Camp David, Camp David Accords - The Peace FAQ

Camp David

Frequently Asked Questions:

● Aren't the Camp David Accords with Egypt a model for future
agreements with Israel's other Arab neighbors?
● Really, how can Egypt violate such a significant agreement? Aren't
the relations with Israel good now?
● Ok, so they are not friends, but is there war between them? The
threat of war?

Aren't the Camp David Accords with Egypt a model for future
agreements with Israel's other Arab neighbors?

● Even Egypt, first to make peace with Israel and the presumed model
for peacemaking, has built a vast U.S.-equipped army that conducts
military exercises obviously designed for fighting Israel. Its huge
"Badr '96" exercises, for example, Egypt's largest since the 1973
war, featured simulated crossings of the Suez Canal.

- Charles Krauthammer - The Weekly Standard, May 11, 1998

● After Egyptian dictator Anwar Sadat's death, his successor Hosni

Mubarak discovered that Egypt could ignore its peace treaty
obligations to Israel with impunity. Sadat had signed over 50
agreements and amendments to the Camp David Accords, which
spelled out in great detail normalization of relations with Israel.
These included trade, tourism, science, cultural and other attributes
of peaceful relations. The late Menachem Begin, of blessed memory,
fully believed that his sacrifice of Sinai, with its air bases and oil, was
worth the inauguration of peaceful relations with the most important
country in the Arab world.

With every passing year, it became clearer to Mubarak that the

Israelis were too timid to protest Egyptian violations. It also became
clear that America would continue to supply aid in the billions of

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dollars to Egypt, despite Egypt's obvious violations of their most

solemn commitments to both President Jimmy Carter and Begin.

From this experience Mubarak devised the "Mubarak gambit," which

sets out the principle that an Arab country can promise Israel peace
and full normalization as a negotiating tactic in order to force an
Israeli withdrawal from territory. Then after the territory is
recovered, the Arab country can ignore the normalization part of any
agreement.

- Bernard J. Shapiro, in The Caucus Current, October 1994

● "[Anwar Sadat was] a traitor [who had] what was coming to him. He
is now dead and buried. Having lived like a Jew, he died like one."

- Colonel Qaddafi, dictator of neighboring Libya, friend of Nelson

Mandela. [quoted in Jacques Givet's "The Anti-Zionist Complex"]

Really, how can Egypt violate such a significant agreement?

Aren't the relations with Israel good now?

● Two radical Leftists, Moshe Dayan and Ezer Weizman, coupled with
the weak Carter, pounded Begin to give up all the Sinai to Egypt in
exchange for absolutely nothing. Oh, Yes...The paper words, like
Oslo, had all the correct words of peace:, cooperation, exchange of
agricultural ideas, cessation of anti-Semitic cartoons in the Egyptian
press. Guess what. The Camp David Accords were never kept -
except by Israel. Today the Egyptian Press is rife with ugly
statements against the Jewish State, lavish with anti-Semitic
cartoons so familiar during Hitler's regime. Nothing changed. That
some Israelis could be so pathetically stupid in the face of
unreciprocated Peace gestures is a shanda (shame) for all the Jewish
people.

- Emanuel A. Winston

● Egyptian Anti-Normalization And Anti-Semitism:

An Impediment To Full Relations With Israel

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will be in Washington the week of

March 27 for a state visit. Israeli-Arab negotiations will certainly be
the centerpiece of his discussions with President Clinton and
Administration officials.

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Egyptian Centrality in Arab-Israeli Peace

Egypt, under the courageous leadership of President Anwar Sadat,

changed the course of Middle East history by becoming the first Arab
nation to make peace with the State of Israel. In his nearly two
decades in power, President Mubarak has continued the policy of
Sadat and has maintained peaceful relations with Israel. President
Mubarak has also worked over the years to encourage other Arab
leaders to enter negotiations with Israel and has been an important
behind-the-scenes facilitator of Israeli negotiations with the
Palestinians, Jordan, Syria and others.

A "Cold Peace"

At the same time, however, twenty-one years into this historic

peace, relations between Israel and Egypt have never developed
beyond proper cordiality. President Mubarak has done little to warm
up the "cold peace," and to encourage people-to-people exchanges
and interactions between Israelis and Egyptians. Symbolically, unlike
his predecessor, President Mubarak has never gone on a state visit to
Israel, always claiming that the timing is not appropriate. (He did
attend the funeral of the late Prime Minister Rabin in Jerusalem.)

As in other Arab countries, while the leadership may be engaged in

relations with Israel, Egypt?s grassroots and intelligentsia are
opposed to any contact with Israel and Jews. Professionals in Egypt
are discouraged from interacting with Israeli colleagues. Israelis are
barred from participating in "international" book and film festivals in
Egypt.

Continuing Anti-Semitism in the Egyptian Media

The cold peace between Israel and Egypt is most apparent in the
Egyptian media where all too often Jews and Israelis are depicted in
a derogatory and incendiary manner. Anti-Semitic stereotypes are
prevalent in caricatures and articles, with Jews portrayed as stooped,
hook-nosed and money-hungry, fighting for world domination. Israeli
leaders are regularly depicted as Nazis, while other articles deny or
diminish the Holocaust. The articles and caricatures can be found in
opposition newspapers as well as in the government-backed press,
including the largest dailies, Al-Ahram, Al-Goumhuriyya and the
popular magazine October.

While President Mubarak has on occasion denounced these anti-

Jewish depictions and conspiracy theories, claims of "International
Zionist" conspiracies continue to dominate the media, as do

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depictions of Jews as Nazis, and Holocaust denial.

- Anti-Defamation League

Ok, so they are not friends, but is there war between them? The
threat of war?

● In September 1996, Egypt held its largest strategic maneuvers ever.

The exercise was code named Badr-96 and involved over 35,000
soldiers, including a canal crossing and liberating of a "besieged
city." The "enemy" in this exercise was Israel. It is routine for major
militarily exercises to have code names and to involve fictitious
enemies. However, it is most unusual for a country to conduct such
an exercise in which the "enemy" is one that the country is
presumably at peace with. Egypt, regardless of its intentions, sent a
disturbing message to Israel by naming the exercise in honor of its
last war with Israel, and by identifying Israel as the enemy. These
events take on even more significant meaning when one looks at the
transformation of the Egyptian military forces over the past decade.

Egypt, since 1985, has undertaken serious efforts to achieve

conventional military parity with Israel and currently fields the 13th
largest military in the world. Relying on $2.1 billion of annual aid
from the US, $1.3 billion in military assistance, is currently
modernizing and building-up its military forces to such an extent that
it is approaching the quantitative and qualitative levels of the Israeli
Defense Forces. In 1994, Egypt surpassed the United States to
become the second largest arms importer, behind Saudi Arabia, in
the world. Egypt, in a region thatleads the world in the import of
weapons, is the only Middle East country to have increased its arms
purchases yearly since 1990.

...Egypt is bordered by Libya, Sudan, and Israel. While Sudan's

Islamic regime is ideologically troublesome, its 300 main battle tanks
(250 of which are T-54/55's), and some 50 combat aircraft pose a
negligible military threat to Egypt. On paper, Libya's military is far
more formidable than Sudan's. However, its forces hardly pose a
military threat to Egypt. Some 1,600 of Libya's 2,200 tanks are old
Soviet T-54/5's. Moreover, a lack of manpower has forced Libya to
place over half of these tanks, as well as many of its 400 aircraft, in
storage, thereby making Libya little more than a massive arms
depot. It is significant to note, that Libya's 80,000 man military is
less than twenty percent the size of Egypt's. Finally, despite the
triangle of tension between Egypt, Sudan, and Libya, they have
generally demonstrated a willingness to support each other over

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perceived pan-Islamic issues. Consequently, there is little doubt that

Israel is the target of Egypt's massive military buildup. Indeed, an
examination of Egyptian perspectives towards Israel leaves little
doubt that Egypt has not ruled out the prospect of a future conflict
with Israel.

Former Egyptian President Sadat's support of expanded relations

with Israel never came to fruition as Egypt's intellectual, political,
and economic elite continued to shun Israel as a regional actor. The
passage of time has not improved Egyptian perceptions toward, or its
acceptance of, Israel.

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