The Camp David Accords


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Thirteen Days in September


Book Description

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW’ S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, The Economist, The Daily Beast, St. Louis Post-Dispatch In September 1978, three world leaders—Menachem Begin of Israel, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and U.S. president Jimmy Carter—met at Camp David to broker a peace agreement between the two Middle East nations. During the thirteen-day conference, Begin and Sadat got into screaming matches and had to be physically separated; both attempted to walk away multiple times. Yet, by the end, a treaty had been forged—one that has quietly stood for more than three decades, proving that peace in the Middle East is possible. Wright combines politics, scripture, and the participants’ personal histories into a compelling narrative of the fragile peace process. Begin was an Orthodox Jew whose parents had perished in the Holocaust; Sadat was a pious Muslim inspired since boyhood by stories of martyrdom; Carter, who knew the Bible by heart, was driven by his faith to pursue a treaty, even as his advisers warned him of the political cost. Wright reveals an extraordinary moment of lifelong enemies working together—and the profound difficulties inherent in the process. Thirteen Days in September is a timely revisiting of this diplomatic triumph and an inside look at how peace is made.




Peace Process


Book Description

One message of Peace Process is that the United States has had, and will continue to have, a crucial role in helping Israel and her Arab neighbors reach peace. If American presidents play their role with skill, they can make a lasting contribution. But just as likely, they may misread the realities of the Middle East and add to the impasse by their own errors.




The Truth About Camp David


Book Description

The collapse of both sets of Arab-Israeli negotiations in 2000 led not only to recrimination and bloodshed, with the outbreak of the second intifada, but to the creation of a new myth. Syrian and Palestinian intransigence was blamed for the current disastrous state of affairs, as both parties rejected a "generous" peace offering from the Israelis that would have brought peace to the region. The Truth About Camp David shatters that myth. Based on the riveting, eyewitness accounts of more than forty direct participants involved in the latest rounds of Arab-Israeli negotiations, including the Camp David 2000 summit, former federal investigator-turned-investigative journalist Clayton E. Swisher provides a compelling counter-narrative to the commonly accepted history. The Truth About Camp David details the tragic inner workings of the Clinton Administration's negotiating mayhem, their eleventh hour blunders and miscalculations, and their concluding decision to end the Oslo process with blame and disengagement. It is not only a fascinating historical look at Middle East politics on the brink of disaster, but a revelatory portrait of how all-too-human American political considerations helped facilitate the present crisis.




Preventing Palestine


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For seventy years Israel has existed as a state, and for forty years it has honored a peace treaty with Egypt that is widely viewed as a triumph of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East. Yet the Palestinians - the would-be beneficiaries of a vision for a comprehensive regional settlement that led to the Camp David Accords in 1978 - remain stateless to this day. How and why Palestinian statelessness persists are the central questions of Seth Anziska's groundbreaking book, which explores the complex legacy of the agreement brokered by President Jimmy Carter. Based on newly declassified international sources, Preventing Palestine charts the emergence of the Middle East peace process, including the establishment of a separate track to deal with the issue of Palestine. At the very start of this process, Anziska argues, Egyptian-Israeli peace came at the expense of the sovereignty of the Palestinians, whose aspirations for a homeland alongside Israel faced crippling challenges. With the introduction of the idea of restrictive autonomy, Israeli settlement expansion, and Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the chances for Palestinian statehood narrowed even further. The first Intifada in 1987 and the end of the Cold War brought new opportunities for a Palestinian state, but many players, refusing to see Palestinians as a nation or a people, continued to steer international diplomacy away from their cause.




We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land


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President Carter has been a student of the biblical Holy Land all his life. For the last three decades, as president of the United States and as founder of The Carter Center, he has studied the complex and interrelated issues of the region's conflicts and has been actively involved in reconciling them. He knows the leaders of all factions in the region who will need to play key roles, and he sees encouraging signs among them. Carter describes the history of previous peace efforts and why they fell short. He argues persuasively that the road to a peace agreement is now open and that it has broad international and regional support. Most of all, since there will be no progress without courageous and sustained U.S. leadership, he says the time for progress is now. President Barack Obama is committed to a personal effort to exert that leadership, starting early in his administration. This is President Carter's call for action, and he lays out a practical and achievable path to peace.




Camp David


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"The most authoritative account of a major historic event, written with scrupulous scholarship by a key behind-the-scenes participant."—Zbigniew Brzezinski, Adviser to the President for National Security Affairs, 1977-81 ". . . an excellent piece of work . . . will represent a major contribution to the academic literature on American Middle East policy during the Carter administration. No one but Bill Quandt could, in my view, write so knowledgeable, yet so judiciously balanced, and account."—Hermann Frederick Eilts, Director Boston University Center for International Relations, and Ambassador to Egypt, 1973-79 "In his detailed, carefully balanced and meticulously researched history of the Carter administration's goal in helping Israel and Egype achieve peace, Bill Quandt has produced an admirable model of contemporary historical writing . . . a major contribution to the literature on the Middle East."—Samuel W. Lewis, Diplomat-in-Residence, The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Ambassador to Israel, 1977-85 "This book is likely to remain the most thoroughly researched and complete account by far of the Camp David negotiations and the American policymaking leading up to them to be written by an American participant. It is unique in its scholarship, its authority and its insight--and it is good reading."—Harold H. Saunders, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, and former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, 1978-81.




Scars of War, Wounds of Peace


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An insightful and thorough account of the Arab-Israeli conflict ranges from the birth of Israel to the present day, told from firsthand knowledge of the major characters and events, written by a former high-ranking Israeli official.




Palestine Peace Not Apartheid


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PRESIDENT CARTER'S COURAGEOUS ASSESSMENT OF WHAT MUST BE DONE TO BRING PERMANENT PEACE TO ISRAEL WITH DIGNITY AND JUSTICE TO PALESTINE




The Missing Peace


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The Missing Peace, published to great acclaim last year, is the most candid inside account of the Middle East peace process ever written.