From Camp David to Oslo: A History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Camp David Accords and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty
The election of Jimmy Carter in 1976 initiated a new approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Carter abandoned Nixon’s strategy of limited agreements and decided to seek a comprehensive accord to be negotiated at an international conference. The PLO, however, would not openly accept Resolution 242 unless the Palestinians’ right to a state was acknowledged beforehand. However, Israel and Egypt did sign an agreement on September 17, 1978, that led in the following year to a peace treaty between those two countries. It was the first treaty between Israel and an Arab neighbor.
The Arab League expelled Egypt and moved its headquarters from Cairo to Tunis. Arab censure of Anwar Sadat (Egypt’s Prime Minister) focused on the conflicting interpretations of what Camp David had promised with respect to Palestinians. The agreement referred to the ‘legitimate rights of the Palestinian people’ and Palestinian ‘autonomy.’ Menachem Begin (who succeeded Yitzhak Rabin as Prime Minister of Israel in 1977) interpreted these references to mean their non-political rights under Israeli sovereignty, whereas Carter and Sadat believed it meant political rights under Arab rule, probably Jordanian.
From Begin’s perspective, ‘the Sinai had been sacrificed but Eretz Israel (West Bank) had been won,’ meaning that removing Egypt as a hostile neighbor would enable Israel to retain the West Bank and prove to the million Palestinians living there that they had no hope of true self-determination. Israel began an aggressive and massive settlement program under the direction of Ariel Sharon in the West Bank.
From Camp David to Oslo
With Egypt removed from Arab-Israeli hostilities, the conflict assumed new dimensions, which included state sponsorship of proxies – notably Lebanon, that led to the Israeli invasion of that country in 1982.
Lebanon Civil War and Foreign Intervention
Since the late 1960s, Lebanon served as an unwilling base for PLO attacks on Israel. The shift of the PLO command from Jordan to camps outside Beirut in 1971 furthered an already fragile Lebanese political structure and inspired the formation of Maronite Catholic militias independent of government control, as was the PLO. Local tensions between Maronites, Muslims, and Leftists erupted, and a civil war broke out in the 1970s. The clashes were more violent and dangerous because they were sponsored by two states: Israel (in favor of Maronites) and Syria (in favor of Muslims).
- Israel: Armed, trained, and facilitated infiltration via Northern Israel to seek to block the PLO.
- Syria: Supported the Palestinians.
The Lebanese civil war allowed Israel to invade southern Lebanon after Tel Aviv suffered a terrorist attack in 1978. In 1982 Ariel Sharon invaded Southern Lebanon, encircling Beirut, and international intervention forced the PLO to leave Beirut and head to Tunisia. Almost simultaneously, the leader of the Maronite Phalange was assassinated, and Sharon allowed the militias to enter the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, where over a thousand Palestinians were slaughtered. This massacre brought the return of US forces to Lebanon.
In 1983, Reagan ordered the bombing of Druze positions, and opposition forces retaliated with the suicide attack against the US barracks (241 deaths). In 1984, Reagan ordered the withdrawal of US forces. As a reaction to the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon, Iran backed the formation of Hezbollah. Israeli troops and client forces engaged in a war of attrition that ultimately ended with Israel voluntarily withdrawing from most of the territory in May 2000.
Israel and the Intifada
All these difficulties did not deter the Israeli Prime Ministers (Begin and Shamir) from pursuing the real goal of the Lebanese venture: consolidating its domination over the West Bank. In the 1980s, with Egypt muted, Iraq involved in the war against Iran, and Syria monitoring its position in Lebanon, Israel expanded its settlements. Jordan sought entry into negotiations with US support and that of Labor politicians in Israeli coalitions, continually impeded by Likud (right-wing party) objections.
No major change in the diplomacy of the Arab-Israeli conflict occurred until December 1988, when the US agreed to talk to the PLO, declaring that it had satisfactorily renounced terrorism and accepted Security Council Resolution 242. The US decision appeared to be a major stepping stone towards the resolution of issues within the framework of the broader Arab-Israeli conflict. However, the impetus for recognition lay not in diplomacy but in the actions of Palestinians in the West Bank and especially in the Gaza Strip, who had rebelled against Israeli occupation. The rebellion, known as the intifada, began in December 1987 and lasted into 1991. The intensity of Palestinian protests and the brutality of the Israeli response focused international attention on the future of the occupied territories.
The US wanted to finish with the intifada because it was giving legitimacy to the PLO’s (the radical branch) claim to be the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The US agreement to discuss matters with Arafat did not mean willingness to negotiate with him; the Jordanian solution remained the favored option. Matters remained stalemated, with Likud, guided by Yitzhak Shamir, ever more determined to resist pressures to compromise, despite US pressures to do so.
The Gulf War, 1990-91
The catalyst for an apparent breakthrough toward the resolution of Arab-Israeli matters was a factor indirectly related to the conflict. In a particular international context: the end of the Cold War, a cooperative American administration, and the collapse of the USSR allowed Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in August 1990. Many Arab states like Syria, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt joined the American-led coalition to liberate Kuwait. Most of these states received US promises to seek to broaden Arab-Israeli negotiations at the conclusion of the war – The Madrid Conference.