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Coalition for Peace with Justice
Article in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs [to CPWJ Letters page] [ to CPWJ home page] March 2003Carter Risked All for Middle East Peace by William James Martin In announcing that Former President Jimmy Carter would be the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Pace Prize, which He received on Dec. 10, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said “In a situation currently marked by threats of the use of power, Carter has stood by the principles that conflicts must as far as possible be resolved through mediation and international cooperation based on international law, respect for human rights, and economic development.” The committee added that “Carter’s mediation was a vital contribution to the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, in itself a great enough achievement to qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize.” In November of 1980, the American electorate squandered the considerable momentum generated by the Carter administration for a comprehensive Middle East peace and initiated the transformation of this region into a bloodier more volatile one in which justice was further removed The region responded to the passive and disengaged character of the new American President, President Reagan, as Israel launched an invasion of Lebanon which claimed the lives of 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians and included the massacres of Palestinian refugees in the Chitila and Sabra refugee camps in Beirut. The number of Palestinian civilians slaughtered in those camps roughly equaled the number of those killed in the World Trade Center. Menachem Begin was pushed reluctantly into the signing of the Camp David Accords by a tenacious Jimmy Carter, skillful at intellectual debate, determined to do the impossible-to end conflict between Arabs and Jews, and willing to put his presidency on the line in one bold gamble. Carter records moments of despair in his memoir Keeping Faith in which he wishes to be rid of the whole Middle East problem and regrets having gotten involved in it in the first place. He observed that solving the Middle East equation was a thankless task, unappreciated by the American people, and that his efforts to this end had eroded his political support. His standing in the polls actually dropped upon his arrival back into the United States after his journey to Cairo and Jerusalem where Carter had, for the second time, put his presidency on the line in order to achieve an agreement for the implementation of the Camp David Accords. Carter attributed this particular decline in his approval rating to the hypercritical press coverage. Carter found himself in the ironic position, for a politician, of having devoted the greatest plurality of his time and energy to an issue, which at best was controversial, and at worst had degraded his popularity from the 80% approval rating that he had enjoyed for the first few months of his tenure. This precipitous decline in Carter’s popularity exactly coincided with Carter’s announcement that the Palestinian people had a right to a homeland. President Carter has been the only American president to take an interest in the Middle East from the outset of his administration and to envision a final solution to this centuriy-old conflict. All other presidents, including Reagan and George W. Bush have become involved in this region only in response to a crisis, and in the case of Bush, only reluctantly and to the least extent possible. The evidence is clear that the initial thrust on the part of Carter taking the form of pressing Sadat for movement towards a settlement is what prompted Sadat to journey to Jerusalem. The Camp David Summit was one of the most remarkable conferences in history. One of the longest in duration, lasting 13 days, and was one of the most intense summits of modern times, it resembled in some ways a marathon psychotherapy session. Carter convened the summit one year after Sadat's journey to Jerusalem in an effort to salvage what was a collapsing peace process. The intensity of the conference, as well as the isolation of the negotiators from the news media and the outside world, augmented the drama taking place in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland and amplified the focus of world attention on the hilltop retreat, on the negotiators and their respective nations, and on the Middle East as a locus of past wars and now, possibly, peace. The three heads of state could not afford to fail, for failure to reach an agreement after such an investment of their state's diplomatic prestige would have been politically fatal to each of them. That political life or death was on the line was no accident, for Carter structured the conference to make the risk of failure severe enough to increase the chance of success. It can probably be said of no other conference in history that the nature and character of the conference was itself a major causative factor in the creation of the agreement that emerged. For his on part, Carter put the prestige of his own presidency behind the effort bringing to Camp David, at one time or other during the thirteen-day period, the major figures of his cabinet--Secretary of State Vance, Secretary of Defense Brown, Vice President Mondale and National Security Advisor Dr. Brzezinshi. President Carter deserves credit for being one of America's most courageous presidents, for Carter was well aware that had he failed at Camp David, there would have been little point in continuing to govern. Henry Kissinger well understood what Carter was up to and expressed the critique that Carter could risk his own political future if he wanted to, but that he did not have the right to put at risk, to such a degree, the office of the Presidency. Whatever the validity of this claim, it implies awareness on Kissinger's part of the personal risk courted by the President. In the writer's view, the most intelligent President since Jefferson also happened to be the most courageous. One searches in vain through the tenure of Ronald Reagan for any display of courage to match this; and I challenge anyone to make that search. The effect of the Camp David Summit was to forge a peace treaty between the two major antagonists in the Middle East, Egypt and Israel, and to initiate a process in which a comprehensive peace would become a possibility. Such a possibility of peace, however, would depend on the constant vigilance of an informed and determined American president with the courage to stand up for the human rights of all the people of the region including Palestinians and to understand that Israel, like any other state must abide by the principles of international law, and in particular UN Resolution 242 which requires that Israel withdraw from the territory it conquered in the ‘67 War. The Camp David Accords embraces UN Res.242 “in all of its aspects” , was ratified by the Israeli Knesset and bears the signature of Manachem Begin as well as Anwar Sadat and Jimmy Carter. |
