Menachem Begin, Jimmy Carter and Anwar el-Sadat at Camp David, 1978.Mohamed Morsi, chairman of the Egyptian Freedom and Justice Party, and Ahmed Shafik, a former prime minister, will both seek public support on the June 16–17 runoff election. They have little in common. Mr. Morsi represents the theocratic agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood, while Mr. Shafik, who belongs to the old guard of President Mubarak's regime, offers a secular program. Yet there is one theme that unites the two finalists, as well as most other candidates who were dropped in the first round: they all strongly criticize the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Israel’s settlement policy. Both have declared that if Israel will not get involved in serious negotiations with the Palestinians on the two-state solution, Egypt will feel free to review the Camp David accord, signed in September 1978 by President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin.
It is too early to predict what they mean by "reviewing" the accords. It will be difficult to cool further the diplomatic, cultural and economic relationship between the countries. Relations have been nearly frozen since Mubarak’s removal from office. A long-standing deal under which Israel was supplied with Egyptian natural gas is practically dead. The Israeli embassy in Cairo was ransacked by an angry mob last September. Israeli journalists are not allowed to visit Egypt, and very few businessmen dare to enter the country. On a different level, Egypt is leading the Arab diplomatic campaign calling on the international community to force Israel to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Since Egypt and Israel have a mutual interest in preventing Al Qaeda from penetrating into the Sinai Peninsula, it is unlikely that the new government in Cairo will cut the lines of communication between Egypt and Israeli intelligence. The new president will learn soon enough that a decision to violate the peace treaty with Israel will spur a decision by the U.S. Congress to cut the generous economic support that Egypt has been enjoying as a result of this treaty. Added tensions between Cairo and Jerusalem could also affect Egypt's access to American weapons.
Knowing that, Israel takes into consideration that even after more than thirty years, the peace treaty with Egypt remains a contract between leaderships and not between the two peoples. Now that the Egyptian people have a voice, their leaders will have to listen. Since the economic situation in Egypt makes it difficult for the leadership to feed the people with more than bread and hummus, they feed them with free hatred of Israel and its American allies.
Unfortunately, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's settlement policy—and President Obama's helplessness to influence it—makes it easy to market animosity against Israel. A brief look at the Palestinian Chapter of the 1978 Camp David Accords, accompanied by a comparison with the 2012 map of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, demonstrates that this document has become irrelevant.
For instance, in 1978, Israel and Egypt agreed there should be transitional arrangements for the West Bank and Gaza over a period not exceeding five years. President Jimmy Carter was also a witness to Israel's written commitment to withdraw its military government and civilian administration as soon as a self-governing authority could be freely elected by the inhabitants of these areas. At this stage, Israeli armed forces were to withdraw into specified security locations.
The Camp David Accords drew a clear time line of no more than five years for the negotiations that were to resolve, among other matters, the location of the boundaries and security arrangements. It stressed, "The solution from the negotiations must also recognize the legitimate right of the Palestinian peoples and their just requirements." The parties agreed that Egypt and Israel would work together and with other interested parties to establish mutually acceptable procedures for a prompt, just and permanent resolution to the refugee problem.
Exactly thirty years ago, American efforts to facilitate autonomy talks between Israel and Egypt were sidetracked by the outbreak of the June 1982 Lebanon war. Some of the ideas, such as a five-year interim period with delayed negotiations on the final status settlement, were incorporated into the 1993–95 Oslo accords. However, eighteen years after the Oslo accords created the Palestinian authority, Israel controls of 62 percent of the West Bank (Area C) and 100 percent of East Jerusalem, while maintaining a full closure of the Gaza Strip.
Since Israel signed the Camp David Accords, it has shown little intention of following up the Sinai withdrawal with redeployment from the West bank. On the contrary—while in 1978 there were some twenty-one thousand settlers in forty small settlements in the West Bank, today there are more than three hundred and thirty thousand settlers in 146 settlements, including three cities, and three thousand people in small, illegal outposts. Most Israeli governments encouraged Jews to move to the occupied territories by offering them cheap housing and other benefits, as well as by building a number of industrial zones and a college.
Comments
It's interesting that while Eldar talks about it being the end of Israel impunity so far as I see he cites not one issue or arena on or in which it's going to suffer any significant costs or whatever due to this alleged end of impunity. The simple fact would seem to be that Israel's impunity—extending, as Bruce Reidel reveals elsewhere here, to a actual triad of nuke capabilities—has been precisely what the U.S. has built for it, and will maintain for it. Including impunity even to the wishes of the U.S., such as our now beyond pathetic requests of it to stop building on occupied ground. And now with Iran we essentially see Israel being able to get the U.S. to deny NPT rights to whoever in the region it wants to deny those rights to, even as it remains a non-NPT signatory. Moreover, we've recently seen whole delegations of U.S. congressmen and women pledging that no matter what happens to the U.S. economically, it will not affect the money we give to Israel every year, with a decades-long commitment from us already being secured by Israel. Very hard to see any of its issues or even facets of its existence that Israel hasn't secured impunity upon via the U.S., except perhaps the slow draining of its population who are sick of living in state that seems to move in ever more fascist directions and seems to be increasingly hated by everyone else in the world.
Eldar and Sin Nombre talk as if the Israelis are purely at fault here: how about a simple recognition from the Arab/Muslim world that the state of Israel has a right to exist: many issues could be settled. If there's anyone acting with impunity on this issue, it's Israel's enemies. The one functiuoning democracy in the Middle East, and Sin Nombre chooses to call it a "fascist" regime. If you want the real fascist regimes in the region, look across Israel's borders.
I didn't call Israel a fascist regime; I said it seems to be moving in ever more fascist directions. Perpetually highly militarized, ever more organized to serve its military and relying ever more on military might for its security and at true peace with none of its neighbors and at swords' point with nearly all; territorially aggrandizing; riots in the streets attacking foreigners and the building of camps to house them; ethno-racial-nationalist/supremacist ideas seeming to gain ever more ground ... it ain't classic fascist, but it ain't pretty. And I didn't say the Israelis are purely at fault here, but, for example, in response to the very keen observation asking for "the simple recognition from the Arab/Muslim world that the state of Israel has the right to exist" note that this offer has *twice* been made by the entire (unanimous) Arab League (which includes Iran, and Syria?) clearly based overwhelmingly on Israel just going back behind the Green Line. And what has been Israel's response to this offer? It hasn't even *deigned* to reply to it. Except perhaps in its actions to keep building, building, building on stolen territory. No matter how in how much esteem one holds the idea of balance and perspective in analyzing things the fact is that the only way that one can view the Israeli/Palestinian situation as balanced is to disregard what even the United States still honors which is international law, such as that outlawing the offensive taking of other's lands, and booting off its inhabitants, and then settling your own people on that land. Enough is enough, currieken: If Israel would just return behind the Green Line I agree things would look closer to 180 degrees different, if not perfectly balanced. But this isn't some fantasy world where you can just wish away such things and pretend they don't exist or matter. And if anyone is in danger of destroying Israel it's Israel itself with its decision to allow its fanatics (largely not even from Israel proper but from places like Brooklyn and the former Soviet Union!) to go settle on occupied territory. It isn't going to be anti-semites or even just the arabs or moslems; it's going to be the whole world refusing to ever accept this and saying that if it leads to Israel's destruction it will be in spite of decades worth of warnings that it was drinking its own poison.
Notice I said "Arab/Muslim" world which includes more than the Arab league; it also includes Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, none of whom have ever affirmed Israel's right to exist. These are fairly important lacunae, since Hezbollah is a key player in Palestinian politics. Remember also that in 2009, while supporting the peace initiative, Mubarak (whose country after all has a peace treaty with Israel) stated that the proposal specifically DID NOT mean recognizing Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Normalization of relations, indeed, does not necessarily imply such recognition. Regarding your attempt to split hairs on the "fascist" question, in what way is Israel headed in that direction? Fascism implies state-sponsorhip, and I'm not sure where the government can be said to be pushing the country in that direction. It was, in fact, the Arab countries that copied Hitler's antics back in the 40s and 50s, and one can easily argue those attitudes have been carried forward in many of the Arab regimes. And in case you haven't been looking, there's plenty of anti-Israeli hysteria on the other side. Of course Israel stresses its military capabilities: those capabilities are the only thing that has ensured the nation's survival in a hostile neighborhood. As far as Israel's fanatical supporters among the American Jewish community, we're obviously looking at different information here; many of Israel's most virulent critics in the US are in that very same Jewish community.
@ currieken: You know, I respectfully realize it isn't conscious on your part but after 40+ years these kinds of arguments are just nothing but chaff and distractions: So *what* if Iran and whoever else aren't part of the Arab League and thus haven't offered formal recognition? In the first place if you are really interested in peace you take whatever *steps* towards peace you can instead of insisting that for some unstated reason everything is tied to everything else and all must be wrapped up in one bundle. And in the second if Israel can so insist that everything is tied to everything else and all must be settled at once, then why can't Iran and others insist on that too and withhold recognition until there's some final, global deal reached? All this is is just accusing others of doing exactly what Israel has pioneered. And then there's the same endless sort of distractions thrown up whenever the simple question is raised of why, if Israel is not just simply interested in stealing ever more land, it just simply doesn't quit doing so, period, and take the benefits that flow from that? After 40+ years of doing X, you know, nobody believes you anymore when you say that no, you really don't care much about doing X. And how come—pretty uniquely I believe—if Israel isn't just rapaciously interested in stealing land it doesn't just come out and declare its borders? Does anyone believe that's anything other than part of a game on the part of Israel to avoid being held to what land it wants? 40+ years now, currieken, and Israel is the invincible superpower of the region, clearly enjoying near total impunity from its neighbors, and far more impunity from serious threat than damn near every other country on earth. And it *still* says it's too endangered to just stop stealing land and needs that as a bargaining chip? With that stealing from the beginning being described as changing the "facts on the ground" so that the thefts they represent could *never* be changed? Who in the world does Israel think it's fooling any more with this kind of argument? Nobody, that's who, which indeed is why you see their new ultimate argument being so commonly thrown around which is just the bald one that no, they always intended to keep that land because God gave it to them. Sheesh, talk about inciting hatred against yourself....