Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt - Essay Example

The Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt were justifiably denounced by most of the Arab s and the Palestinians: The official signing of Camp David Accords took place in Washington D.C. in the March of 1979, where President Jimmy Carter played the role of the mediator. The accords were signed between Israel and Egypt, effectively handing over the contentious region of Sinai to Egypt, causing indignation to Palestinians and Arabs who felt their religious sentiments were ignored. The parties to the pact, Israel and Egypt also agreed to negotiate on the issue of Palestinian autonomy in Israel occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, which to this day remains strife torn and without any suitable political arrangement. The rest of this essay will discuss the reasons for Arab and Palestinian denouncement of the Accords and criticisms, if any, of the same. It is an open secret that Israeli government is subordinate to orders from Washington D.C. Israel is heavily dependent on the United States for its military and diplomatic efforts. The United States too has strategic interests in the Middle East region, which is endowed with rich oil resources. Hence, most Arab states are suspicious of apparent acts of generosity and goodwill on part of Washington D.C. The Arabs see Camp David Accords as one episode in a century long American preoccupation with gaining control of oil resources in the region. Consistent with this view of American motives, the consequences of Camp David Accords have not yielded the Palestinians any concessions. If losing Mount Sinai, with all its rich historical and religious associations, to Egypt was a major blow, the subsequent indifference to the legitimate grievances of Palestinians has only exposed Israeli-American agenda. For example, when we carefully review the document entitled "Minutes of Meeting at U. S. Department of State, Wednesday, October 21, 1992" (which could be accessed from the Library of Congress website), it becomes obvious from this document that all of the American diplomats involved in the so-called peace process view the Interim Agreement as an extension of American “imperial strategic vision” set by the Camp David Accords and Framework. So, the internal government records from Washington D.C. make it abundantly clear that the concerns and aspirations of Palestinians was not even a consideration for the Israeli-American ruling elite. Seen in this light we can understand why Camp David Accords were denounced by Palestinians and most Arab states (Khalidi, 2006). Indeed, if the Camp David Accords are seen in the context of American-Israeli interests, we can see why no substantial diplomatic manoeuvres were made to fulfil the stated objective of reaching a Final Settlement for the Israel-Palestinian issue. Further, “the Camp David Accords called for an ‘interconnection’ between the Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty and a "Framework for Autonomy" for the Palestinians. The Egyptians bargained quite assiduously for this "interconnection" so as to avoid the appearance of concluding a separate peace between Israel and Egypt at the expense of the Palestinians. Nevertheless, after the implementation of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, the Israelis paid no attention whatsoever to this so-called ‘interconnection’ despite express language to that effect. The so-called Linowitz negotiations got nowhere because of Israeli stalling. Eventually the Linowitz negotiations died a quiet death after Carter lost the 1980 presidential election”. (Sprinzak, 1991) Hence, the Arabs (including Palestinians) are quite right when they point out that the Israelis, with their masters from the West, will do everything they can to “stall, drag out, and indefinitely postpone and delay a Final Settlement”, while they continue to carry out oppressive military measures, occupy Arabs’ native lands and deprive them of basic human rights that were drafted into the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Sprinzak, 1991). What little hope of justice Camp David Accords offered met a huge setback, when the hard-line Likud party rose to prominence in Israeli politics displacing the more moderate Labor party. It is no coincidence then that more incidents of Palestinian uprising were recorded during the period of Ariel Sharon’s leadership. True to expectations, Ariel Sharon visited Al Aqsa Mosque, in what was seen as an act of provocation. The provocation proved successful, leading to attacks against Israeli police the next day. The Israeli government “in turn charged that the visit had not been provocative, and that the stone throwing w as an attempt by Arafat to restore his Camp David damaged stature. To this, Arafat responded that the acts of defiance were a natural expression of pent up anger that had not been manipulated by either himself or the Palestinian Authority. Thus began the Al Aqsa intifada”. (Masalha, 2003) The heavy-handed approach of Israel is further accentuating Arab discontent. For example, balanced and neutral media reportage of the goings on in the region has altered the perception of international community. For example, the photograph of 12 year old Muhammad al-Durah, captured by a French reporter just 45 minutes before he fell victim to Israeli ammunition, while huddled alongside his father, had exposed some of the brutalities suffered by Palestinians. Leading this bandwagon on objective journalism is networks such as Al-Jazeera, which present a contrasting and a subaltern view of events in Middle East, vastly different from the biased and propaganda based reports in the Western media. These evident realities have sown seeds of disillusionment and suspicion among Arabs. This portrayal of overpowering Israeli military might, directed at unarmed Palestinians, has finally dismantled the long-held illusion of Israeli moral authority whenever it has responded to acts of provocation in the past (Masalha, 2003). The injustice felt by Palestinians by Camp David Accords is easy to understand, when we take into account the events preceding it. Foremost among them was the Jordanian military onslaught (with American aid) against the Palestinian movement in September 1970. This had disrupted Palestinian efforts at liberation for years to come. Jordan’s King Hussein ended “the Palestinian-enforced de facto dual authority in Jordan between 1967 and 1970, and also helped accomplish policy objectives for the U.S. and Israel” (Karsh, 1997). A similar pattern followed, when Palestinian liberationists gathered in Lebanon after the disaster of Black September, posing a threat to Lebanese authority. Immediately, the United States and Israel leadership conjured an opportunistic alliance with Syria to keep a check on Palestinian activities in Lebanon. By sharing suzerainty over Lebanon, Israel and Syria managed to curtail Palestinian national movement. It is at this juncture that the Camp David Accords were drafted. The damage it caused to the Palestinians and their cause is illustrated by the following passage: “Egypt was subsequently drafted to deliver the coup de grace, peacefully this time, against the Palestinians. The 1978 Camp David agreement inflicted more damage on Palestinian nationalism by non-military means than the two previous armed onslaughts combined…Not only had Camp David secured the removal of Egypt from the Arab strategic arena, but it had also allowed Israel to dodge its legal responsibilities to the Palestinian people, and to shrug off its obligation to withdraw from Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese territories, under Security Council resolutions”. (Said, 2002) The Palestinian cause, which was handed a huge blow by the Camp David Accords, met further setbacks from Saddam Hussein’s acts of indiscretion. He was a central figure to the war with neighbour Iran in the 1980s, which could have been easily avoided, had he shown concern for his own people. And toward the end of the decade, when he refused to follow orders from Washington, he was promptly put in his place by American military might. Not only did the Gulf War shatter Iraqi civil society, it also spelled disaster for Palestinians, “whose leadership decided in 1993 to acquiesce in the U.S. and Israeli agendas, which constituted a reformulation of old plans that excluded Palestinian self-determination and circumvented their national rights upheld by the international community” (Karsh, 1997). These rights were constituted by the United Nations, in the aftermath of the Second World War. Under the new terms of agreement, the promise of "full autonomy", which was stated in the Camp David Accords, were effectively ended. In this new reality, Palestinians have very little choice. They are forced to choose between two political arrangements: “either they insist on total Israeli withdrawal as the only path to a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with an arrangement for sharing sovereignty in Jerusalem; or they accept a neo-apartheid system with Palestinian "autonomous zones," i.e., reservations and enclaves within a greater Israel”. The Palestinians have little political or military power to achieve the first of these options. Moreover, it is now more than fifty years since the conception of a ‘Jewish homeland and Israel’ that this course of action is impossible to enforce. Under the neo-apartheid arrangement, Palestinians would be deprived of their basic human rights as granted by the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights as well as provisions in UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR): “the right of the refugees to return to their homes and property, the right of self determination, the right to struggle against the occupation, and their rights as civilians under occupation in accordance with the 1949 Geneva Convention” (Quandt, 1998). This would imply that all unilateral acts of aggression carried out by Israel and its allies in the last five decades or so would be deemed illegal. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the American foreign policy framework based on containment became obsolete. But, the strategic scope of that policy framework has remained intact, the result of which is the ongoing American hegemony. Israels role in the United States’ strategy for world domination has also remained the same. Presently, the equations of power have altered to the effect that Israel has emerged as the regional super-power. Israel’s masters in Washington D.C. are aggressively “promoting a new Baghdad pact-type military alliance in which Israel, which was deliberately kept out of the earlier Baghdad Pact (1955) to appease the Arabs, now occupies centre stage with Turkey in second place, followed by Jordan” (Lesch and Tessler, 1999). If this alliance should come to fruition, then the position of other Arab states would be most vulnerable. As the miseries of Palestinians continue to mount, those Arab states that do not acquiesce with American-Israeli imperial designs for the region would meet a similar fate. Such a scenario would give a free license to the United States to rebuke attempts at U.S.-Arab reconciliation that is based on fair, balanced and historically informed justice. So, the important questions being asked at this juncture are: What can the Palestinians and other affected Arabs do in the face of America’s strong and uncritical support of Israeli lebensraum that goes back half a century and the world’s only superpower’s indifference to violations of basic human rights to the Palestinians and other Arab people? Is the situation beyond remedy as to resign to the reality of U.S-Israeli domination of the region? “The honourable alternative to all this is a bi-national state, which is more consonant with the territorial consequences of Oslo now prevailing on the ground. That, however is unacceptable to Israel and therefore to the U.S. For a start, the U.S. can stop vetoing resolutions of the Security Council calling on Israel to refrain from grabbing Arab land, building settlements, and violating the rights of civilians under occupation”. (Dowek, 2001) American policy framework for the Middle East will not change as long as its policy-makers are not held accountable. Washingtons policy on Israeli settlements has steadily shifted since Camp David Accords from considering them "illegal" to an "obstacle to peace" under the neo-conservative agenda of Ronald Reagan, to the present reference made to it as a mere "complicating factor” in the peace process. In other words, Israel is now given a free hand to grab land from Arabs and build colonial settlements in them. The Arab regimes in the region need to join hands and make Israel and America pay the price for their defiance of international community consensus. The Arab states should abandon its attempts at normalizing relations with Israel and should not allow Washington to continue its biased, prejudiced and inhumane policies any longer. In other words, the Arab world “needs to restructure its own policies in accordance with the dictates of self-respect, of national interests and reciprocal relations” (Dowek, 2001). References: Tom Segev, One Palestine, complete: Jews and Arabs under the British mandate New York : Metropolitan Books, 2000, 956.94004924 S454.O 2000 Rashid Khalidi, The iron cage: the story of the Palestinian struggle for statehood Boston, MA : Beacon Press, 2006, 956.9405 K45.I 2006 Efraim Karsh, Fabricating Israeli history: the ’new historians’, London; Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1997, 956.9404 K18F Nur Masalha, The politics of denial: Israel and the Palestinian refugee problem London ; Sterling, Va : Pluto Press, c2003, 325.21 M394P 2003 Amnon Rubinstein, The Zionist dream revisited: from Herzl to Gush Emunim and back New York: Schocken Books, 1984, 956.94001 R896M Ehud Sprinzak, The ascendance of Israel’s radical right, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, 320.54095694 S769A William B. Quandt, (ed.), The Middle East : ten years after Camp David, Washington, D.C. : Brookings Institution, c1988, 327.6205694 Q1M Ann Mosely Lesch and Mark Tessler, Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinians: from Camp David to Intifada, Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c1989, 956.04 L625.I Ephraim Dowek, Israeli-Egyptian relations 1980-2000, London; Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2001, 327.5694062 D746.I 2001 Barry Rubin, Revolution until victory? : the politics and history of the PLO Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1994, 322.42095694 R896R 1994 Edward W. Said., The end of the peace process: Oslo and after, London: Granta Books, 2002, 956.053 S132E 2002 Read More