Carter summoned Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat to Camp David to broker peace, not apartheid, in the Middle East. But the president of Israel broke his promise to freeze the settlements.
Last summer, former President Jimmy Carter had a tender conversation with one of his great-grandsons. Approaching his hundredth birthday, he was in hospice care at home for nearly 15 months. He noted that he had a pretty wonderful life. He was successful in everything he aspired to—a stellar career as a naval officer on a submarine, working under the command of the famously powerful captain, later Admiral Hyman Rickover; Governor of Georgia; President of the United States; 2002 Nobel Peace Prize laureate; author of 33 books, including childhood memories—An hour before dawn— which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. Yes, he told his great-grandson, he succeeded in everything and regrets nothing: “But I don’t seem to be able to cope with this dying business.” So he still had that wry, biting sense of humor.
But as his biographer, I venture to say with certainty that during his long life he once regretted a lot. It was called Camp David—ironically, it was the scene of his greatest personal diplomatic triumph. yes Camp David Accords of 1978 marked the beginning of almost half a century of peace between Israel and Egypt. Carter single-handedly removed Egypt, Israel’s only serious traditional military threat, from the battlefield. To be sure, it remains a cold peace that has survived in part only because Egypt is still ruled by a brutal military dictatorship. But still, two nations that had fought four major wars against each other established diplomatic relations and never fought again.
But Carter wanted and expected much more. Indeed, he believed he had achieved a comprehensive peace in the entire Arab-Israeli conflict, including a concrete road map for Palestinian self-determination. In particular, Carter thought he had defeated Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s Promise freeze all Israeli settlements in the West Bank for five years – during which time an agreement on Palestinian self-government and autonomy will be negotiated. The implicit but unspoken assumption was that Palestinian autonomy would lead to a demilitarized Palestinian state. The most intractable and incendiary conflict in the world will finally end with a political compromise between the two states.
That didn’t happen. Carter was deeply disappointed—even outraged—by what he saw as Prime Minister Begin’s betrayal. “He’s trying to stick to the deal,” Carter noted in his diary. Two days later, Carter again noted that Begin was publicly “denying the agreement we made on Saturday night, of which I have a full record and a perfect memory.” Moshe Dayan, a member of the Israeli delegation at Camp David, confirmed Carter’s report on the critical issue of the settlement freeze. September 20, 1978 Diane handed to Carter that he was “deeply upset by Begin’s public disagreement with the president over the length of the settlement freeze.”
Three months later, Carter was enraged when Begin announced a major expansion of settlements in the West Bank. He complained bitterly about it to his chief domestic helper, Stuart Eisenstat the Israelite lied to him. As Eisenstat cautiously pushed back, Carter reached into a Resolute desk drawer and pulled out a document, “These are my notes from my meeting with Begin,” he said. “Here you see a ‘five-year settlement freeze.'”
Carter wanted more than just a separate peace between Egypt and Israel. So did Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who also understood that his own political viability and even his personal security depended on reaching an agreement that could not be perceived by the Arab street as an abandonment of the Palestinian cause.
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Begin got what he wanted, a separate peace with Egypt, and he reneged on his promises to the President of the United States. Carter felt betrayed, and it is clear why he would be relentlessly opposed to Israeli settlements in the years and decades to come. This sincerity cost him dearly. The Jewish American establishment turned against him.
Most of America’s Jewish voters began to turn against Carter in the 1980 election. Carter received only 45 percent of the vote of the Jewish vote, the first and only time a Democratic presidential candidate lost the Jewish vote.
Carter lost his re-election bid for many reasons, but he was particularly angry that Jewish Americans had abandoned him after he had risked so much of his presidency to get Egypt off the battlefield for Israel.
Sadat died three years after being assassinated at Camp David by Islamist army officers enraged that he had abandoned the Palestinians. Sadat’s assassination strengthened Carter’s determination to use his presidency to oppose Israeli encroachments in the West Bank. He did so many times. But no one listened.
Finally, in 2006, Carter published a book about the conflict. He gave it a provocative name, Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid. His editor at Simon & Schuster, Alice Mayhew, reportedly tried to dissuade him from using the inflammatory word “apartheid.” So did Stu Eisenstadt and other former assistants. One longtime aide at the Carter Center, Ken Stein, resigned in protest.
Carter wanted to provoke. The title was certainly provocative, but the word apartheid was in the title as a warning – a clear note that if Israel does not achieve peace with the Palestinians, the growth of facts on the ground, the increase in the number of settlements in the West Bank, would forever rule out the two-state solution. Notably, Carter’s text in the book did not argue that Israel was already an apartheid state.
Friends of Israel were outraged, and Carter became even more of an outcast in the Jewish American community. Some accused him of anti-Semitism. Carter tried to explain that he meant no offense. But he defended his book, which jumped onto the bestseller lists and managed to sell a whopping 275,000 hardcover copies.
That was 19 years ago. Of course, since then, things have gotten unimaginably worse in this dangerous area. Some Palestinians cheered when Hamas committed war crimes, killing about 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023. And since then, Bibi Netanyahu has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Gaza, killing some 45,000 Palestinians so far, 90 percent of whom were civilians, thousands of them completely innocent children.
Carter’s book proved prescient. He has always been a prophet, speaking uncomfortable hard truths, but now his voice is not so lonely. Unfortunately, he was right about the settlements in 1978. and was right about them in 2006. More than 700,000 Jewish Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank, a territory criss-crossed by “Israelis-only” roads and a maze of civil and legal restrictions. of the Palestinian population, making it impossible to continue a normal life.
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I would argue that if the international community could muster the necessary courage, a two-state solution could still be worked out. But it must be imposed through very concerted political and diplomatic pressure, backed by economic and military sanctions. Unfortunately, this is unlikely.
Most likely, Israel will announce the annexation of large settlements first, and gradually the entire West Bank. The Palestinians will be forced to leave. It’s all a very sad prospect.
This is why Camp David became Jimmy Carter’s deepest regret. He wanted more for Israel than to be constantly at war. He wanted peace, not apartheid.
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