The return of the Sinai without any encumbrances is no small triumph. So far as Egyptian territory is concerned, the hero of the 1973 war has successfully reclaimed the land lost by his predecessor.
If Sadat did not obtain all that he intended to get by going to Jerusalem, he came very close to doing so. At least, he came very close to obtaining all that he might reasonably have expected in undertaking his peace initiative. Indeed, it may well be argued that he got a good deal more than he might reasonably have expected in that he succeeded, with American help, in pushing a Palestinian solution beyond agreement simply on a set of principles. Sadat may have been led to expect in the course of the past year that, again with American help, he could do even better for the Palestinians. In fact, what he did do was the most that could be done. Nor could the Egyptian President have assumed that he would not have to pay a price in breaking away from his Arab brothers and making his peace. Yet how considerable was the price? In relation to the Arab world, it does not appear great. Without Egypt, the rest of this world has no real center of political gravity to give its efforts what modest cohesiveness they formerly possessed. There is no likely successor to Egypt—not Syria and not even Saudi Arabia. A serious blow would be struck at Egyptian interests were Saudi Arabia to withdraw its financial support of Cairo. But this it cannot do without incurring risks. The Saudis may dislike Sadat’s policy, but they can scarcely afford to respond effectively without bringing even greater risks upon themselves.
A more serious critique of Sadat’s policy and the price he must incur by pursuing it argues that the logic of this policy is to make of Egypt an American—and indirectly an Israeli—satellite. In making his separate peace, Sadat has forfeited on this view his former freedom of action. It is certainly true that Sadat is now tightly tied to Washington, and that this dependent relationship must have certain consequences for future Egyptian-Israeli relations. But if this is the price that the present policy entails, no purpose is served by juxtaposing it with a largely imaginary former freedom of action. Cairo’s independence of action was being steadily eroded in any case, whether because of its internal difficulties or because of an Arab bloc—supported by the Soviet Union—it could not control. This had been precisely Sadat’s difficulty in the period leading to his initiative. It led to his being increasingly caught between the Americans and Israelis on one side and a Syrian-Palestinian-Soviet combination on the other. In breaking out of this position, he has not further limited his independence of action. The difference is that whereas his constrained position formerly offered only risks and no apparent gains, now it holds out the prospect of some distinct gains.
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Even if Sadat has gained, and rather substantially so, from the results to which his initiative has finally led, can the same be said of the Palestinians? Were the Palestinians forced to pay the price for an Egyptian-Israeli peace? It is significant that even among many supporters of the Camp David agreements, let alone opponents, the view is entertained that the Palestinians did have to pay the real price for an agreement between Egypt and Israel. Put less delicately, Sadat is seen as having sacrificed Palestinian interests in order to obtain a separate peace. And though the sacrifice may be considered necessary, it is still accepted by many with a sense of unease.
The view that the Palestinians paid the chief price for Camp David and that Sadat imposed this price on them, assumes that a very different solution of the West Bank and Gaza, one far more favorable to Palestinian interests, was possible. But this assumption will not bear serious examination. There was no way by which Sadat could have obtained better terms for the Palestinians. Had he never undertaken his peace initiative, the Palestinians would be in the same position today that they were in a year ago. That position could have been substantially altered only through a war against Israel led and won primarily by Egypt. There was no prospect that Egypt could have succeeded in such an enterprise, even had the willingness been there. In the absence of war, yet in the absence of a move toward reconciliation with Israel, Sadat was of little use to the Palestinians. It is nonsense to believe that he has now sacrificed Palestinian interests. Indeed, he has done more for those interests than most close observers of the Middle East would have deemed possible a year ago.
The role and responsibility of Sadat apart, the view that the Palestinians were the main losers at Camp David is persuasive only if the immediate results of the summit are measured by the yardstick of an independent Palestinian state. What is the point, however, of that view and of the judgment to which it leads? An independent state was not something the Palestinians had to lose, save in the sense that one may be said to lose a hope or a vision. Nothing was denied to them at Camp David that they had once enjoyed in the past. Nor was anything denied to them that they might have achieved by other means had it not been for the presumed collusion of the Camp David parties. Finally, is it indeed the case that the Palestinians have now lost their hope of an independent state? If so, then they have almost surely misread the significance of the agreement on the West Bank and Gaza. For the Camp David framework has provided not only the broad justification of a Palestinian state but the mechanism for achieving that end. The Palestinians have only to make intelligent use of what has now been conceded them in all but name.
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The Israelis, in turn, have paid a very substantial price for the Camp David agreements, the prevailing and contrary judgment notwithstanding. That price cannot be calculated simply or even primarly in terms of the strategic assets, significant in themselves, they must now surrender in the Sinai. In time, the undertakings made with respect to the West Bank and Gaza are likely to prove far more significant. The often vague and ambiguous character of those commitments, when taken together with the need to obtain the concurrence of the parties at each stage of their implementation, have prompted the conclusion that the Israelis have, in fact, committed themselves to very little and that the process they have agreed to at Camp David is one they can always control. The Israeli government has encouraged this conclusion by the statements its leaders have made in the period following the summit. Above all, the government has emphasized that the Camp David framework will not and cannot be used to support the creation of a Palestinian state. In his defense of the summit accords, Prime Minister Begin assured the Knesset that “there is and will not be under any conditions or in any circumstances a Palestinian state.”
This assurance of Mr. Begin, however, no longer carries any real conviction. The Israelis can influence the political evolution of the Palestinians, but they cannot control this evolution in the sense the Prime Minister evidently intended to convey. Once the Palestinians are provided full autonomy and Israeli forces are confined to specified locations in the West Bank and Gaza, a process will have begun that is bound to have a dynamism and momentum of its own. Even in the transitional period, the elected self-governing authority in these territories is to have, defense and foreign affairs apart, the substantial attributes and functions of a government. Should it behave at all in the manner such “authorities” have behaved in the past, it may be expected to push even within the immediate period ahead for an expansion of powers. Its leadership, moreover, cannot be determined by the Israeli government if it is to enjoy any degree of confidence of the inhabitants. Within broad limits, Jerusalem may be expected to attempt to exercise a veto over the kind of political elite to emerge within the West Bank and Gaza. Still the limits are likely to permit elements indirectly representative of, or acceptable to, the PLO. There are any number of cases in this century in which a people has achieved political independence in circumstances less promising than those now accorded the Palestinians.
This is the price that Israel paid to get a peace with Egypt. In the circumstances, it was probably the best price Israel could have expected to pay in order to remove Egypt from the thirty-year conflict. Still, it is high in terms of the risks the Israelis are required to take. Even in the short run, and almost certainly in the long run, these risks are greater than the ones incurred by Egypt.
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V
Will the results of Camp David prove lasting? In the speculation that has followed the summit, this question has been considered largely in terms of the reaction of other Arab states, particularly the Saudis and the Jordanians. But the fate of the agreements will not be determined in the first place by these states. It will be determined above all by America. If this country remains committed to the agreements, in fact as well as in words, then whatever the reservations and even the opposition of others, the prospects are good that they will prove durable. For the degree of our commitment will surely influence the position Saudi Arabia and Jordan ultimately take.
Thus, the real question raised by speculation over the future of the summit agreements is whether the change in American policy that produced the success at Camp David will prove lasting. The significance of this change is not adequately conveyed simply by characterizing it as a shift from a policy of directly seeking a comprehensive settlement to one of promoting a separate peace in the hope, and even the reasonable expectation, that out of such a peace a comprehensive settlement will emerge in time. The old policy of directly seeking a comprehensive settlement of the Middle East conflict reflected more than an obsessive ambition to achieve the unachievable. At root, it betrayed an unwillingness to commit American influence and power.
It was of course recognized that even a comprehensive settlement would require some commitment of American influence and power, and not least of all in order to bring Israel to terms. Still, there was a considerable difference between the kind of American commitment required by a comprehensive settlement and the kind required by a separate peace. The policy of directly pursuing a comprehensive settlement did not simply reflect the conviction that a separate peace would eventually unravel—whether as a result of the tensions it would create between an exposed Egypt and other Arab states, or by virtue of the extremism it would breed among the Palestinians—or that it would facilitate a Soviet reentry in force into the Middle East. At a deeper level the opposition to a separate peace expressed the unwillingness to employ American power to forestall or, if necessary, to counter these consequences, along with the fear of having to counter a substantial portion of the Arab world, including the states that supply America with one-fourth of its imported oil.
Only the future will tell whether the administration has learned a lesson from Camp David that will endure. In the period immediately following the summit there have been several signs that this lesson has not been accepted throughout the administration, that at least a significant part of the bureaucracy remains opposed to the shift in policy, and that it will use its influence to move for a return to the previous course. Intimations of second thoughts have been expressed even at the presidential level, as witnessed by Carter’s momentary effort to “improve” upon the results of Camp David by pressing on those issues the parties left in abeyance because their respective positions were too divergent to permit compromise. There was no useful purpose served in raising these issues almost before the ink had dried on the agreement. What is necessary now is consummation of the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel and the initiation of negotiations on the means for establishing the elected self-governing authorities in the West Bank and Gaza. Neither step is facilitated by reminding the parties of what, in the American view, they have yet to do if the Middle East conflict is one day to be settled. The only purpose that is served by this tactic is to create doubt over the American commitment to the course we appear to have accepted at Camp David.
These presidential gestures may be no more than the reflexes of a habit that is not easily unlearned. The persisting bureaucratic opposition to the shift registered at Camp David may slowly atrophy. If this should prove to be the case, the summit conference may well stand out as the end of a policy predicated on the assumption that American power can play no more than a modest and largely passive role, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world.
1 See my article, “The Middle East: For a Separate Peace,” COMMENTARY, March 1978.
2 This position enjoyed a very broad consensus in Israel. The preceding Labor government had taken a similar position on the sacrosanct character of the Sinai settlements. It is also worth recalling that in the unofficial plan of its Foreign Minister, Yigal Allon, a plan the Rabin government took care to separate itself from, the terms of a peace treaty with Egypt would have offered less than Begin initially offered Sadat. With respect to the Sinai settlements, there was no difference of view.
3 The provision on sovereignty apart, these dealt with the Palestinian option of choosing either Israeli or Jordanian citizenship, the right of residents of Israel to acquire land and settle in the West Bank and Gaza (a right reciprocally granted to Arab residents of these territories who chose to become Israeli citizens), and the assurance of freedom of movement and of economic activity to residents of Israel and the territories. None of these provisions appears in the Camp David agreement. At the same time, their absence cannot be taken as evidence of their relinquishment by Israel. In each case, Israel has evidently reserved its claimed rights, something it might also have done in presenting the Begin plan. In the Camp David agreement, these claimed rights are effectively reserved for the time being by virtue of a process almost every step of which requires Israeli concurrence. The same method of reservation might just as well have been employed in the Begin plan.
4 In the Begin plan the functions of security and public order are maintained as Israeli responsibilities. The Camp David agreement, on the other hand, provides for “full autonomy” for the West Bank and Gaza inhabitants and the withdrawal of Israeli military government and civilian administration as soon as a self-governing authority has been elected by the inhabitants to replace the military government.
