The Camp David Accords: How Egypt and Israel Made Peace

Twelve Days That Made History

In September 1978, three men retreated to a rustic presidential compound in the Maryland mountains. For twelve days, they argued, threatened to walk out, and nearly failed — multiple times. When they emerged, they had produced the framework for the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab state.

The three men were: Menachem Begin, the hawkish Israeli prime minister and former underground fighter; Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president who had launched a surprise war against Israel just five years earlier; and Jimmy Carter, the American president who bet his presidency on bringing them together.

What they achieved seemed impossible. In many ways, it still does.

The World Before Camp David

To understand why Camp David was revolutionary, you need to understand what came before it. Since Israel’s founding in 1948, the Arab world had maintained a united front of rejection. No Arab state recognized Israel. No Arab leader would negotiate with Israel. The Arab League’s “Three Nos” of the 1967 Khartoum Summit — no peace, no recognition, no negotiation — were official policy.

Israel and Egypt had fought four wars: 1948, 1956 (Suez Crisis), 1967 (Six-Day War), and 1973 (Yom Kippur War). The Yom Kippur War was particularly devastating — Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, initially overwhelming Israeli defenses before Israel rallied and counterattacked.

The 1973 war left both sides sobered. Egypt had proven it could fight effectively but couldn’t defeat Israel militarily. Israel had won but at a terrible cost — nearly 3,000 dead — and had lost its sense of invulnerability.

Sadat Goes to Jerusalem

On November 19, 1977, Anwar Sadat did something no Arab leader had ever done: he flew to Jerusalem. He walked off the plane at Ben Gurion Airport, shook hands with Israeli officials, and the next day addressed the Knesset — Israel’s parliament.

The speech electrified the world. Sadat said he was willing to live in peace with Israel, to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and to negotiate a comprehensive settlement. The Israeli audience — many of them veterans of wars against Egypt — watched in stunned silence. Some wept.

Sadat’s visit broke the psychological barrier. For thirty years, Israelis and Arabs had dehumanized each other across a wall of warfare and propaganda. Sadat’s physical presence in Jerusalem — praying at Al-Aqsa, laying a wreath at Yad Vashem, eating dinner with Begin — shattered the illusion that peace was unthinkable.

But a dramatic gesture is not a peace treaty. The hard work was still ahead.

The Thirteen Days

After months of stalled negotiations, Carter invited Begin and Sadat to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains. The setting was deliberately isolated — no phones, no press, no distractions. The three leaders and their delegations would stay until they reached an agreement or admitted failure.

The talks nearly collapsed repeatedly:

Day 3: Sadat and Begin met face to face and it went badly. Their personal styles clashed — Sadat was sweeping and visionary, Begin was legalistic and detail-oriented. Carter separated them and shuttled between their cabins for the remainder of the summit.

Day 10: Sadat packed his bags and ordered a helicopter. Carter literally walked to Sadat’s cabin and talked him out of leaving, telling him that walking out would destroy the relationship between Egypt and the United States.

The Sinai question: The central territorial issue was the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had captured in 1967. Begin did not want to return it. Sadat would accept nothing less than full withdrawal. Carter’s team found a formula: Israel would return the entire Sinai in phases, and Egypt would establish full diplomatic relations.

The settlements: Israel had built settlements in the Sinai, including the town of Yamit. Begin agonized over ordering their evacuation. The decision to uproot Israeli civilians from their homes — which eventually happened in 1982 — was one of the most painful moments in Israeli history, foreshadowing the Gaza disengagement of 2005.

The Palestinian question: Sadat wanted a comprehensive settlement including Palestinian self-determination. Begin was unwilling to discuss Palestinian sovereignty. They compromised on vague language about “autonomy” for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza — language that satisfied no one and resolved nothing.

The Frameworks

Camp David produced two frameworks:

A Framework for Peace in the Middle East: This addressed the Palestinian question in broad, aspirational terms — calling for a transitional period of Palestinian autonomy and negotiations on final status. It was never implemented.

A Framework for the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel: This was specific and actionable. Israel would withdraw from the Sinai. Egypt would normalize relations. The United States would guarantee the arrangement with massive military and economic aid to both countries.

The actual peace treaty was signed on March 26, 1979, on the White House lawn. Begin and Sadat shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Cost

The price of peace was steep — and not only in territory.

For Egypt: The Arab world reacted with fury. Egypt was expelled from the Arab League. Diplomatic relations were severed by virtually every Arab state. Sadat was denounced as a traitor.

On October 6, 1981 — the eighth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War — Anwar Sadat was assassinated during a military parade by Islamic extremist soldiers who opposed the peace with Israel. The man who had the courage to fly to Jerusalem was killed for it.

For Israel: The evacuation of the Sinai settlements, particularly Yamit in April 1982, traumatized the country. Families who had built homes and communities were forcibly removed by Israeli soldiers. Some chained themselves to their houses. The images of Jews evicting Jews seared the national consciousness.

Begin never recovered emotionally. After his wife died in 1982 and the Lebanon War began that same year, he retreated into depression and isolation, resigning in 1983. He spent his last years as a recluse, barely leaving his apartment in Jerusalem. He died in 1992.

The Cold Peace

The Egypt-Israel peace treaty has now survived for over four decades. It has endured the assassination of Sadat, the rise and fall of Mubarak, the Egyptian revolution of 2011, the brief Muslim Brotherhood government, and the current Sisi regime.

But it has always been what observers call a “cold peace.” Government-to-government relations are functional — intelligence cooperation, trade, security coordination in the Sinai. But people-to-people relations are minimal. Few Egyptians visit Israel. Israeli tourists in Egypt are rare. Egyptian popular culture remains largely anti-Israel. Normalization at the state level never translated into normalization between peoples.

Still, no shots have been fired across the Egyptian-Israeli border since 1979. After four wars in thirty years, four decades of peace — even cold peace — is no small achievement.

Legacy

The Camp David Accords proved that peace between Israel and the Arab world was possible. They established a template — land for peace, American mediation, security guarantees — that influenced every subsequent negotiation, from Oslo to the Abraham Accords.

They also revealed the limits of peace agreements. The Palestinian question, which Camp David sidestepped, has remained the unresolved core of the conflict. And the personal costs — Sadat’s assassination, Begin’s despair, the trauma of settlement evacuation — showed that peacemaking extracts a price that few leaders are willing to pay.

Modern Israel’s history is full of wars. Camp David is a reminder that it also contains moments of extraordinary courage — moments when enemies sat across a table and chose, despite everything, to try.