Camp David: Peacemaking and Politics

By William B. Quandt. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1986. 426 pp. $32.95 (cloth), $12.95 (paper).

Reviewed by Donald Neff

A number of books have already been written about the traumatic event that these days is referred to simply as Camp David. But none is more detailed or more revealing than William Quandt's about that historic sequestration of the leaders of America, Egypt and Israel. These three men, Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, met for 13 tense days in September 1978 at the presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland to work for what an expectant world hoped would be no less than a comprehensive peace in the Middle East.

That ambitious goal was undoubtedly what Carter and Sadat had in mind. For Israel's Begin, however, the aim even in those early days was probably much more limited. The evidence that has emerged since then, which is generally supported by the record of Quandt's insightful book, strongly indicates that Begin from the start was less interested in the overspanning idea of a general peace than in a narrow, bilateral agreement with Egypt.

To achieve an overall peace, Israel would have had, as a starter, to surrender the occupied territories, which Begin and his followers have opposed since the lands were captured in the 1967 June War. Nonetheless, Carter apparently seriously believed that was what Begin was willing to do if only he could be made to see the light. That assumption was a measure of Carter's lack of sophistication about the Middle East.

Opening the Door for Future War

The record makes clear that what Begin probably wanted all along is what he finally got: a bilateral peace treaty with Egypt, which neutralized Israel's strongest Arab neighbor. Once that was achieved, it certified Israel's superiority in the region. Afterwards, Israel embarked on such actions as the bombing of the capitals of Iraq (1981) and Tunisia (1985) and the siege of Beirut (1982), adventures it might have been less capable of undertaking without the treaty with Egypt.

Although Quandt, who was Carter's Middle East specialist on the National Security Council, puts Carter and Sadat in as favorable a light as is reasonably possible, the fact is that both men emerge looking naive compared to the wily, uncompromising Begin. For a time Carter and Sadat apparently thought they could collude to pressure Begin into concessions, but the combative former leader of the Irgun terrorist group would have none of that. As he haughtily informed Sadat, Israel "did not need Egypt's recognition because recognition of Israel's right to exist came only from God."

That messianic tone pretty much set Begin's negotiating style. It was an effective technique, forcing the desperate leaders of America and Egypt into concession after concession as they sought to salvage some achievement from their highly publicized meeting. In the end, since Sadat was the weakest, he conceded the most.

It is clear from Quandt's record that the American negotiators were less than enthralled by Begin. They resented his exaggerated courtliness, behind which they suspected lay an arrogance bordering on megalomania. He insisted on lecturing the Americans on biblical history, on Israel's pivotal influence on America's Mideast policy and on the Jews exclusive right to Palestine. His refusal to entertain any sort of withdrawal from the occupied West Bank—which he repeatedly insisted on referring to as Judea and Samaria—or the other Israeli-occupied territories drove the Americans and Egyptians to despair.

Not even the realization that "Begin was not a man of his word," as Quandt euphemistically phrases it, seemed to give Carter and Sadat the resolve to demand concessions from the Israeli leader. The reality was just the opposite. By the time Camp David had dragged toward its third week, the President was desperate for some evidence of progress, and so too was Sadat.

An Imperfect Peace

The result was predictable, although Quandt diplomatically declines to overemphasize the negative consequences. Israel got more U.S. aid, about $3 billion immediately and much more later, and a narrow bilateral treaty with Egypt. This was exactly what neither the U.S. nor the Egyptian negotiators wanted. It was sure to perpetuate the conflict because it overlooked the central issue, the plight of the Palestinians.

There is almost a sense of Greek tragedy about the fate of the men who negotiated at Camp David. Carter was defeated in the 1980 presidential elections and Sadat was assassinated in 1981. Begin was later overtaken by an incapacitating melancholia, after the death of his wife, that caused him to retire into deep seclusion. Quandt does not dwell on these personal losses, and this is perhaps just as well. They suggest that the consequences of what we know as Camp David comprise a tragedy of indescribable proportions.

Donald Neff is the author of histories of the 1956 and 1967 wars in the Middle East and most recently finished a history of the 1973 war.