I'm 36 years old, but that's old enough to remember when Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin and Anwar el-Sadat signed the Camp David Accords. Even then I understood how significant it was that an Arab state had finally made peace with Israel and the Jewish fact. But while I was barely six at the time, I noticed a big problem from what the news reports were putting out. While the agreements called for ultimate self-government for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, there was no definitive timetable, unlike the schedule for Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula -- nor was there a specific recognition of the "Palestinian problem."
There was a classic editorial cartoon a couple of years later, when the issue really began heating up again. I can't remember the byline, but it showed Begin saying basically, "We do empathize with the Palestinians. After all, we Jews were in the same position as them before 1948; so we suggest they do what we did -- wander around the desert for 2000 years." Ouch!
The issue of the West Bank is not completely simple, but there is broad consensus that the final border needs to be at or near the "Green Line" -- the pre 1967 border -- with perhaps some recognition of legal settlements. That's partly because the territory technically belonged to Jordan (albeit questionably) until it renounced its claim in 1988, around the time the first intifada started and while there is the issue of the settlements an enclavated country is not without precedent as I've noted in some previous posts.
But Gaza is a different story. It doesn't belong to any country -- not legally. Far as I know, Egypt wiped its hands of the territory decades ago after Israel chased it out back in 1967 and it did not ask for it back in 1978. Maybe this is because it worried about and still does the radicals in the territory nearly as much as Israel (although for different reasons -- many in Gaza, like in the rest of the Middle East, want a region-wide caliphate to replace the "apostate" secular governments). Not to mention the intractable refugee problem -- of those who live in Gaza, over a million, nearly ⅔ of the population in the territory, meet the accepted definition of a "displaced person." Have that many refugees in such a small territory, of course you're going to have rocket launchers.
I never thought I'd live to see the day where Carter and Pat Buchanan agreed on anything, but when one calls present Israeli policies "apartheid" and the other calls Gaza a "concentration camp" (using the same terminology a Vatican official used last week) -- well, I'll let you draw your own conclusions, but clearly 1978 was a missed opportunity to resolve some key issues.
Of course, Carter deserves a lot of credit for turning the tide and for beginning to move the process forward. He got Egypt to recognize Israel, which eventually paved the way for Jordan to do the same (sort of). But he still could have done more including an insistence that self-government for the Palestinians be front-loaded and all armed groups disarmed -- as well as ensuring those smuggling tunnels were never built in the first place. By not doing so, he's made what could have been a 4 year plan (which would have been concurrent with the three-stage withdrawal from Sinai) a 31 year stalemate which still goes on.
We know what happened to Sadat and Begin. One almost wishes Arafat was back -- as stupid as he was in not accepting Camp David II, he still would have kept the waring factions in Palestine in line. Even King Hussein of Jordan was a voice of reason, who could have pulled people together, until his health problems caught up with him.
Instead, we can look to 2000 more years of armed conflict, 2000 more years of blood and tears, 2000 years of wandering -- and even more despair. And that doesn't help anyone. Certainly not the Gazans who got shafted in 1978 and left in a no-man's land. The West Bank, impoverished as it is, almost seems like a paradise by comparison -- no wonder the Palestinians are divided as they are.
I don't like saying it, because I really respect Jimmy Carter -- but he really dropped the ball and the world's paying the price for it now. Sometimes, a half-assed agreement can be worse than none at all. And when it's the world's most contested region, everyone pays the price.
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1 comment:
I think that is a pretty selective and damning assessment to lay all this at the feet of Jimmy Carter.
You might have noticed in your research that Egypt and Israel have had peace ever since. That was the primary objective of that agreement, hence the signatories.
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