Leadership in the Middle East

Where are today’s Menachem Begins and Anwar Sadats? Or Yitzhak Rabins and Yasser Arafats?

Without leaders of their stature and their willingness to compromise for the good of their people, it’s hard to see how anything close to peace can ever be achieved in the Middle East.

This statement does not at all excuse the cruel acts these men committed while leading their respective nations or factions.

Begin, before he became Prime Minister of Israel in the late 1970s, led the revolt against British control of Palestine in the 1940s and was considered a terrorist by the British in the pre-Israel period. As Israeli Prime Minister he greatly expanded the construction of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank.

Sadat had been active in the Islamic Brotherhood and the fascist Young Egypt organization in Egypt. After taking office as Egyptian President upon the death of Gamal Abdul Nasser, he launched the Yom Kippur War against Israel in 1973 to drive the Israelis out of the Sinai Peninsula and the Syrian Golan Heights.

Rabin, as Israeli Minister of Defense in the 1980s, instituted an “Iron Fist” policy in the West Bank, detaining Palestinians without trial, demolishing houses, and shutting down newspapers and institutions. During Palestinian riots he authorized “force, might and beatings,” earning him the nickname “the bone breaker.”

Arafat served for decades as leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and  later as leader of the Palestinian National Authority (PLA). Those organizations, especially the PLO, fought against Israeli control of the Holy Land, accompanied by violence on numerous occasions. Arafat was accused of permitting such actions, and in his early life he himself led paramilitary Palestinian incursions into Israel.

And yet all four men, on two separate occasions, negotiated peace agreements with their counterparts, and each of them received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to end Middle East violence. Their courage cost some of them their lives at the hands of internal assassins.

Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed the Camp David Accords in September 1978. President Jimmy Carter facilitated the agreement by hosting Begin and Sadat at Camp David in Maryland, and the three leaders signed the pact following 13 days of negotiations there. The Camp David meeting was the outcome of 14 months of semi-secret discussions, begun a few years after the close of the Yom Kippur War, which was initiated by Egypt and Syria against Israel in 1973.

The Yom Kippur War, which lasted 19 days, had ended in an Israeli victory, with Israel gaining control of the Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and much of Syria’s Golan Heights. But retaining control of those territorial conquests had proved expensive and difficult for Israel.

Sadat, as President of Egypt, saw the advantages that peace could bring to his nation, and Begin saw little value in trying to hold captured Egypt and Syrian territory. Both were willing to open discussions to their mutual advantage. The result was the Camp David Accords.

The Accords provided that Israel would return the Sinai to Egypt and remove Israel settlers from that area, and set up proceedings designed to lead to autonomy of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to replace Israel’s military government there. In return, Egypt would recognize the state of Israel, guarantee Israel passage through the Suez Canal, and agree to restrictions on Egyptian military installations within close proximity to Israel.

The Camp David Accords earned Sadat and Begin the Nobel Peace Prize of 1978. But the honor cost Sadat his life at the hands of political opponents. Members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad assassinated him three years after the Accords were signed.

The Oslo Accords, negotiated 15 years after the Camp David Accords, dealt directly with relations between Israel and the Palestinians, represented by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) through its leader, Yasser Arafat. Israel was led at the 1993 negotiations by Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of the Jewish state at that time.

The Oslo Accords created the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) as the entity to provide limited self-government for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Equally important, under the Accords the PLO recognized the existence of Israel, and Israel recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and as a partner for bilateral negotiations.

The Oslo Accords derived from the Camp David Accords and, like them, provided a framework for further negotiations on the status of the Palestinians. Those items were to include the border between Israel and a Palestinian entity, Palestinian “right of return” to Israel territory, Israeli settlements, and the status of Jerusalem.

Discussions along those lines continued from 1993 until 2000, when negotiations broke down over the status of Jerusalem, and Palestinian militants thereupon resorted to violence against Israel in the Second Intifada.

The Oslo Accords earned both Arafat and Rabin, like Sadat and Begin, the Nobel Peace Prize.

But far-right Israelis opposed the Accords, and in 1995, two years after the agreement, a right-wing Israeli assassinated Prime Minister Rabin for signing them. And following Arafat’s sudden illness and death in France in 2004, several investigations have suggested that his death came as a result of polonium poisoning.

The Middle East is probably the world’s oldest and most intractable site of ongoing hostilities. The sad irony, of course, is that religion undergirds the mutual hostility.

There’s certainly no hope today for trying to set up negotiations similar to Camp David or Oslo. Last October’s brutal attack from Gaza by Hamas on residents and visitors in southern Israel, and Israel’s brutal rejoinder on thousands of Gaza residents as well as Hamas fighters, will prevent such discussions for a long time to come. What’s more, Netanyahu’s right-wing government in Israel has never accepted the idea of a Palestinian state.

And sizable contingents of both Israelis and Palestinians each dream of ruling all the land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, and Jerusalem as well.

But maybe, just maybe, sometime in the future, a few leaders on each side will arise who are willing, for the sake of their own people’s well-being and in the face of certain danger, to try once again for peaceful solutions. Like Begin, Sadat, Rabin, and Arafat, they would certainly deserve their own Nobel Peace Prize.

Rick Morain is a reporter and columnist with the Jefferson Herald.