Forty years ago Monday, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords, ending a 30-year state of war between Israel and the largest Arab country. It was a triumph for diplomacy and inspired a generation of officials to dream about what once was impossible: bringing peace to the Middle East.
Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama each launched their own initiatives, but each went nowhere. And as for President Trump’s “deal of the century”: it increasingly appears the diplomatic equivalent of OJ Simpson’s hunt for the real killer.
For many within the State Department, peace-processing has become a full-time profession. “It never hurts to talk” has become unquestioned fact. The problem, however, is that talk can kill. Almost twice as many Israelis died at the hands of Palestinian terrorists after the PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat’s iconic handshake with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin than in the 18 months before the 1993 Oslo Accords.
President Jimmy Carter may claim credit for bringing Israelis and Egyptians together, but it was Sadat who made the bold decision to approach Israel with an offer to talk peace. More than four decades later, it is hard not to recognize the emotion with which Sadat was met when he made his first visit to Israel to address the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
Sadat became sincere in his quest for peace for a simple reason: He had tried to defeat his enemy at war, launching a surprise attack in 1973 to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Israel’s victory, even at a high price, convinced Sadat that he could not achieve his aims militarily; peace became the only option. The same was true with Jordan, which became the second Arab state to recognize Israel in 1994. Jordan tried war with Israel in 1948 and 1967, and lost not only Jerusalem but the entire West Bank for its miscalculation.
Compare the Egypt and Jordan examples to other theoretical peace partners: Diplomats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory each time they seek to shield the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, or other Palestinian groups from the consequences of their actions. If Palestinian leaders believe diplomacy is about collecting what chits they can at the negotiating table and then using terrorism or military force to extract other concessions, then that is an indication they are insincere in their quest for peace. The same is true with Lebanon: By rescuing Hezbollah in 2006 from the disastrous results of its decision to launch a cross-border attack into Israel, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other diplomats simply guaranteed that the next war would be far bloodier and more destructive: Today, Hezbollah has more missiles aimed at Israel than it was before the 2006 war.
The same lessons hold true with peacekeeping. Along the Syrian and Lebanese borders, peace keeping has become a joke: Highly paid UN peacekeepers turn the other way to avoid confrontation as Hezbollah re-arms and other terrorist groups prepare for attacks. The only successful peacekeepers have been the (non-U.N.) Multinational Force of Observers who separated Israeli and Egyptian forces and monitored the peace in the Sinai Peninsula. The reason, again, is that the combatants made the peace first and only later brought peacekeepers in. Seldom, if ever, do peacekeepers actually bring peace between warring parties.
The 1978 Camp David Accords forever changed the face of the Middle East. Even though the peace was cold at a popular level, it was nonetheless resilient. The lesson should be clear: If any U.S. president wants Middle Eastern peace to be part of his legacy, then he should recognize that peace is seldom made between equals but rather when one side recognizes its military defeat at the hands of the other and understands that military action and terrorism will not bring it the rewards it seeks. Cease-fires set back peace and they ironically increase the body count by prolonging conflicts as rejectionists game the diplomatic system. To offer a concession in the face of violence is akin to paying ransom for hostage-taking: it only guarantees more of the same.
Sadat should be lauded for taking a giant leap for peace. How unfortunate it is, then, that so many diplomats in the United States, European Union, and U.N. bureaucracy seem so determined to set up roadblocks to prevent the emergence of a new Sadat.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
