The Camp David Accords were two framework agreements signed on September 17, 1978 at the White House, following thirteen days of secluded negotiation at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland. President Jimmy Carter hosted, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin negotiated, and the American team included Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, and the Middle East specialist William Quandt. The accords did not themselves end the state of war between Egypt and Israel, nor did they produce a Palestinian settlement. What they did was create the diplomatic architecture within which the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty would be signed six months later, and they set out a separate autonomy framework for the West Bank and Gaza that was intended to lead to Palestinian self-government within five years. The Yale Avalon Project preserves the full texts of both frameworks.
The two frameworks
The accords consist of two distinct documents. The “Framework for Peace in the Middle East” addressed the broader regional conflict, including a section on the West Bank and Gaza that called for “full autonomy” for the inhabitants, a five-year transitional period, withdrawal of Israeli military government, and final-status negotiations. The “Framework for the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel” committed the two parties to conclude a peace treaty within three months, set the terms of Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai, and specified the demilitarization and security arrangements that would later be codified in the 1979 treaty. Both documents were signed by Sadat and Begin, and witnessed by Carter.
Egypt-Sinai framework
The Sinai framework was specific and enforceable. Israel committed to a staged withdrawal from the entire Sinai Peninsula over roughly three years, dismantling settlements and military installations. Egypt committed to full peace, including open borders, normal diplomatic relations, freedom of navigation through the Straits of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba, and the passage of Israeli ships through the Suez Canal. A multinational observer force was contemplated for the demilitarization zones. The Office of the Historian provides the authoritative State Department summary, and the Carter White House archives preserve the original signed documents and the contemporaneous records of the negotiation.
West Bank and Gaza autonomy framework
The second framework was more ambitious in scope and more ambiguous in execution. It contemplated a three-stage process: negotiations among Egypt, Israel, and Jordan (with Palestinian representatives included in the Jordanian delegation) to establish a self-governing authority for the West Bank and Gaza; a five-year transitional period during which Israeli military government would withdraw and a “self-governing authority” would be elected; and final-status negotiations to resolve the permanent fate of the territories. Jordan declined to participate, the PLO rejected the framework as inadequate, and the Palestinian autonomy track never produced a signed implementation agreement during the Carter years. The Britannica entry describes the Palestinian-track provisions as “widely regarded as the least successful aspect of the accords.”
What Camp David delivered
Camp David delivered the core architecture of the Egypt-Israel peace, and with it, the benchmark case for the proposition that Israeli territorial withdrawal can produce durable interstate peace. The framework for Egypt was translated into the March 1979 peace treaty, implemented through the Multinational Force and Observers, and has held for more than forty-five years. The Nobel Committee awarded Sadat and Begin the Peace Prize in 1978 for the accords, a judgment that the subsequent durability of the Egypt-Israel peace has vindicated. Carter, for his part, built the negotiating template, the American-sponsored framework approach, that would be used in almost every subsequent Arab-Israeli negotiation.
What Camp David did not deliver
Camp David did not deliver a Palestinian settlement. It did not secure the participation of Jordan or the PLO. It did not produce autonomy arrangements that could be implemented. Sadat paid a heavy price: Egypt was expelled from the Arab League, its embassy in Damascus was attacked, and Sadat himself was assassinated in October 1981 by Islamist officers who cited the peace with Israel among their grievances. Begin’s government faced intense domestic opposition from the settler movement and from the political right over the Sinai withdrawal. The Palestinian track’s failure in 1978-1979 meant that the West Bank and Gaza would not see a serious diplomatic framework again until Oslo in 1993, and the contours of the unresolved Palestinian question would eventually produce the First Intifada in 1987 and everything that followed. Camp David therefore belongs in the land-for-peace record as both a success (Egypt-Sinai) and as evidence that the formula works much better with a capable state counterparty than with a framework that lacks one.