Carter
And Camp David,
Where It All Began
By Zachary Wales
24 January 2007
The
Electronic Intifada
Now
it's on. The debate over President Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace not
Apartheid has become a mainstream staple. Turn on Fox News and see resigned
Carter aid Steve Berman bullied into saying that Carter is not only
anti-Semitic, but supports terror. Open the New York Times, Amazon.com,
Washington Post and find outraged columnists, petitioning consumers,
D-Rep. Lady Macbeth washing her hands of that dreaded a-word.
But like most things Israeli
and Palestinian, few are taking note of history and what it might mean
to an ex-president. Carter is no longer in "the game," which
affords him the liberty to speak frankly, unlike Howard Dean, who once
hinted at criticisms of Israel before quickly retreating to behavioral
protocol. Perhaps then it is fairer to judge Carter's present in light
of his past, when political cards were stacked and he spoke with another
voice.
It is mid-September 1978,
and President Carter has invited Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to Camp David for thirteen days
of negotiation over an Arab-Israeli peace. The event was preceded by
Sadat's diplomatic visit to Jerusalem in November 1977, the first public
meeting between an Arab leader and Zionist or Israeli official since
the June 1918 meeting between Chaim Weizmann and the Emir Faisal. Opposition
proliferated: the government in Damascus instituted a "Day of National
Mourning," Iraq canceled the celebratory Al-Adha feast, Libya withdrew
recognition of the Sadat government, and Egypt's Foreign Minister Ismail
Fahmy submitted his resignation.
The Fateh party of the Palestinian
Liberation Organization (PLO) issued a statement calling the visit a
"dangerous turning point and a gain for world Zionism and its imperialist
allies, headed by the U.S.," and indicated that Israel had declared
"on every occasion that the people of Palestine have no rights,
that there can be no independent Palestinian state and no total withdrawal
from occupied Arab lands." [1]
The opposition was not without
logic.
Sadat's diplomacy validated
Israel's claim to Jerusalem as its capital, and arguably every other
legal violation the state had made since occupying the West Bank and
Gaza Strip in 1967. Prior to this, other countries had refused to place
their embassies in Jerusalem. Even the United States' Secretary of the
Treasury, W. Michael Blumenthal, had refused to be accompanied by Jerusalem
Mayor Kollek when visiting the Old City. In a sense, Sadat's visit was
the token act that Israel's allies had been waiting for, as suggested
by U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who suddenly "had no qualms"
with visiting Jerusalem in this capacity thereafter. [2]
The ironies surrounding Israel's
political leadership of the time were no less symbolic. Having broken
the Labor Party's monopoly on Israeli politics, Likud's 1977 electoral
victory brought new vigor into the colonial-settler movement in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip, not to mention in Syria's Golan Heights and
Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, the latter being Sadat's primary impetus for
negotiations. At the head of Likud was Begin, the former leader of the
notorious Irgun Zvai Leumi militia, whose resume included an official
"terrorist" labeling from the British government, and a letter
from Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt published in the New York Times
describing it as "closely akin in its organization, methods, political
philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties."
[3]
Among Palestinians, Begin
had been most recently known for "creating facts": his repeated
avowal to establish Israeli settlements in the West Bank. But more notoriously,
it was Begin who, along with Yitzhak Shamir, had ordered the infamous
massacre of nearly 250 Palestinian civilians at Deir Yassin on April
9, 1948. On that fateful day in Jerusalem in 1977, it was Shamir who
presented Sadat to the Israeli Knesset; Sadat delivered his words, then
took his seat to the right of Begin.
The political tensions leading
up to Carter's Camp David only worsened. Sadat called for a conference
in Cairo, which the PLO and Syria boycotted. The Israeli officials in
attendance objected to the honorary plaques set in place of the absent
PLO delegates, and insisted that they be changed to read "The Arabs
of Eretz Israel." Moreover, when the Israeli delegates saw that
there was a Palestinian flag flown outside the Mena House hotel (the
site of the conference), they objected to "a strange and unknown
flag" and had the conference organizers remove it. [4]
There is a carefulness in
Carter's description of events leading up to Camp David that warrants
some attention. Begin's involvement with the Irgun is acknowledged,
but it is followed with some kind adjustments: Begin is a "man
of personal courage and single-minded devotion," yet he was "prepared
to resort to extreme measures to achieve [his] goals" (41).
While Begin is given ample
dimensions in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Sadat is described only
in relation to Begin: the two were "personally incompatible,"
(45) and "[a]t least with Begin, every word of the final agreement
was carefully considered, and he and I spent a lot of time perusing
a thesaurus and dictionary. He was a careful semanticist. He surprised
me once when I proposed autonomy for the Palestinians; he insisted on
'full autonomy'" (Carter's emphasis, 46).
It is possible to re-imagine events to a point that a fiction emerges
and contradictions become tolerable. Israeli historian Meron Benvenisti
has written movingly on this. [5] In Carter's previous work, Keeping
Faith: Memoirs of a President, he deals with Begin and the Camp David
Accords rather differently. On the second day of the talks, Begin made
it clear, according to Carter, that he "wanted to deal with Sinai,
keep the West Bank and avoid the Palestinian issue." [6] Carter
later added, "I accused Begin of wanting to hold onto the West
Bank, and said that his home rule or autonomy proposal was a subterfuge."
[7]
None of this is to suggest
that Carter is dishonest about the events of Camp David in his new book
-- and Camp David certainly isn't his central focus -- but that he overlooks
perhaps his greatest contribution to the subject that his book criticizes:
apartheid.
Carter's description of Camp
David in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid supports his general argument,
as it is referred to throughout the book. But given the role that he
played, Carter's argument has a disembodied quality. Carter emphasizes
that the Camp David Accords specified a commitment to UN Resolutions
242 and 338, which enshrined "full autonomy" and Israel's
withdrawal from the occupied territories. In concluding his section
on Camp David, he laments, "The Israelis have never granted any
appreciable autonomy to the Palestinians, and insisted on withdrawing
their military and political forces, Israeli leaders have tightened
their hold on the occupied territories" (52). He adds that if Israel
had "refrained from colonizing the West Bank," the Camp David
Accords might have yielded greater success (53).
It is difficult to believe that the imminent failure of Camp David as
a "peace accord" was not obvious at the time it was signed.
Prior to the talks themselves, Ariel Sharon, then head of the Ministerial
Settlement Committee, told the September 9, 1978 Jerusalem Post: "Make
no mistake about it, the government will establish many new settlements.
That's what it was elected to do and that is what it will do ... These
plans are not prejudicial to the prospects of peace ...[for] they will
permit us to entertain more daring solutions to the question of the
Arab population than we can permit ourselves today." [8]
Nor is it apparent that the
Accords did much to uphold America's interests in the Middle East. "Carter's
signature will cost him his interests in the Arab region," Warren
Christopher told the U.S. Department of State in a confidential cable
less than ten days after the Accords were signed. [9]
Another crucial point that
Carter leaves out is his direct influence on Camp David's adherence
to UN Resolutions. Camp David unfolded with the understanding that the
PLO was willing to accept UN Resolution 242 on the basis that Palestinian
national rights were recognized. The United States, however, rejected
this, in part because of the Zionist lobby (which included popular tours
made by Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Rabbi Alexander Schindler,
along with private meetings between Carter's staff and Dayan) and Israel's
disapproval. Throughout the talks, Carter cast frequent aspersions on
Palestinians and started looking for moderates who would be willing
to sign away rights. The policy document that Carter and Dayan produced
after a meeting that went from 6:30 pm to 2:30 am, did not mention any
Palestinian rights, and took the words "Palestine" and "Palestinian"
out of the document altogether, substituting the terms with "Arab"
or "West Bank and Gaza." In its entirety, the document even
contradicted the U.S.-Soviet policy approach that was established in
1977. [10]
Moreover, throughout these
talks, Dayan spoke candidly about the idea of "Arab Bantustans,"
borrowing liberally from South Africa's apartheid model of the time.
Added to this were Begin's proposals for the annexation of territories
without conferring upon their Palestinian inhabitants either Israeli
citizenship or the political rights emanating there from. [11]
When Carter addressed Congress
on the outcome of Camp David on September 18, 1978, he said that "the
Israeli military government over those areas [i.e. the West Bank and
Gaza] will be withdrawn and will be replaced with a government with
full autonomy." [12] In reality, "autonomy" became what
one historian called a "scheme for continued occupation under a
more permanent guise." The Accords provided a series of "transitional
arrangements" for the West Bank and Gaza under which Israeli military
government and civilian administration would be withdrawn "as soon
as self-governing authority ha[d] been freely elected by the inhabitants."
The "final status" of the territories would be negotiated
by Israel, Egypt, Jordan and representatives from the West Bank and
Gaza during the five-year period prescribed for the "transitional
arrangements," which were to "give due consideration to both
the principle of self-government by the inhabitants of these territories
and to the legitimate security concerns of the parties involved."
A U.S. official in the Jerusalem consulate later told one historian,
"Neither the end of the occupation nor self-determination is fully
guaranteed in Camp David." [14]
In the fall of 1978, Israel produced a master plan that clearly stated
the ambitions of future settlement and the failure of the United States
to challenge them effectively
In the fall of 1978, Israel
produced a master plan that clearly stated the ambitions of future settlement
and the failure of the United States to challenge them effectively.
According to a Ha'aretz article of the time: "The West Bankers
read Carter's words, but they believe Begin when he says that settlements
in the West Bank will continue. They are afraid of becoming a minority
within the borders of the autonomy." [15] Israel would maintain
control over state lands and water resources, and colonization would
continue as would the development of separate legal, administrative
and judicial institutions for Jewish communities, which would not be
a part of the autonomy framework.
So useless were the Accords
for the Palestinians that even Begin mocked it, saying that regarding
Palestinian rights, it was "devoid of any real content ... The
word 'legitimate' which is linked to rights -- as I tried to explain
to my hosts at Camp David -- has no meaning, really." [16] Perhaps
this was a slip, as Begin's South African-born publicity consultant,
Harry Hurwitz, must have told him.
Endnotes
[1] Jiryis, S. "The Arab World at the Crossroads: The Opposition
to Sadat," Journal of Palestine Studies in 7, no. 2, Winter 1978,
29.
[2] Ibid., 37.
[3] Massad, Joseph, The Persistence of the Palestinian Question; Essays
on Zionism and the Palestinians, New York: Routledge, 2006, 3.
[4] Jiryis, Ibid., 34-5.
[5] See Benvenisti's Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy
Land Since 1948, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
[6] Carter, Jimmy, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President, New York:
Bantam Books, 1982, 345.
[7] Ibid., 348-9.
[8] In Aronson, Geoffrey, Israel, Palestinians and the Intifada: Creating
facts on the West Bank, London; New York: Kegan Paul International,
1990, 85.
[9] Warren Christopher, Confidential, Cable State, U.S. Department of
State, issued to United States Embassies and Consulates worldwide, September
26, 1978.
[10] Jiryis, Ibid., 49-50.
[11] F. Sayegh "The Camp David Agreement and the Palestine Problem,"
Journal of Palestine Studies in 8, no. 2 Winter 1979, 5.
[12] Ibid, 7.
[13] Aronson, Ibid., 180.
[14] Quoted in Aronson, Ibid., 180.
[15] Quoted in Aronson, Ibid., 184.
[16] Sayegh, Ibid., 30.
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