ident Jimmy Carter before Egypt and Israel could settle their differences. Carter invited
Begin and Sadat to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, and for nearly
two weeks pushed and cajoled them to compromise until they reached a deal. At the
White House on September 17, 1978, Carter, Begin, and Sadat signed two “frame-
works,” documents portending a formal peace treaty and an effort to settle the Pales-
tinian problem. More tough bargaining, including several bouts of brinksmanship, fol-
lowed, but on March 29, 1979, the two sides signed a treaty on the White House
lawn. The peace between Israel and the largest Arab nation has since held although
often strained. Angry that Sadat had signed a separate peace agreement, the other Arab
leaders expelled Egypt from the Arab League. Two years later, in 1981, radical Islamists
assassinated Sadat. In April 1982, Israel removed the last of its settlers and soldiers
from the Sinai Peninsula.
Also in the early 1980s, Israel turned its attention to its northern neighbor,
Lebanon, where thousands of Palestinians, many of them armed guerrillas, had fled
after being expelled from Jordan in 1971 following fighting with government forces.
The presence of the Palestinians had been a major factor in the outbreak of civil war
in Lebanon in 1975, and the guerrillas established themselves in southern Lebanon
and used bases there to launch artillery and rocket attacks against Jewish communities
in northern Israel. In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to push the Palestinians from
the south. Israeli forces continued north, eventually surrounding Beirut and forcing
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Yasir Arafat along with thousands
of Palestinian fighters and supporters to evacuate the country. In September, the
bloody conflict in Lebanon led President Ronald Reagan to propose a new peace plan
that focused on the Palestinian issue. As with so many other peace plans over the years,
nothing concrete came of it; it did, however, set out principles that would be useful
in later diplomatic efforts. Meeting in Fez, Morocco, a week after Reagan announced
his plan, Arab leaders ignored the specifics of that plan but for the first time offered
tentatively that Israel’s existence might one day be accepted.
The 1991 Persian Gulf War resulted, directly and indirectly, in rounds of Arab-
Israeli peacemaking that were more successful than previous efforts. Determined
diplomacy—and weeks of round-the-world travel—by Secretary of State James A. Baker
III resulted in the first sustained series of meetings between Arab and Israeli officials.
They began with the convening of the Madrid peace conference in October 1991 and
lasted for more than a year. In a move that produced more concrete results, a left-of-
center Israeli government entered into secret negotiations with PLO leaders resulting in
a landmark agreement and signing in September 1993. The so-called Oslo Accords,
reached with the mediation of Norway, appeared to offer the first real prospect for end-
ing or at least diminishing what nearly everyone agreed had become the core of the
Arab-Israeli conflict: violence and animosity between Israel and the 3 million-plus Pales-
tinians living under Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem.
The agreement between Israel and the Palestinians also provided political cover
and room to maneuver to Jordan’s King Hussein. Over the years, Israeli and Jordan-
ian diplomats secretly had negotiated the essence of a peace deal, so they quickly struck
a political agreement, which Hussein and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin signed
at the White House in June 1994 with President Bill Clinton looking on. The two
leaders signed a formal treaty the following October at a border crossing between their
countries. Clinton again was there to help seal the peace.
40 ARABS AND ISRAELIS