The CIA has just declassified a raft of documents related to President Jimmy Carter’s historic meeting at Camp David in September 1978, with Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin. At least a cursory reading of the most salient documents does not reveal a lot that has not [...]]]>
The CIA has just declassified a raft of documents related to President Jimmy Carter’s historic meeting at Camp David in September 1978, with Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin. At least a cursory reading of the most salient documents does not reveal a lot that has not already been reported and commented on a thousand times in the last thirty years. But taken together, they say a lot, and point to what can — and perhaps cannot — be done with the current US-brokered negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
The first thing that leaps out is how much President Carter was both in charge and deeply engaged. While some historians have faulted him for focusing too much on details during his presidency, at Camp David he proved that he could deal with both “trees” and “woods.” He could deal with minute and difficult details; but he never lost sight of the big picture, which was necessary to bring to bear the political leadership that ultimately created success. It is also evident from the documents — and was evident at the time — that Carter was supported by an immensely able, talented, knowledgeable, and experienced team, from Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski at the top, to key advisors. These notably included Assistant Secretary of State Harold Saunders and NSC staff director for the Middle East, William Quandt. Together, they molded a successful US position.
Of course, so much credit also has to go to Egypt’s Sadat and Israel’s Begin , two very unlikely peace partners only a short time before Camp David, but both with a vision for their peoples that enabled them to take decisions that would have likely eluded lesser men. Sadat, as much as anything, wanted to get Egypt out of the business of having to confront Israel on behalf of other Arab states, to no benefit (and a lot of risk) to Egypt and its people. Begin wanted to eliminate Israel’s principal enemy from the Arab military balance, without which — Egypt — no coalition of Arab states had any chance of besting Israel in combat. And so it proved to be. In pursuing this goal, Begin gave hostages to his political enemies, including those who stoutly opposed Israel’s evacuation of Jewish settlements on the Egyptian side of the old Egyptian Israeli border, but which Begin agreed to do and then made happen.
The US had a major geopolitical stake, as well. On three previous occasions, the 1956 Suez War, the 1967 Six-Day War, and the so-called Yom Kippur War of 1973, conflict posed risks of confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union — and at least in 1973 came perilously close to becoming the second most risky moment of the Cold War after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Camp David Accords, which took Egypt out of the Arab military balance, thus not only dropped the risk of a plausible Arab military attack on Israel almost to the vanishing point, it also dropped the risk of a US-Soviet confrontation in the region virtually to zero. Everyone gained.
Since then, there have been a series of attempts to build on the Camp David Accords and the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. Israel has peace with Jordan and Lebanon. It has evacuated Gaza (though this has not brought peace, for a variety of reasons). But the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians of the West Bank (and Gaza) is not all that much advanced from where the first talks began in the mid-1980s. (Note: I assumed the Arab-Israeli portfolio at the NSC after the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty was completed, and served for nearly two years as the White House representative to the so-called Autonomy talks over the Palestinian territories). Indeed, any negotiator from that time would recognize all the issues are still in play 33 years later.
That should not be surprising. Unlike the first Camp David and the resulting treaty, there is no common interest among all the parties in reaching a basic deal. Israel (at least its government) is not keen on relinquishing much of the West Bank and at least some of the Jewish settlements (that now include half a million people): this is a deeply conflicted issue in Israel, with no obvious direct security payoff. For their part, the Palestinians want gains that go beyond what any Israeli government has been willing to contemplate. Gaza, meanwhile, is isolated by Israel and the West, thus making almost impossible a united negotiating posture on the part of the Palestinians. And while the “West” is committed to a resolution of the conflict, getting there remains in the “too tough” category, especially when the only potential arbiter, a succession of US presidents since Jimmy Carter, has not seen such a resolution as being of anything like the magnitude of peace between Israel and Egypt, at least in terms of gaining security for the United States (the Soviet Union has long since disappeared).
President Bill Clinton did try, by convening Israeli and Palestinian leaders at Camp David in late 1980. But he had waited until too late in his second term, without the prospect that he would still be in power to help foster the implementation of any agreement that would be reached — a necessary requirement. Neither Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, or the PLO leader, Yasser Arafat, had the political backing needed to take major “risks for peace,” and there was not a sufficient overlapping of interests. Nor did Clinton undertake the careful preparations that marked Jimmy Carter’s efforts a generation earlier, and which are revealed in the newly-declassified documents. And he did not take with him to Camp David a ”first team” of experts able to provide both the institutional memory or capacity to help work a deal. What Bill Clinton did achieve was the enunciation of a set of principles, a few days before he left office, and which can be found here. They are relatively simple as a set of compromises that could lead to a settlement — something that just about every serious negotiator over the last three decades would attest to. Simple to state but, so far, impossible to gain politically.
Now there is a third try to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave negotiations a wide berth, secretary of State John Kerry has placed this high on his agenda, as did President Obama in his address this fall to the UN General Assembly. But the chances of success are still remote, for all the reasons that have bedeviled the last three decades of effort. Further, other events in the region work against hopes for ending the conflict anytime soon. Israel is preoccupied with turmoil in Egypt (where the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty remains the cornerstone of its security and thus of its sense of confidence in the future); Iran poses a critical challenge; and the situation in Syria also provides no comfort. Together, these three crises grossly limit the capacity of the Israeli government to take risks for peace, even if it were predisposed to do so, which is far from evident. Meanwhile, there is little or no prospect of fostering a basis for serious negotiations on the Palestinian side, in major part because of the domination of Gaza by the radical group Hamas, which is ratified in power by the Israeli-Western blockade.
Further, like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama has not made the sustained commitment to move the peace process forward, given any indication that he would take the risks in US domestic politics that would be needed, or created a top-class team of advisors and — below Kerry himself — negotiators needed to increase the chances of success. Given the low probability that the talks will produce results, none of this can really be faulted.
Jimmy Carter’s legacy lives on; but neither objective circumstances, leadership of the contending parties (Israel and the Palestinians), or a strong US team argue for a repetition of success any time in the foreseeable future. The new documents show what can be done if all three factors come together. Regrettably, however, none of them now exist.
Photo: Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat with U.S. President Jimmy Carter at Camp David in 1978.
]]>As the Obama administration struggles to walk a fine policy line on Egypt that takes appropriate account of the diverse U.S. interests at stake, one subject that is often mentioned, but shouldn’t be, as a reason to go easy on the head-cracking Egyptian [...]]]>
As the Obama administration struggles to walk a fine policy line on Egypt that takes appropriate account of the diverse U.S. interests at stake, one subject that is often mentioned, but shouldn’t be, as a reason to go easy on the head-cracking Egyptian generals is to maintain the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. This is not to say that Egyptian-Israeli peace is not still quite important to regional security as well as to U.S. interests; indeed it is. But the reason this topic should not be shaping U.S. policy toward the political drama today in Egypt is that the peace is simply not in danger. No Egyptian regime would see any advantage in breaching it.
That is so because not just the generals but also any Egyptian leader with at least half a brain would realize that in any new round of fighting the Egyptians would get clobbered by a vastly more capable Israeli force. Getting clobbered would mean not just military defeat but also the humiliation and political costs that would go with it.
The last time the Egyptians were able to hold their own militarily against Israel was in the opening days of the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Anwar Sadat used the advantage of surprise to score just enough success on the battlefield to atone for the humiliation of the war six years earlier and make it politically possible for him to undertake the initiative that led to the peace treaty. Even that military success did not last long. By the time of the cease-fire Israeli forces had successfully counterattacked, had surrounded the Egyptian Third Army, and were rolling toward Cairo.
So as Israel lobbies western governments to keep supporting General el-Sisi and his colleagues, let us not act as if the Egyptian-Israeli peace is at stake when it really isn’t. We might reflect instead on other possible and actual Israeli motives for taking that position. There is the understandable concern, which any country in Israel’s geographic position would have, of violent militants operating in, and out of, the Sinai. But recent history lends little support to the idea that this problem is likely to diminish rather than to grow if the generals are left in charge and unpressured from outside the country. The opposite is more likely true, given the prospect their harsh policies will provoke increased violent militancy from battered Islamists. In any case, cross-border violence by militants is the sort of thing the Israelis have repeatedly shown themselves quick to address with their own means, regardless of what any government on the other side of the border may think.
Because the Egyptian generals’ policies are most conspicuously a form of Islamist-bashing, the Israeli government naturally and reflexively smiles on those policies. Here again, however, the connection between political outcomes in Cairo and the effects that most interest the Israelis is not clear-cut. During his tenuous one year in office, Mohamed Morsi did not prove to be as steadfast a friend as Hamas—the Islamists Israel works hardest at bashing—had hoped he would be.
Some in the Israeli government may be thinking of a possible downside for them of emphasizing the idea that the peace treaty is endangered. This idea may bring to mind how the U.S.-Egyptian aid relationship is rooted in the bargains struck by Jimmy Carter at Camp David, in which voluminous U.S. assistance to Egypt was part of the price the United States paid to get Sadat to assume the costs and risks of making a separate peace with Israel. That in turn may bring to mind how Israel did not fulfill its part of the bargains, which was to make a peace with the Palestinians within five years and withdraw Israeli troops from Palestinian territory.
This subject leads to what may be the strongest motive for the Netanyahu government to oppose squeezing the flow of aid to Egypt, although it would not openly acknowledge it as a motive. The Israeli Right has to be discomfited by any thought of the United States using leverage based on a major aid relationship in that part of the world to get the recipient to change destructive policies. It is the failure of the United States to use the even greater leverage it could exert on Israel that permits Netanyahu’s government to continue the occupation and colonization of conquered territory and, 35 years after Camp David, to deny the Palestinians self-determination.
Photo: US President Jimmy Carter shaking hands with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty on the grounds of the White House on 26 March 1979
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
It’s time to ask some tough questions about US policy regarding Egypt. The most pressing being what that policy is, exactly?
I agreed with the easily assailable decision by the Obama administration to refrain from labelling the ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi a coup. It still [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
It’s time to ask some tough questions about US policy regarding Egypt. The most pressing being what that policy is, exactly?
I agreed with the easily assailable decision by the Obama administration to refrain from labelling the ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi a coup. It still is my belief that doing so might be consistent with US law, but would not be helpful to Egypt. Instead of taking funding away from the military which, since it now directly controls the Egyptian till, would simply divert the lost funds from other places (causing even more distress to an already reeling Egyptian economy) it would be better to use the aid as leverage to push the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) toward an inclusive political process that would include drafting a broadly acceptable constitution and, with all due speed, re-installing a duly elected civilian government.
Yet, despite rhetoric supporting just such an outcome, the United States has done nothing to push for such an Egyptian future. The withholding of four F-16 fighter planes means nothing; the SCAF knows they will get the planes in due course and they have no immediate need for them. Mealy-mouthed statements from US officials calling for “all sides” to show restraint are boilerplate and meaningless, all the more so in the wake of the massive violence last weekend, where scores of Egyptian supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood were slaughtered.
What is the US’ desired outcome? Surely, the Obama administration is not comfortable with the level of violence we are currently seeing in Egypt. And equally surely, however much SCAF might be the familiar partner — the one we know and who can be counted on to cooperate with US policy initiatives — the administration must realize that a renewal of the sort of military dictatorship embodied by Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak cannot be re-installed permanently in Egypt anymore.
But it is also clear that the United States was not at all comfortable with the Muslim Brotherhood leadership in Egypt, or the rise, swept in by the Arab Awakening, of the moderate, anti-Salafist version of political Islam the Brotherhood represented. (Before there is any confusion, I do not believe the West did anything to hasten the downfall of Morsi in Egypt, nor to create the agitation against similar regimes in Tunisia and Turkey. But neither do I believe that Morsi’s failure elicited anything but satisfaction in Washington.)
The question of the US response to the coup in Egypt is not simply about Egypt. It is about the region more broadly. It is about Tunisia, the Gaza Strip, Syria and Turkey. The desire to pivot away from the Middle East, as well as Obama’s disdain for Bush-style “democracy promotion”, meant the US wouldn’t do much about the spread of political Islam. But when Morsi and, now, the Tunisian Ennahda Party, stumbled badly, they certainly didn’t mind.
The Turkish AKP seemed, at first, to have integrated some liberal values, including neo-liberal economics, with Islamist politics, but that too has frayed in 2013. US discomfort with Turkey was certainly sharpened by Turkish support for the Hamas government in Gaza. But it struck harder as Morsi’s Egypt and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s became closer and, using the historic prestige both countries have in the Muslim world, staked out regional leadership roles. There was every possibility that similar Islamist governments could emerge in Jordan and Syria, along with Libya. In time, the Gulf States could also see similar uprisings (as Bahrain already has) that, if successful, might give rise to Islamist governments. The possibility of that sort of regional unity must have given pause to policymakers in Washington, Jerusalem, London, Paris and even Moscow.
So it is not surprising that the US is lobbing rhetoric, rather than substantive pressure, as SCAF seeks to hammer the Brotherhood back into submission; back into an outlaw role. The declaration by SCAF Commander-in-Chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi that the crackdown on the Brotherhood was part of a renewed “war on terror” was hardly lost on Western observers. Nor was the accompanying action against Hamas in Gaza, which is of a piece with the domestic battle against the Brotherhood. The US may feel that the SCAF is going too far with its tactics and risking long term instability, but they cannot object to the goal of neutralizing the Brotherhood and similar organizations in the region as a political force.
This is all a serious mis-read of the realities in the Middle East. Morsi brought the strife upon himself, with his bungling governance, his transparent attempt at a power grab and ignoring his campaign promises to create an inclusive government an restrain his own party’s Islamist leanings. The June 30 protest was a very real statement of dissatisfaction.
But since June 30, history has been re-written in Egypt. The Brotherhood was somehow cast as having been an illegitimate ruling party all along. Their electoral victory was supposedly a reflection of the fact that they were the only group that was organized and thus took advantage of hastily scheduled elections. This, of course, completely ignores the fact that the Brotherhood was not the only Islamist party to garner significant support. In fact, 368 of the 508 parliamentary seats went to Islamist parties. Only 115 were garnered by the liberals, centrists and leftists combined. The Egyptian people, having been burned by half a century of secular(ish) dictatorship, wanted to try something new. When that didn’t work, they protested and moved in a different direction. It’s called democracy.
And while June 30 certainly represented widespread dissatisfaction with the Morsi government, the numbers quoted have been called into serious doubt, and it is not at all clear that those demonstrating also supported a coup. What is clear is that the Brotherhood still has significant support in Egypt, along with major opposition. Driving them underground and labelling them terrorists is unlikely to produce a stable Egypt. A better tactic would have been to allow popular disenchantment with the Brotherhood to continue to grow and express itself in the ballot box.
In the last analysis, the US is largely standing by and watching rather than using the leverage it has with the SCAF to push for an inclusive political transition. The hope is surely that a stable Egypt will emerge after a death blow has been dealt to political Islam, not only in Egypt but throughout the region. That hope seems a bit too ambitious. The words of Professor Fawaz Gerges seem to encapsulate the larger view well:
The military’s removal of Morsi undermines Egypt’s fragile democratic experiment because there is a real danger that once again the Islamists will be suppressed and excluded from the political space. The writing is already on the wall with the arrest of Morsi and the targeting of scores of Brotherhood leaders. This does not bode well for the democratic transition because there will be no institutionalization of democracy without the Brotherhood, the biggest and oldest mainstream religiously based Islamist movement in the Middle East… As the central Islamist organization established in 1928, the failure of the Muslim Brotherhood’s first experience in power will likely taint the standing and image of its branches and junior ideological partners in Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and even Tunisia and Morocco. Hamas is already reeling from the violent storm in Cairo and the Muslim Brothers in Jordan are feeling the political heat and pressure at home. The Syrian Islamists are disoriented and fear that the tide has turned against them. The liberal-leaning opposition in Tunisia is energized and plans to go on the offensive against Ennahda. Even the mildly Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Gulen Movement in Turkey are watching unfolding developments in neighboring Egypt with anxiety and disquiet. Nevertheless, it would be foolish to pen the obituary of the Islamist movement.
The US is allowing stability to be sacrificed in the hope that political Islam will be dealt a death blow. It is possible, of course, that its ability to affect SCAF’s behavior is limited, but this seems unlikely. SCAF is dependent on its good relations with the US and Europe; it won’t simply ignore significant pressure from Washington. More likely, that pressure is as absent in private as it obviously is in public. The US will probably pay a long-term price for such a short-sighted strategy. Par for the course in the Middle East. One can only hope that the recent efforts by the European Union, including a visit to Morsi by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, bodes some sort of change in Western policy with Egypt.
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