Sadat and Begin sit down at Camp David; Carter will need thirteen days
Ten months after Anwar Sadat's startling visit to Jerusalem, the peace he had opened talks toward still had no written terms. On September 5, 1978, Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin arrived at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains, at Jimmy Carter's invitation. The two leaders were barely on speaking terms, so Carter planned to carry messages between their cabins himself. The talks had no fixed end date. They ran thirteen tense days before anyone signed anything.
Camp David was one of the first times an American president personally brokered a peace settlement between foreign heads of state, staking his own credibility on the outcome. Carter's shuttle diplomacy became the template for later American-led negotiations, from Dayton to the Clinton-era Mideast summits, and made Camp David a recurring venue for later diplomatic summits.
QWhy did Carter drive Sadat and Begin to a Civil War battlefield in the middle of a peace summit?
On roughly the tenth day of stalled negotiations over the West Bank, Carter loaded both delegations into cars and took them to Gettysburg National Military Park, about an hour from Camp David. He used the battlefield as a working metaphor, pointing to the cost paid by men on both sides who had refused to give ground. There is no record either leader found it decisive, though the trip did give both delegations a break from the cabins and gave Carter a chance to reopen the stalled talks the next morning.
QWhat kept Sadat and Begin from walking out and blaming each other in public?
Camp David had no press corps on site, which meant neither leader could step outside and make a statement to rally support back home if talks turned sour. That absence of media coverage cut off an escape valve: a leader who walked away risked taking the blame for the collapse instead of spinning it for a domestic audience. The blackout was deliberate on Carter's part, meant to keep both delegations focused on negotiating instead of on public relations.
QHow did Carter personally handle two men who would not speak directly to each other?
Sadat and Begin were not on speaking terms by the time they reached Camp David. Carter became the go-between, walking between the two men's separate cabins to carry proposals and objections rather than seating the two leaders across a table from each other. The arrangement stretched Carter thin over thirteen days, but it also meant every concession passed through the American president's hands first.
