Posted on 09/19/2003 8:54:29 AM PDT by yonif
Twenty-five years have elapsed since the leaders of Egypt, Israel, and the US concluded the Camp David Accords, and the taste of that historic moment could hardly be more sweet, bitter, and perplexing.
The sweetness is in that, three decades after having assumed the leadership of the pan-Arab refusal to accept the Jews' restoration in their ancestral land, the largest Arab country made peace with the Jewish state. Moreover, the peace deal struck between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat was comprehensive, unambiguous, and popular.
The bitterness is in that all these recollections have since been eclipsed by what has transpired between Israel and the Palestinians, and the current Egyptian leadership's retreat from the spirit of Sadat's legacy.
And the perplexity is in that, the more Arab-Israeli peace making is experimented with, the more it emerges that at least some of the reasons for its failures have less to do with the Arab world's foreign relations and more to do with its domestic affairs.
What happened at Camp David in 1978 was different from what was later done in Oslo in almost every respect: the mechanism of the deal, the historical circumstances, and the personalities at play.
The Camp David mechanism began with a stunning gesture of recognition and an unequivocal statement of reconciliation. Sadat's arrival in Jerusalem and address to the Knesset were not only displays of courage scarcely paralleled in political history, they also implied that the Jews had a right to restore their nation in the land where David and Solomon reigned and Isaiah and Jeremiah prophesied. Sadat's emphatic vow from the Knesset podium, that the 1973 war should be the last one, represented a genuine parting with violence as a legitimate option in dealing with Israel, even before the peace deal itself was done.
The Oslo process, by contrast, was launched with a ceremony where Yasser Arafat not only refused to take off his military uniform and insisted on wearing his pistol, but also neglected to concur with Yitzhak Rabin's cry then and there: "Enough with violence!" As Oslo supporter and political scientist Shlomo Avineri argues, it is clear in hindsight that Israel should have first obtained a Palestinian declaration of recognition of Israel as the Jewish state, and only then get down to the business of carving out the details of a land-for-peace deal.
As for its broader setting, the Camp David situation was different in that the Cold War was still alive at the time, as was also the shah's government in Iran. For a moment, therefore, America enjoyed the backing of a solid, anti-Soviet, Cairo-Jerusalem-Teheran axis. Oslo, by contrast, was born after Islamist fanaticism had made serious conquests across the Middle East, and positioned itself as a potent enemy of peace.
Faced with these, some in the West became resigned to the conclusion that the residents of the Middle East prefer Sadat's legacy to Khomeini's. Such people would do well to recall that when Sadat returned to Egypt he was greeted by some three million spontaneously gathered citizens who lined the streets of Cairo and Alexandria waving little Israeli and Egyptian flags. Theirs was a vote-by-the-feet no less genuine, and much better attended, than subsequent Islamist gatherings that today cloud Egypt's future.
Still, with Sadat's life having been taken by Islamists and his legacy abandoned by his successors, there is no escaping the conclusion that the peace accord with Egypt depended too heavily on one personality. Following Sadat's death, gone were not only the warmth and openness that characterized the relationship he nurtured with Israel, but also the determination to lead Egypt away from the poverty, chauvinism, clericalism, nepotism, and tribalism that have often been a hallmark of the post-colonial Arab world.
One wonders where Egypt would have proceeded had Sadat not been murdered: Would the media's agenda, the treatment of foreign investors, the hostility toward globalization, and the attitude toward Israel have been what they became under Hosni Mubarak? One thing is clear: The newly established relations with Egypt proved exceedingly dependent on one individual. Paradoxically, that is also true of the peace accords with the Palestinians, only there the crucial individual's attitude toward peace has proven negative.
Still, the very fact that the role of the individual remains so decisive in deciding the direction of entire Arab societies is itself a symptom of their ailments. A day will come when the destiny of the Middle East will be shaped by the Arab masses, not by those who purport to speak in their name, but are never brave enough to face the verdict of a free election.
Until that day, the millions of Egyptians who hailed Anwar Sadat for having made peace with the Jews should serve as evidence that, if only given a democratic chance, the Arab world would choose what Sadat chose: peace.
Wild Thing
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