Reza Pahlavi, who had been a strong U.S. ally and had supplied oil to Israel. The
prospect of a greater role in Iran for Islamists provided new incentive to Egypt, Israel,
and the United States to press forward with negotiations. Begin and Carter held another
round of talks early in March 1979, first in Washington and then in Jerusalem, before
reaching final agreement on the text of a treaty (Iranian Revolution, p. 379).
On March 26, 1979, at a sun-soaked ceremony on the White House lawn, Begin
and Sadat signed (and Carter witnessed) the Treaty of Peace between the Arab Repub-
lic of Egypt and the State of Israel. The agreement embraced the land-for-peace for-
mulation of Resolution 242 adopted nearly a dozen years earlier. It required Israel to
withdraw all of its military installations and civilian settlements from the Sinai Penin-
sula in exchange for peace and a “normal relationship” between the two countries. The
treaty also established, for the first time, an official international border between Israel
and an Arab state. The status of the Gaza Strip remained unresolved, but the inter-
national border otherwise followed that of the pre-1948 boundary between Egypt and
Palestine.
The treaty included three annexes establishing timetables and procedures for spe-
cific actions by both sides, including Israel’s staged withdrawal (over three years) from
the Sinai and the exchange of ambassadors. Begin and Sadat also signed letters to
Carter pledging to conduct the talks agreed to at Camp David leading to “autonomy”
for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In subsequent years, Egypt
and Israel fitfully carried out most of their respective duties under the bilateral peace
treaty, but the negotiations on behalf of the Palestinians quickly bogged down and
collapsed in 1982. Israel withdrew from the Sinai in three stages, completing the
removal of soldiers and settlers on April 25, 1982. (Not until 2005 would Israel again
dismantle all of its settlements from an Arab territory, the Gaza Strip.) Egypt and Israel
exchanged ambassadors in February 1980, but other aspects of normalizing economic
and political relations occurred slowly or not at all, in some cases because Israel dragged
its feet on the Palestinian autonomy talks, and Egypt felt leery of appearing to make
further concessions to Israel (Israeli Disengagement, p. 313).
The Arab League, which had threatened to expel Egypt if it signed a separate peace
agreement with Israel, followed through on that threat on March 31, five days after
the signing of the treaty. The league moved its headquarters from Cairo to Tunis and
imposed diplomatic and economic boycotts against Egypt, breached officially only by
Oman and Sudan. The boycott would last until May 1989, when member states agreed
to allow Egypt to rejoin.
According to memoirs and statements made to colleagues, Sadat realized the per-
sonal risk of negotiating with Israel. The full extent of that risk became clear on Octo-
ber 6, 1981, when Islamist extremists assassinated Sadat as he reviewed a military
parade commemorating Egypt’s self-proclaimed victory in the 1973 war. Vice Presi-
dent Hosni Mubarak, like Sadat a former military officer, assumed the presidency.
Begin attended Sadat’s funeral four days later, and Mubarak assured him that he
intended to carry out Egypt’s obligations under the peace treaty.
One other legacy of the Camp David peace process has been an enormous trans-
fer of U.S. economic and military aid to Israel and Egypt. Carter promised both sides
that the United States would help shoulder the financial burden of implementing the
peace treaty, and that promise translated into financial aid packages that over the next
two decades would average about $3 billion a year for Israel and $2 billion for Egypt.
ARABS AND ISRAELIS 121