Jim Lehrer interviewed Jimmy Carter tonight. Carter said he thought
Howard Dean should have stuck with his position towards Middle East. Carter endorsed
the idea that the US should have a "balanced" position towards Israel and Palestine.
Dean might have chosen other words. I've heard there is a bit of controversy on use
of words.
You must be away. You are quiet! (LOL)
cheers!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sadat Remembered for Camp David Accord
Tue Sep 16,11:54 AM ET
story.news.yahoo.com
By DONNA BRYSON, Associated Press Writer
CAIRO, Egypt - Anwar Sadat is certainly remembered in Egypt - both
by those who spit out his name with anger and by those who
accompanied him on his first steps toward peace with Israel a quarter
century ago.
His opponents say the late Egyptian
president's peace was their disaster - a
betrayal of the Arab cause. But they can't
ignore him. The treaty he signed with Israel
endures and has reshaped the politics of the
region.
On Sept. 17, 1978, after 12 days of
negotiations brokered by President Carter at
his Camp David retreat, Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem
Begin signed the blueprint for the first peace treaty between Israel and
an Arab neighbor after four Mideast wars.
There has been no full-scale war since.
Sadat, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Begin, was assassinated
in 1981 by fundamentalist Egyptian Muslim plotters angered in part by
his overtures to Israel. His successor, Hosni Mubarak (news - web
sites), has kept the peace. Ali Salem, an Egyptian writer and peace
proponent, believes Sadat's legacy is assured.
Sadat "was a statesman and his role was not to reign only in Egypt, but
to make something that would glimmer in history," Salem said.
Cairo has a subway stop and industrial zone named after him, and all of
Egypt celebrates Sinai Liberation Day on April 25, the anniversary of
Israel's final withdrawal from the peninsula as the peace treaty
stipulated.
Osama el-Baz, now an adviser to Mubarak, traveled with Sadat to Israel
in November 1977 on his epic journey of peace, wondering as they
touched down whether the Israelis were "just playing games." Many of
the Israelis waiting on the tarmac wondered the same thing about the
Egyptians.
"But as time progressed, peace prevailed," el-Baz said.
Not, however, until the Americans plunged in. Begin and Sadat quickly
deadlocked and Carter summoned them to the presidential retreat in
Maryland to rescue the negotiations.
There too, things went so badly that the Egyptians wanted to give up and
go home.
Hearing at one point of an impasse over troop deployment, Sadat
"decided to barge in on the meeting. Everyone was a little bit surprised,"
M. Cherif Bassiouni, an Egyptian negotiator, said in a telephone
interview from Chicago, where he heads DePaul University's International
Human Rights Law Institute.
"Did we come here to make war or peace?" Bassiouni recalled a
finger-pointing Sadat shouting at an Israeli negotiator. The Israelis
backed down, and Sadat made his point to both sides: Egyptians and
Israelis were no longer rivals, but partners intent on the same goal.
The following spring they signed a peace treaty on the White House
lawn.
The idea that Arabs and Israelis can be partners, not enemies, is met
with some skepticism today. The Camp David accords also called for
resolving Israel's conflict with the Palestinians, yet Wednesday's Camp
David anniversary finds Israeli-Palestinian tensions at a high after three
years of violence.
Faried Zahran, then and now a leftist leader, remembers his anger at
Sadat's peace efforts, and believes the present violence proves that
Camp David was "unreasonable, unjust, unsuccessful."
El-Baz said he once hoped the Palestinians, Jordanians, Lebanese and
Syrians would sign their own peace treaties with Israel within a decade
of the peace with Egypt. If Jordan is the only one to have done so, he
said, it's because the problems are complex, not because Sadat's vision
was flawed.
Other negotiations have waxed and waned but the
land-for-peace framework set out at Camp David has
survived. The 22-member Arab League, which
suspended Egypt for years because of its peace with
Israel, last year adopted a peace plan offering Israel
normal relations in exchange for full withdrawal from
war-won lands.
The peace is much colder than what Sadat
envisioned when he opened trade, tourism and
diplomatic ties with Israel. Egyptians are appalled by
what the Palestinians have endured and tend to put
all the blame on Israel. Israelis are appalled by the
anti-Semitic invective in the Egyptian media and
tend to see it all as government-directed.
For defending Sadat's goals and visiting Israel, writer
Salem is ostracized by fellow leftists. But he doesn't
give up.
"We have now no war and no threats of war," he said.
"It is a beginning. We have to go on the road. It is a
long road." |
