by Christina Pomoni

Created on: August 20, 2009   Last Updated: September 17, 2009

In the long history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Camp David Accords set the framework for future peace in the Middle East. Following twelve days of secret talks and negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and US President Jimmy Carter, the Camp David Accords were signed on September 17, 1978 at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland. Although initially the accords led to the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty on March 26, 1979, they were unsuccessful in bringing long-term peace between Israel and other Arab countries in the region.

Egypt and Israel maintained a state of war since 1948 when Israel had declared its independence and the founding of the State of Israel, which did not bring any benefit to Egypt. Later on, in 1967 during the Six Day War, although initially Egypt embargoed Israeli shipping by closing the Straits of Tiran and unifying forces with Jordan, Syria and Iraq to establish a large armed force in the Israeli border, Israel attacked back capturing the Gaza strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, Egypt lost again to Israel realizing there was no way to eliminate the opponent through outright war. It was then that Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat preferred the road of diplomacy to solve the problem, unlike other Arab countries that continued being at a state of war with Israel.

On January 20, 1977, US President Carter proceeded with a comprehensive, bilateral approach to revitalize the peace process in the Middle East. Carter's new approach appealed to the reconvening of the 1973 Geneva Conference that had initially failed to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict in the absence of representation of the Palestinians by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). This time, President Carter hoped that the Conference would be held with a Palestinian delegation in the hope of negotiating a final settlement. However, this remained a pure aspiration.

President Carter visited the Arab leaders on whom he would have to lay his hopes for peace settlements in the Middle East. Although his meetings with Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat, King Hussein of Jordan, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin were successful, President Carter feared reactions. Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia that had allied with Egypt and Syria as well as other

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