Now that the hoopla and the hosannahs from Camp David have died down, we are in a position to evaluate what actually happened there, and what the agreements portend for the future of the Middle East.
One thing we are certain did not happen: Peace for all time and justice for all peoples in a spirit of mutual concessions were not achieved. For the true meaning of Camp David has become increasingly clear: Egyptian President Anwar elSadat, in betrayal of his long-time commitments to Libertarian Review, the other Arab nations and to the Palestinian people, has made a separate peace with Israel. What Sadat accomplished was solely in the interest of the Egyptian state—the return of Egyptian sovereignty over the Sinai, and the removal of the Zionist settlements there.
And even that sovereignty will be limited; for the Sinai will be virtually demilitarized, and United Nations troops will be permanently stationed there, near the Israeli border. To top it off, Jimmy Carter has sweetened the deal even further for Israeli Prime Minister Begin by agreeing to build two air bases for Israel near the Sinai border, at a cost to the American taxpayer of 500 million.
Israel’s gain from Camp David is enormous. In addition to preserving the Sinai as a buffer zone against any possible Egyptian attack, (with the help of the United States and the United Nations), Israel’s major gain is simply the separate peace. For Egypt is the strongest Arab military power, and the peace treaty means that Egypt has abandoned the Arab struggle, putting another conventional war virtually out of the question for the Arab states.
In return for these inestimable gains, all Begin had to give up was the Zionist settlements in the Sinai. This he accomplished very cleverly by throwing the problem open to the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), and letting “democracy” decide. As the leader of the ultra-Zionist bloc in the Knesset, Begin was able to cover himself with his own party and to throw the onus for abandoning the settlements on all the political parties in Israel.
It is no accident that the happiest men at the televised proceedings at Camp David were clearly Begin and Carter. Begin has knocked Egypt out of the war. Carter has revived his flagging popularity, restored his image as a strong statesman, and resurrected Zionist funding sources for his reelection campaign.
Sadat, on the other hand, is in much shakier shape. Sadat’s own Foreign Minister, Mohammed Ibrahim Kamel, thanked by Begin for his part in the negotiations, resigned immediately thereafter in protest of the agreements. But just as Carter desperately needed an agreement—any agreement at Camp David to restore his political fortunes, so Sadat needed some positive conclusion from his quixotic gamble last November, flying to Israel and returning empty-handed. To save his face, Sadat, too, needed an agreement. Begin, sitting pretty on Israeli conquests, could afford to bide his time. Hence, Begin was able to wait and pick up all the marbles.
But Sadat desperately needed some way to cover himself with Arab public opinion, both for the betrayal of the Palestinians and for the betrayal of his allies. The consequent widely trumpeted “Framework for Peace in the MiddIe East” is, simply, a grisly hoax. The framework is merely a warmed-over version of the Begin plan for localized autonomy for the West Bank, which Sadat had angrily rejected last December. Briefly, there is no assurance whatever that Israeli troops will ever leave the West Bank, or that the Israeli settlements there will not be expanded in the next five years, much less dismantled. Begin reaffirmed his intention to assert eternal sovereignty over the West Bank, and agreed only to negotiate. Who the negotiators on behalf of the Palestinians will be, or who will represent them in the local government accorded them for the next five years, will be subject to Israeli veto. This means, of course, no role for the major Palestinian group, the Palestine Liberation Organization, as well as no role for the millions of Palestinians exiled from both the West Bank and from Israel proper.They will not even be represented, much less assured the right to return to the homes, lands, and properties seized from them by the state of Israel during more than three decades of combat.
As for the other Arab nations, not a word is said in the “Framework for Peace in the Middle East” about Israel’s returning the Golan Heights to Syria, or about restoring the Moslem holy places of East Jerusalem to the Palestinians. Jordan is merely allotted the thankless role of supervising the Palestinian “representatives.” Despite its longstanding, pro-United States and anti-PLO role, Jordan—the bulk of whose citizens are Palestinians cannot afford to seem too eager to jettison Palestinian interests. Moreover, Jordan’s financial and political mentor, Saudi Arabia devoutly Moslem-has been angered by the failure of the framework to resolve the problem of East Jerusalem. As a result, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have, so far, firmly (though not very heatedly) rejected the Camp David accords. Without Jordanian collaboration, it is doubtful that Egypt alone would try to implement the phony provisions for Palestinian autonomy. As a result, the framework is probably destined to remain a dead letter, although still providing Begin with a cover-up to assuage American opinion, and Sadat with an even flimsier cover-up for the Arab world.
In the short run, the state of Israel is now in an excellent strategic position. Egypt, the strongest Arab power, has been taken out of the war and effectively neutralized, leaving Israel free to take an even tougher line with the other Arab states. Jordan, on Israel’s eastern flank, has always been militarily passive, and there have been no PLO guerrillas based there since “Black September” of 1970, when King Hussein of Jordan turned savagely upon the PLO camps and massacred the guerrillas. The PLO forces are mobilized only in Lebanon; but Lebanon, too, has been neutralized by last winter’s incursions from Israel. Southern Lebanon is now occupied partly by U.N. troops, and partly by anti-Palestinian Christian fanatics in an army organized by the fascistic Phalange and subsidized and equipped by Israel. Both serve as a buffer against any PLO incursion in force into Israel.This leaves only Syria, effectively in control of civil war-torn Lebanon and confronting Israel on the Golan Heights. But Syria is only one nation, far weaker than Israel. Moreover, rumor has it that Syria’s President Hafez el Assad, who has played a vacillating, centrist role in the Middle East, may be mortally ill. If so, Syria will be weakened still further at least for a while.
It is true that such radical Arab states as Iraq, Algeria, and Libya remain fiercely anti-Zionist, but they can do little about it, since they are not front-line (or “confrontation”) states contiguous with Israel. They can offer financial aid and moral support to the Palestinians, but little else.
Beyond all this, Camp David has put the quietus, once and for all, to what might be called the official “dove” peace plan, sponsored by doves in the U.S. State Department and by various “soft” Zionists and peace movement members within Israel. The dove plan entailed Israel’s withdrawal from all its post-1967 conquests, including the West Bank, and the establishment of a genuinely independent Palestinian state in that area.In return for these concessions, the new Palestine would pledge to recognize Israel’s post-1948 borders and presumably not serve as a base for further assertion of Palestinian rights to the remainder of Israel. The dove plan is now dead, buried by Camp David, and the Israeli peace movement seems perfectly content with the Begin-Sadat-Carter agreement.
In the long run, however, Israel’s situation is not that favorable. Instead, Israel is sitting on top of a cauldron, the cauldron of Palestinian rights to their property, homeland, and national self-determination which have been trampled on and remain as remote as ever. For the major burning question in the Middle East, the rights of the Palestinians, remains unresolved. The most hopeful development of the past decade for the Palestinians has been their resolution to rely, not on the weak reed of Arab nation-states, wedded to their own state interests, but rather on themselves alone, on their national spirit and on popular militancy. Until 1967, the Palestinians were content to have their interests fought for by the Arab nations, and the result was a tragic series of expulsions and defeats.
After the 1967 rout, the Palestinians developed their own national consciousness, and the PLO emerged as the internationally acknowledged representative for the millions of Palestinians at home and in exile. It is probably the PLO’s struggle, based on the widespread support of the Palestinian people, which offers the only long-term hope for vindication of their rights.
In the last few years, a grave split has occurred within the PLO and between it and other Palestinian political and guerrilla organizations. The PLO “moderates,” headed by Yassir Arafat, are willing to accept the pre-1967 solution propounded by the State Department doves. The radicals have angrily spurned that solution as a sellout of the ultimate Palestinian aim: the restoration of the rights and properties of all Palestinians, and a consequent secular, democratic state (with freedom for all religions) in all of Palestine. In the last few years, conflict between the moderates and the radicals has led to armed clashes and the recent assassination of leading moderate PLO diplomats in Western Europe.
We can expect that Camp David, by putting an end to the dove proposal, will serve to unify the PLO and other Palestinians around the more radical program—at least until new events occur which might revive the old proposal to return to the pre-1967 state of affairs. But there is another, less heralded but still important, reason for the split among the Palestinians, and this problem is not so easily resolved. The Arafat wing believes that all Arab nations can be mobilized to aid the PLO in its struggle, that the Arab states can serve as a healthy rear zone to enable the Palestinians to concentrate their political and armed struggles against the Israeli enemy.
But many of the radicals, particularly the “rejection front” headed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (and its leader, Dr. George Habash), are far more pessimistic about any reliance upon the Arab nations, at least those in the front lines against Israel. They cite, in addition to the current sellout by Egypt, the Jordanian actions of Black September and the Syrian crushing of the PLO and Lebanese Left during the recent civil war in Lebanon.
The radicals hold that the quickest way toward victory for the Palestinians over Israel is actually the roundabout way—safeguarding the Palestinian rear by first promoting the overthrow of the conservative, pro-United States governments of the Arab confrontation states, and their replacement by radical regimes which would be thoroughly anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian. How this question will be resolved it is far too early to tell.
At any rate, regardless of how the dispute over the Arab regimes eventually turns out, the PLO is bound to be unified and strengthened by the agreements at Camp David, and Arab support for the organization is bound to increase. Neither Begin nor Carter has heard the last of the PLO. As a PLO official in Beirut commented on Camp David: “It’s true there can be no war without Egypt. But there can be no peace without the PLO.”
