When presenting the results of the Camp David talks to the U.S. Congress on September 18, 1978, President Jimmy Carter noted that it had been 2,000 years since there was peace between Egypt and a free Jewish nation and that such a peace might be secured that year. The Camp David Accords were a chance for one of the brightest moments in history. Sadly, Carter's expectations at that euphoric moment were never quite met, and today peace in the Middle East remains a distant hope.
That does not change the fact that the results of the Camp David talks were substantial and historic: the return of the Sinai to Egypt, the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt, and a framework for guiding the subsequent negotiations on Palestinian self-governance and relationship to Israel.
The problem lies not in what happened at Camp David, but what has failed to happen since. Though peace between Egypt and Israel has held, the framework for the Palestinian negotiations had no serious follow through until Yasir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords in 1993. But even as the two sides grew closer to a resolution of their differences, the extremists in both camps subverted the process. The Israelis created new settlements in the West Bank; from among the Palestinians suicide bombers emerged who would self-immolate in order to kill Israelis.
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