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Egypt: The Peace That Never Was
by Rael Jean Isaac
In 1978, Israel traded both crucial strategic assets and vital principles for what (predictably) turned out to be worthless pieces of paper. Yet unlike the 1993 Oslo agreements, the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty is still almost universally deemed a success. This became obvious when conservative critics, indignant at the Nobel Peace Prize award to Jimmy Carter, criticized every aspect of his record but this one. Here the critics, implicitly acknowledging the treaty's value, have resorted to arguing that Carter does not really deserve the credit, pointing out that Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat initially negotiated without and even despite him. More astonishing, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon clings to the disastrous Egyptian treaty as if it were a model to emulate. Speaking to the Likud Party Congress on October 23 Sharon declared: "We know the price of peace and the Likud, as it did in the past [in the case of Egypt], is prepared to pay this heavy price."
Let us look at what Israel's leaders gave up, what they thought they received in return and what they actually obtained. Israel relinquished strategic depth -- the Sinai is five times the size of Israel in its pre-1967 borders. That depth was not only important in relation to Egypt, always Israel's most formidable antagonist, but in relation to its other Arab foes. The Sinai airfields served as the backbone of Israel's defense system. Israel relinquished the Abu Rudeis oil fields and with them the prospect of energy independence. The treaty opened the way for the United States to provide Egypt with both civilian and military aid: $50 billion worth since 1980. Direct U.S. military funding for the Egyptian military now comes to $1.3 billion each year.
Even more important were the principles that were established, with Israel sacrificing what had been basic tenets of the state -- and of Begin himself as a Revisionist Zionist. Begin agreed to return to the old international border with Egypt and to destroy Jewish towns and villages. Begin's initial plan called for Israel to retain the Etzion air base in northern Sinai and for the Sinai settlements, of which Yamit was the most important, to remain, although both would be formally under Egyptian sovereignty. But faced with Sadat's fierce rejection, Begin accepted the dangerous principle that Israel stood ready to uproot Israeli citizens and forfeit all its territorial gains in a defensive war in exchange for Arab promises.
Moreover, while Begin's core principle as leader of the Herut Party had been Israel's right to Judea and Samaria, the heart of the ancient Land of Israel, to win the treaty he agreed to Sadat's demand that Arabs in the so-called West Bank be given "autonomy" with the issue of sovereignty to be taken up after a five year period. Believe it or not, the major criticism came from the Labor Party which argued -- correctly -- that the autonomy plan would eventually lead to establishment of an independent Arab state.
Israel traded key strategic and economic assets and vital principles for paper -- indeed, for more worthless pieces of paper than most people realize. For although the texts of the Camp David accords and the subsequent treaty were widely available, the contents of the 50 agreements fleshing out the details of "normalization" in specific areas remained unknown and inaccessible. In "The Real Lessons of Camp David" (Commentary, December 1993) this writer noted that from Israel's point of view, these agreements were the heart of the treaty -- they defined the "normal and friendly relations" for which Israel was willing to sacrifice so much.
Violated from the outset, the agreements became an embarrassment to be hidden away. Begin's party, the Likud, did not want the public to focus upon them because Camp David was its proudest achievement and the contrast between what the agreements promised and what was actually delivered revealed that the treaty with Egypt was an empty shell. As for Labor, it looked forward to signing treaties with other neighboring states and pointing to the failure of the only existing one was not likely to inspire confidence in their utility. Nonetheless, through inadvertence or early misplaced optimism, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a report, Israel's Foreign Relations: Selected Documents 1979-80, containing eight of the agreements.
They were painstakingly detailed. The agricultural agreement provided, for example, that the two countries would cooperate on "field crops, vegetables, fruit, floriculture, spices and medicinal plant production," on animal production, including "poultry, dairy, sheep and goats," on "veterinary services" including joint "development and manufacture of veterinary pharmaceuticals and vaccines." There would be coordination of "plant-quarantine inspection procedures" and of "post-harvesting and processing activities" and "joint programs and exchange of experience, methods, and know-how between their respective agricultural extension services."
Of the eight agreements published, the cultural agreement would have been the most important to Israel, for here was a means of transforming attitudes among an Egyptian public accustomed to the demonization of the Jewish state. The two countries pledged "contacts and exchange of visits of experts in the cultural, artistic, technical, scientific and medical fields," exchanges of publications, of art objects, of exhibitions, of radio and television programs, recordings and tapes. They promised to "facilitate visits of scientists, scholars and researchers of the other country," to develop special equivalence "diplomas, certificates and academic degrees" and to "encourage and promote youth and sport activities between youth and sports institutions in each countries."
Together, the fifty agreements formed the substance of the new era of relations which Israel believed it was obtaining. There was, to be sure, a brief period of improvement in images of Israel in the Egyptian press, some tourism, one youth exchange, a few agricultural projects. But once Israel completed its three-year, phased withdrawal from the Sinai in April 1982, Egypt froze relations. The fundamental reason was later offered by King Hassan of Morocco. He reported in 1984 that Sadat's successor, Hosni Mubarak, had told him the treaty was empty of substance since "Cairo had obtained from it what it could."
Within short order, Egypt was massively flouting the agreements. Perhaps most important, official, semi-official and so-called opposition papers kept up a relentless barrage of hostile propaganda. To Israel, ending the "teaching of contempt" was such a central target that it had put the promise "to abstain from hostile propaganda" into the text of the treaty itself. But soon only Iran could compete with Egypt as world center for the publication and dissemination of both new and "classic" anti-Semitic literature.
At the UN, Egypt headed the unsuccessful campaign to keep the Zionism-is-racism resolution intact.
No charge was too vicious or absurd. At least two Egyptian papers (Al-Akhbar and Al-Masa'a) described the blowing up of the Pan Am plane over Lockerbie, Scotland as an Israeli plot. Israel was accused of introducing hoof-and-mouth disease into Egypt and exporting radiation-contaminated food to Egypt (both in the semi-official Al Ahram); of causing earthquakes in Egypt (Al-Wafd, Dec. 27, 1992), of bombing the World Trade Center and throwing the blame on Arabs (Al-Jumhuriyah, April 5, 1993), of introducing AIDS to Egypt (Roz Al-Yusuf, July 2, 1990), and of polluting the entire globe (Roz Al-Yusuf, June 15, 1992). In cartoons and caricatures, Egyptian media copy Nazi graphics. When a symbol for the Jew is used, it is a snake or some hideous imaginary monster. The media broadcast sermons describing enmity toward Israel as a religious duty.
Egypt exerted itself to maintain the Arab boycott and Israel's international isolation. Although Egypt undertook in its treaty with Israel to end all economic boycotts, the government enforced the Arab boycott within Egypt. In 1989, the then-Soviet ambassador to Egypt reported his surprise on being summoned by the Egyptian Foreign Minister, who protested a proposed Soviet thawing of relations with Israel. When he observed that Egypt had diplomatic relations with Israel, he was told that Egypt had no choice but the Soviets did. Egypt repeatedly urged African nations not to resume relations with Israel. And when, during the first Bush administration, the United States led the effort to rescind the UN's Zionism-equals-racism resolution, Egypt headed the unsuccessful campaign to keep the resolution intact. True to form, at the UN anti-racism conference in Durban in 2002, Egypt led the (largely successful) effort to turn the conference into an assault on Israel.
Carolyn Glick, writing in the Jerusalem Post ("Not a Cold Peace -- a Cold War," August 17, 2001) notes that the open hostility of all strata of Egyptian society is best encapsulated by the treatment of Israeli diplomats in Cairo. She quotes Alon Liel, Director General of Israel's Foreign Ministry in the Barak government: "The lives of our diplomats in Cairo are hellish. They are physically threatened and humiliated socially and professionally. If you are an Israeli diplomat, no one wants to see you, to meet with you and the press crucifies you everyday. There are almost no professionals or tradesmen whose services an Israeli diplomat may seek out, who will agree to help him....For instance, if one of our diplomats needs to see a doctor we have to send one out from Isra |
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