The Peace FAQ:
Camp David
Frequently Asked Questions:
Aren't the Camp David Accords with Egypt a model for future agreements with Israel's other Arab neighbors?
- Even Egypt, first to make peace with Israel and the presumed model
for peacemaking, has built a vast U.S.-equipped army that conducts
military exercises obviously designed for fighting Israel. Its huge
"Badr '96" exercises, for example, Egypt's largest since the 1973 war,
featured simulated crossings of the Suez Canal.
- Charles Krauthammer - The Weekly Standard, May 11, 1998
- After Egyptian dictator Anwar Sadat's death, his successor Hosni
Mubarak discovered that Egypt could ignore its peace treaty
obligations to Israel with impunity. Sadat had signed over 50
agreements and amendments to the Camp David Accords, which spelled out
in great detail normalization of relations with Israel. These included
trade, tourism, science, cultural and other attributes of peaceful
relations. The late Menachem Begin, of blessed memory, fully believed
that his sacrifice of Sinai, with its air bases and oil, was worth the
inauguration of peaceful relations with the most important country in
the Arab world.
With every passing year, it became clearer to Mubarak that the Israelis were too timid to protest Egyptian violations. It also became clear that America would continue to supply aid in the billions of dollars to Egypt, despite Egypt's obvious violations of their most solemn commitments to both President Jimmy Carter and Begin.
From this experience Mubarak devised the "Mubarak gambit," which sets out the principle that an Arab country can promise Israel peace and full normalization as a negotiating tactic in order to force an Israeli withdrawal from territory. Then after the territory is recovered, the Arab country can ignore the normalization part of any agreement.
- Bernard J. Shapiro, in The Caucus Current, October 1994
- "[Anwar Sadat was] a traitor [who had] what was coming to him. He is now dead and buried. Having lived like a Jew, he died like one."
- Colonel Qaddafi, dictator of neighboring Libya, friend of Nelson Mandela. [quoted in Jacques Givet's "The Anti-Zionist Complex"]
Really, how can Egypt violate such a significant agreement? Aren't the relations with Israel good now?
- Two
radical Leftists, Moshe Dayan and Ezer Weizman, coupled with the weak
Carter, pounded Begin to give up all the Sinai to Egypt in exchange
for absolutely nothing. Oh, Yes...The paper words, like Oslo, had all
the correct words of peace:, cooperation, exchange of agricultural
ideas, cessation of anti-Semitic cartoons in the Egyptian press.
Guess what. The Camp David Accords were never kept - except by
Israel. Today the Egyptian Press is rife with ugly statements against
the Jewish State, lavish with anti-Semitic cartoons so familiar during
Hitler's regime. Nothing changed. That some Israelis could be so
pathetically stupid in the face of unreciprocated Peace gestures is a
shanda (shame) for all the Jewish people.
- Emanuel A. Winston
- Egyptian Anti-Normalization And Anti-Semitism:
An Impediment To Full Relations With IsraelEgyptian President Hosni Mubarak will be in Washington the week of March 27 for a state visit. Israeli-Arab negotiations will certainly be the centerpiece of his discussions with President Clinton and Administration officials.
Egyptian Centrality in Arab-Israeli Peace
Egypt, under the courageous leadership of President Anwar Sadat, changed the course of Middle East history by becoming the first Arab nation to make peace with the State of Israel. In his nearly two decades in power, President Mubarak has continued the policy of Sadat and has maintained peaceful relations with Israel. President Mubarak has also worked over the years to encourage other Arab leaders to enter negotiations with Israel and has been an important behind-the-scenes facilitator of Israeli negotiations with the Palestinians, Jordan, Syria and others.
A "Cold Peace"
At the same time, however, twenty-one years into this historic peace, relations between Israel and Egypt have never developed beyond proper cordiality. President Mubarak has done little to warm up the "cold peace," and to encourage people-to-people exchanges and interactions between Israelis and Egyptians. Symbolically, unlike his predecessor, President Mubarak has never gone on a state visit to Israel, always claiming that the timing is not appropriate. (He did attend the funeral of the late Prime Minister Rabin in Jerusalem.)
As in other Arab countries, while the leadership may be engaged in relations with Israel, Egypt?s grassroots and intelligentsia are opposed to any contact with Israel and Jews. Professionals in Egypt are discouraged from interacting with Israeli colleagues. Israelis are barred from participating in "international" book and film festivals in Egypt.
Continuing Anti-Semitism in the Egyptian Media
The cold peace between Israel and Egypt is most apparent in the Egyptian media where all too often Jews and Israelis are depicted in a derogatory and incendiary manner. Anti-Semitic stereotypes are prevalent in caricatures and articles, with Jews portrayed as stooped, hook-nosed and money-hungry, fighting for world domination. Israeli leaders are regularly depicted as Nazis, while other articles deny or diminish the Holocaust. The articles and caricatures can be found in opposition newspapers as well as in the government-backed press, including the largest dailies, Al-Ahram, Al-Goumhuriyya and the popular magazine October.
While President Mubarak has on occasion denounced these anti-Jewish depictions and conspiracy theories, claims of "International Zionist" conspiracies continue to dominate the media, as do depictions of Jews as Nazis, and Holocaust denial.
Ok, so they are not friends, but is there war between them? The threat of war?
-
In September 1996, Egypt held its largest strategic maneuvers
ever. The exercise was code named Badr-96 and involved over 35,000
soldiers, including a canal crossing and liberating of a "besieged
city." The "enemy" in this exercise was Israel. It is routine
for major militarily exercises to have code names and to involve
fictitious enemies. However, it is most unusual for a country to
conduct such an exercise in which the "enemy" is one that the country
is presumably at peace with. Egypt, regardless of its intentions, sent
a disturbing message to Israel by naming the exercise in honor of its
last war with Israel, and by identifying Israel as the enemy. These
events take on even more significant meaning when one looks at the
transformation of the Egyptian military forces over the past decade.
Egypt, since 1985, has undertaken serious efforts to achieve conventional military parity with Israel and currently fields the 13th largest military in the world. Relying on $2.1 billion of annual aid from the US, $1.3 billion in military assistance, is currently modernizing and building-up its military forces to such an extent that it is approaching the quantitative and qualitative levels of the Israeli Defense Forces. In 1994, Egypt surpassed the United States to become the second largest arms importer, behind Saudi Arabia, in the world. Egypt, in a region thatleads the world in the import of weapons, is the only Middle East country to have increased its arms purchases yearly since 1990.
...Egypt is bordered by Libya, Sudan, and Israel. While Sudan's Islamic regime is ideologically troublesome, its 300 main battle tanks (250 of which are T-54/55's), and some 50 combat aircraft pose a negligible military threat to Egypt. On paper, Libya's military is far more formidable than Sudan's. However, its forces hardly pose a military threat to Egypt. Some 1,600 of Libya's 2,200 tanks are old Soviet T-54/5's. Moreover, a lack of manpower has forced Libya to place over half of these tanks, as well as many of its 400 aircraft, in storage, thereby making Libya little more than a massive arms depot. It is significant to note, that Libya's 80,000 man military is less than twenty percent the size of Egypt's. Finally, despite the triangle of tension between Egypt, Sudan, and Libya, they have generally demonstrated a willingness to support each other over perceived pan-Islamic issues. Consequently, there is little doubt that Israel is the target of Egypt's massive military buildup. Indeed, an examination of Egyptian perspectives towards Israel leaves little doubt that Egypt has not ruled out the prospect of a future conflict with Israel.
Former Egyptian President Sadat's support of expanded relations with Israel never came to fruition as Egypt's intellectual, political, and economic elite continued to shun Israel as a regional actor. The passage of time has not improved Egyptian perceptions toward, or its acceptance of, Israel.
- Shawn M. Pine, in The Maccabean, July 1997
- RELATED SECTIONS:
Egypt, Israel, Peace Treaties, Islam, Oslo, Land-for-Peace, the Yom Kippur War, the Six Day War, the War of Independence, War, Occupied Territories
- WWW RESOURCES:
- BOOKS & PRINTED MATERIAL:
- The Israel-Arab Reader: Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict 6TH rev Updated Edition, by Walter Laqueur, Barry Rubin
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, by Martin Gilbert
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can be Resolved, by Alan Dershowitz
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine, by Joan Peters
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israel Conflict, Second Edition, by Mitchell Geoffrey Bard
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - The Camp David Summit - What Went Wrong?: Americans, Israelis, And Palestinians Analyze The Failure Of The Boldest Attempt Ever to Resolve the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, by Shimon Shamir, Bruce Maddy-Weitzman
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - The High Cost of Peace: How Washington's Middle East Policy Left America Vulnerable to Terrorism, by Yossef Bodansky, Jim Saxton
[VIEW BOOK HERE]
- The Israel-Arab Reader: Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict 6TH rev Updated Edition, by Walter Laqueur, Barry Rubin
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