Egypt and Israel Sign Peace Treaty

Context

For thirty years after Israel's founding in 1948, Egypt and its Arab neighbors fought repeated wars with the Jewish state, including the 1967 Six-Day War in which Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula and the 1973 Yom Kippur War that ended in a fragile cease-fire. Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat, who succeeded Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970, shifted away from strict alignment with the Soviet Union and sought to recover the Sinai through diplomacy rather than another costly conflict. The United States, eager to reduce Soviet influence and stabilize the region during the Cold War, positioned itself as the key mediator under President Jimmy Carter.

What Happened

Sadat's surprise visit to Jerusalem in November 1977 broke a long-standing Arab taboo and opened direct talks with Israel. Those discussions culminated in the Camp David Accords of September 1978, when Sadat, Begin, and Carter spent nearly two weeks at the presidential retreat hammering out two frameworks: one for bilateral peace between Egypt and Israel and another addressing broader regional issues including the Palestinians. On March 26, 1979, Sadat and Begin returned to Washington and signed the formal Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty on the White House lawn in a ceremony witnessed by Carter and attended by members of Congress and foreign diplomats. The document committed Israel to withdraw from the entire Sinai Peninsula over three years, established full diplomatic and economic relations, and guaranteed freedom of navigation through the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran.

Aftermath

Egypt faced immediate condemnation from other Arab states, leading to its temporary suspension from the Arab League and the withdrawal of ambassadors from several capitals. Israel began its phased withdrawal from Sinai, completing the process by 1982, while both countries exchanged ambassadors and opened embassies. The United States significantly increased economic and military aid to Egypt to help offset the loss of Arab support and to cement the new alignment.

Legacy

The treaty remains the cornerstone of Egyptian-Israeli relations more than four decades later and has survived multiple regional crises, including wars in Lebanon and Gaza. It demonstrated that direct negotiations could produce lasting agreements and served as a model for later efforts such as the Oslo Accords and the Abraham Accords. Sadat and Begin shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize for their roles, though Sadat paid with his life when Islamist extremists assassinated him in 1981 partly because of the treaty.