As Jimmy Carter began his hospice care at home in his rural Plains, Georgia, precisely where he wanted to be for his final transition, well-wishers from politics and the media began reflecting about how our 39th president’s greatest contributions came after he left Washington.
Carter is being celebrated most of all, these days, for having forged a new template of moral leadership that redefined being an ex-president. He showed us an all-new American post-presidency can become an extraordinarily productive second career. His Carter Center has worked to improve our planet in all ways from crisis management and election monitoring to ridding Africa of the dreaded Guinea worm disease.
Yet, as a correspondent and author who chronicled how this mostly unknown governor became our most unlikely president, I find myself not really joining those who dismissively glide past his presidency to praise his post-presidency. Let alone those who opine that Carter seemed overmatched by the challenges of his times.
Instead, I found myself thinking about 12 days on Maryland’s gentle Catoctin Mountain, back in September, 1978 — and how, most unexpectedly, they became one of the great events of the American presidency. I recall discovering that during those 12 days, that unpretentious, no-pomp president from Plains, Georgia, quietly fought like hell to rescue his Camp David summit to secure peace in the Middle East — after he saw the relationship between Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin suddenly internally combust.
In the end, Carter saved that summit and shaped the historic diplomatic peace accord that the experts — and probably even his two famously headstrong guests — had given up on.
As Newsday’s Washington bureau chief at that time, I worked with my colleague, Jim Klurfeld, our superb national security correspondent, as we reconstructed, with considerable detail, how that Camp David Summit almost collapsed — but how Carter then salvaged the summit and forged the peace. The actual tale proved far more dramatic than we had imagined. We later learned that even the participants in the talks were eager to discover what had been happening in the separate cabins that were the Carter, Sadat and Begin summit headquarters.
And this is that story. It’s a reminder of insights and understandings we once knew, but seem to have forgotten, as we often shorthand history. Yet, it was a historic accomplishment that remains vital to our understanding and appreciation of Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
Remember the context that led up to that 1978 summit: In 1967, Egypt and Israel’s other Arab neighbors had hoped to militarily surround and defeat Israel. But Israel defeated them in just six days and ended up controlling lands four times its original size: Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, Jordan’s West Bank, Syria’s Golan Heights.
Then, in 1973, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish holy day of atonement, Sadat’s Egypt and Syria attacked Israel again; and they were defeated again.
But in 1977, Sadat stunned Israel and the world by traveling to Jerusalem to tell Israel’s Knesset it was time for peace. Carter decided the world needed to seize the moment and build upon that spirit. So Carter invited Sadat and Begin to come to Washington in September 1978 to build at least their part of a true peace in the Middle East.
Carter envisioned a locale that would be a respite from the formal settings of diplomacy. A relaxed, slacks and sport shirts summit in bucolic Camp David. He thought it could be just the right place for defusing tensions to help those two proud Middle East leaders negotiate their path to peace. So how did that work out?
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Day One at Camp David: Things started tense, then got worse. Sadat had hardened his positions. And, sitting around the coffee table at Carter’s Aspen Lodge patio, Egypt’s leader insisted on reading aloud every sentence of his 11-page plan for peace. His audience, Begin and Carter, had already read it and knew it was a non-starter.
On Day Two: Begin responded to Sadat’s positions, firmly calling them unacceptable. Things swiftly moved from merely being confrontational to the brink of internal combustion.
(A word of explanation: We wanted to fully discover and convey the diplomatic and human drama of that summit. So we pieced together a reconstruction of the summit dialogue by talking with Israeli and Egyptian officials. And we confirmed each side’s wording with the other side. Both sides said what we finally produced was an essentially accurate re-creation of what was said. Then we published it. And today, I am presenting the exact wording of the dialogue, as agreed to by both sides, but not placing the words within quotation marks. You’ll get the point.)
Sadat (referring to his 1977 visit to Israel): I have done this great and magnanimous gesture and still I am waiting for a response.
Begin: We understand and appreciate what you did, but you cannot and you should not belittle our part. … But still we received you as a head of state — not as a head of a country we are still at war with. We did what Jewish people have always said must be done: we turned an enemy into a visitor. We took one who was an antagonist and made him into a friend. You understand that — you were our enemy.
Sadat: But I said then that we are no longer your enemy, that the past must be the past and that now we must be friends. We cannot talk to each other as enemies. There must be trust.
Begin: But how do we know that you can be trusted? You deceived us in 1973, crossing the canal under camouflage. It was a trick!
(Voices and tempers were rising.)
Sadat: But that was war — it was a tactic of war a strategic decision that was made because we wanted our land back!
Begin: But you did it at Yom Kippur, when all of our men were in temple.
Sadat: Yes, yes, we did that on purpose.
Finally, Begin firmly told Sadat Egypt’s plan could not be the basis of the summit talks.
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Carter quickly realized his three-way summit format wasn’t working. Every time Begin or Sadat made a point, the other jumped in to rebut. Tensions quickly escalated. Carter figured that if the three-way meetings continued, he would end up being just the designated referee. So he scrapped the three-way format and instituted a shuttle diplomacy format. It would be as if he would be shuttling back and forth between Jerusalem and Cairo for one-on-one negotiations. Except this time, either Carter or one of his guests would be shuttling the roughly 50 yards that separated Carter’s Aspen Lodge and Sadat’s Dogwood Lodge or Begin’s Birch Lodge.
Most of the time, Carter’s Aspen Lodge served as summit central. Through it all, Carter was mainly focused on the substance that he believed could still be the basis of a comprehensive summit accord. Chief concerns included: What to do about the Palestinians who lived in West Bank and Gaza; and what to do about Egypt’s huge Sinai Peninsula that Israel had occupied since 1967.
Carter was surprised to learn that Israeli Defense Minister Ezer Weizman and Egyptian Defense Minister Mohamed Gamasy had separately pretty much agreed on a plan to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, leaving only the issue of what to do about Israeli settlements there. But Sadat knows that Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have been pressuring him to resolve the West Bank and Gaza — and warning Sadat not to short-sheet the Palestinians while mainly focusing on the return of Egypt’s Sinai. But Carter believed that if Sadat knew Sinai would definitely be resolved he would be more flexible in making concessions in West Bank and Gaza decisions.
So Carter stayed up most of one night, writing in longhand on a yellow legal pad. In the morning he showed his top advisers a totally new two-track summit framework proposal. It became the summit’s new Camp David master plan: Carter had written “Framework” across the top. Beneath that he had written two tracks that were to be simultaneously negotiated: (1) a Sinai settlement framework; (2) a comprehensive West Bank and Gaza agreement. Bottom line: Carter was reassuring the Palestinians and Jordan by giving equal weight to working simultaneously all those issues. But he was also giving Sadat assurance that he would get the Sinai deal he most wanted.
But this was a summit with Sadat and Begin — and that meant no problem would be resolved without ups and downs and dramas of soap operatic proportions. And lo, it came to pass, complete with pronouncements that the summit was collapsing. Begin declared at one point that he could not make even one more concession — which of course infuriated Sadat, who took Israel’s defense minister aside and said: “Ezer, everything is collapsing.”
Then Sadat raised diplomatic blood pressures, telling Egyptian reporters he was thinking of leaving Camp David. He also became fond of saying he was under “house arrest.” Secretary of State Cyrus Vance heard that Sadat had ordered a helicopter; Carter saw Vance’s face was ashen and told friends he thought war had broken out. And so it went.
But through it all, Carter worked late into every night, writing and rewriting on his legal pad. He resolved this dispute and worked around that one. He found the summiteers willing to postpone the most controversial issues. Resolving Israeli settlements in the Sinai would be left to a Knesset vote; and importantly, Begin agreed to Carter he wouldn’t require that it be a party loyalty vote. That satisfied Sadat.
Importantly, Jerusalem would be dealt with another time. But that came only after Carter had referred to it being “occupied” territory — which caused Begin and all his advisers to massively erupt. Carter removed the word.
Finally, after 12 days, in his Aspen Lodge, Carter handed the last of it to Sadat for the final approval that would mean the summit’s success or failure. Carter and Sadat said something to each other. Outside, on the patio, Carter’s advisers had clustered and were gazing through the window. It was like they were watching a silent movie — they saw history being made, but had no idea what the actors had said.
Carter sensed their dilemma. So he slowly turned away from Sadat and faced the window. Then he lifted his right hand tightly against his chest (where Sadat could not see it). Carter flashed one thumb up. Now, outside, Carter’s senior staff became the silent movie cast, celebrating soundlessly.
Carter’s team rushed to arrange a White House official signing of the summit accords late that same night — before a single mind could be changed.
Later, Sadat would talk with reporters: “I must tell you quite frankly I have a very soft spot for the man Carter, and the friend Carter, and then the statesman Carter. In a quarter of an hour, all the whole picture had changed — and because of his perseverance and patience. … He was right and I was wrong.”
And that night, in the White House’s ornate East Room, Begin, who had so often frustrated Carter at Camp David, told the world: “The Camp David Summit should be renamed — it was the Jimmy Carter Summit. …The president undertook an initiative most imaginative in our time. … The president took a great risk for himself and did it with great courage.”
They were talking about the American president who just a few weeks earlier had sunk to disastrous lows in the American public opinion polls. Pols, pundits and ordinary people had been telling each other they had little regard for Jimmy Carter’s ability to handle foreign policy and other matters. One year later, Iranian militant students would overrun the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 diplomats and citizens hostage. That would doom Carter’s last best chance of being reelected.
But in 1978, those 12 days of Camp David summitry showcased the global leadership of an American president at his very best. It was an achievement we must make sure history never forgets.
