Jimmy Carter’s Nobel Peace Prize was long overdue. It should have been awarded at the same time Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin shared the prize in 1978. Because of a purely procedural glitch, however, that did not happen.
In retrospect, it would have been nearly impossible for Carter to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Even then it was the most dangerous unsolved problem in the world. Carter knew this when he took office in 1977 and daringly set out to do something about it at the beginning of his administration. It turned out that Carter, his wife Rosalynn and his old friend Jody Powell, who subsequently became his press secretary, went to the Holy Land even before his election. The three went there, pondering what they would do when Carter became president.
This fast start caught Israel and its American defenders by surprise. Momentarily, time was also on Carter’s side. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made it known that he was prepared to do anything to end this dilemma before the problem worsened. Sadat went to Jerusalem in 1977 and addressed the Knesset.
Events happened so rapidly that neither Sadat nor Begin, who was the most intransigent Israeli leader to date, quite knew what to expect. Israeli Army officers later admitted they were so alarmed that they set up precautions, thinking that the whole Sadat journey might be just a trap to land Egyptian commandos on Israeli soil.It soon was clear, however, that Sadat was quite sincere in hoping that his initiative would bring about a rapid peace. Willy-nilly, a visit to Egypt by Begin followed. The problem, of course, was that the Israelis had no intention of making peace until they had permanently absorbed the rest of the West Bank, at the very least.Soon Begin, Sadat and Carter found themselves sequestered at Camp David, Maryland, the American presidential retreat. Very early on, Begin seemed intransigent, as usual, but Sadat left the details to be ironed out by Carter. For 13 days Carter proposed and Begin rejected. Time after time, Carter came up with a new proposal to untie the Gordian knot. Eventually, Begin seemed to yield, and the three negotiators returned to the White House with what appeared to be an agreement.
The next morning, seeming to ignore what had transpired the night before, Begin left for a scheduled fund-raising rally in New York. Jimmy Carter was persistent, however, and continued moving forward. The dilemma, of course, did not go away, and the drama continued, alternating between high hopes and deep depression.
Meanwhile new events were taking place in Iran, increasingly diverting the world’s attention from Israel and Palestine.
Ronald Reagan, who defeated Carter in the 1980 presidential election, then made his own attempt to solve the Arab-Israeli problem, which came to naught for his entire two terms. Despite his sponsorship of the Madrid peace conference and his attempt to tie US loan guarantees to a halt in Israeli settlement building, President George Herbert Walker Bush met with the same disappointments. Then came President Bill Clinton, who was putty in the hands of the Israelis. Clinton’s two terms were characterized by many false starts, but, in the end, nothing had really moved forward.
Now, after the first two years of President George W. Bush’s administration, the “war on terrorism” has absorbed the American public. As a result, the Arab-Israeli dispute has continued to remain unsolved. Instead of attending single-mindedly to that core problem, Bush has launched into a dispute with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Regardless of how that works out, it appears that there always will be yet another reason to postpone working on the Arab-Israeli dispute. Clearly George W. Bush fears the Israel lobby above all else — even though he knows nothing else can be solved as long as Israel refuses to cooperate. There may be a way to help solve this impasse, however. En route home from Norway, Carter was interviewed in Denmark. When asked if he would help once again to tackle the Arab-Israeli problem, Carter said he would not intervene unless both parties want him to. In a way, that makes Jimmy Carter needed more now than ever before.
At this point, all the groundwork has been laid. Crown Prince Abdullah, with the support of the entire Arab League, has offered peace with Israel with no strings attached. All the Israelis have to do now is to return to the 1967 borders.
It appears the Israelis will not do this, however, as long as the United States continues to forgive all of Israel’s debts and thus postpone any solution. There, too, then, all President Bush has to say is, “No — not until the Arab-Israeli problem is solved.”
Despite Ariel Sharon’s intransigence, it might be that Bush and Carter could work to solve this problem together. Would that not be the best solution, not only for Bush, but for both the Republican and Democratic parties, in order to get the world off this downward spiral? This is not the time for either party to play politics as usual. As Carter already has said, “The worst thing that you can do is not to try.”
— Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
Arab News Opinion 23 December 2002
