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From Camp David to The Oslo Accords: The Failure of the Israeli-Palestinian
Peace Process

Thesis · March 2019

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From Camp David to The Oslo Accords: The Failure of the
Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process

Lisa Mizan. March 2019

Direct negotiations between Israel and Palestine have been occurring since the creation
of the former, but there is yet to be a successful long term plan accomplished between the
parties regarding the matters of mutual peace and civility. Today, terror and incitement are
widespread through the disputed land and the degeneration of the “peace process” has
brought several questions to the table regarding the motives and narratives of the parties
involved: What caused the the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace-process? How have the
contributions of the United States and neighboring Arab nations affected this trajectory? How
may a solution to this ongoing conflict be achieved when there are such incongruent
narratives existing within the conflict? This essay explores the complex history between the
two states, the major characters involved in the peace negotiations and the crucial events from
the Camp David Accords in 1978 to the Oslo Accords in 1993. It argues that the attempts at
long lasting peace between Israel and Palestine have been futile due to the strategic
imbalance in the processes and the lack of regard to the increasing disparity between the
Jewish and Arab populations. Specifically, it points out the problematic nature of the Camp
David blueprint in the context of a two state solution and this continued over simplified
approach and ambivalence to the core realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in future
negotiations.
The history that fuels this decades long conflict is long standing, but made its first
concrete political mark when the state of Israel was founded in May 14, 1948. Since then,
several nations, UN resolutions, failed peace negotiations, and international summits have
attempted to bring a hiatus to the fire that plagues the land and hearts of Arabs and Jews
living in the stretch we now know as Israel and Palestine. The 1948 Arab-Israeli war resulted
in Israel gaining control of 78% of British Mandatory Palestine, up from the 57% originally
recommended by UN Resolution 181.1 This directly lead to the birth of the Palestinian
refugee crisis with about 700,00 Arabs fleeing or being ejected from their homes and
resettling into present day West Bank and the Gaza Strip, alongside neighboring Arab nations
like Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. Israel’s official stance was that the Palestinians had
“voluntarily” left their homes while the Arab stance vigorously argued that this expulsion
was premeditated and deliberate.2 This divergence of perspective between the two nations of
the same event was to be the first of many and is arguably the definitive origin of the political
conflict. The violence persisted through the next few decades through large scale conflicts
such as the The Six-Day War, The October War and the First Intifada to small quarrels that
occured between Israeli and Palestinian diplomats while trying to find a common ground
amidst the chaos.3 Notably, all events lead up to parties from both sides, and even outside,
being brought together to find a solution to one of the most entrenched conflicts in modern
history. Out of this grew the two state solution: Israel is to withdraw from most part of the
territories it occupied in 1967 and Palestine is to establish itself as demilitarized nation state
1
​Mike Berry and Greg Philo,​ Israel and Palestine : Competing Histories.​ (London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto,
2006), 36
2
​Benny Morris, ​Righteous Victims : A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001​. ( New York: Vintage
Books, 2001), 252-253
3
​Berry and Philo, ​Israel and Palestine. ​54, 66, 82
with limited control over East Jerusalem. Further, Palestinians will see the “right of return”
for a set amount of its displaced populace while in return the involved Arab nations such as
Egypt and Jordan will work towards harmonizing their historically aggressive relations with
Israel.4 This would go on to build the foundation to future peace negotiations such as Camp
David and the Oslo Accords.
There exist various perspectives to the peace process between the two sides and even
within the nation groups themselves. Palestinians have held different views which can
crucially be understood through an analysis of the Palestinian cause for the right of return,
which remains a cornerstone to their advocacy, and the intangible meanings they hold to said
geographical entity. Palestinians, like most Arabs, hold strongly divided views on the need to
make peace with Israel.5 In the years preceding the Six Day War, the official Arab position
presented to the United Nations was that the Palestinian Arabs have been unjustly harmed by
the actions of the Zionist Jews and the United Nations and that it was now up to them to
reach out for reconciliation.6 This stance has rippled into resolutions and negotiations that
have followed suit. Further, the Arab case can be summarized into their argument that they
had a more valid claim to the land, (if every nation were to lay claims to a land that they
occupied two thousand years ago like the Jews, where would our world be?) and that they
were not completely hostile to the immigration of Jews as long as they were to come without
a political motive - which, of course, conflicted with Zionism.7 These attitudes are more
deeply seated than political stances; the history of Muslim attitudes towards Jews have
profoundly shaped how Palestinians in large have interacted with Israelis visible through
Turkish-Zionist and Arab-Zionist relations in Palestine. The Ummah’s consciousness in the
region viewed the Jews as transient objects - “inconsequential weaklings,” incapable of
asserting dominance over the Turks and Arabs who had built some of the most powerful
empires in history with the sword of Islam.8 This would explain the initial lack of assertive
and forceful response to the influx of Jews into the land; afterall, what could these Jews, ones
who were now escaping a genocide, achieve anyway? And when it was the Palestinians who
were now turned into the weaker minority, the Arabs could not allow it to continue.
For Israelis, the opinions and views have been multivariate and have also evolved through
time. The “traditional narrative”9 that has been widely contented by Israelis and many Jews
living abroad is that the Arabs willingly and voluntarily upon official instruction left their
homes that has gone on to create the refugee crisis.10 It is imperative as historians to
understand this orientation and divergence in perspective of the same dilemma, the Arab
exodus of 1948, as it directly relates to the assumptions one enters a peace negotiation with.
Historian Yosef Gorny in his work ​Zionism and Arabs, 1882-1948: A Study of Ideology11
provides a comprehensive work of the roots of Jewish Nationalism where he argues that at
the core of the obstacles towards reconciliation between Jews and Arabs was the Zionist
4
​Uriya Shavit, “The Failures of Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process: Balance and Imbalance” ​The Journal for
Interdisciplinary Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 2. ​(2018): 6
5
Robert Owen Freedman.​ The Middle East and the Peace Process : The Impact of the Oslo Accords​.
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), 3
6
Fred J. Khouri. ​The Arab-Israeli Dilemma.​ (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1977), 319
7
​Khouri. ​The Arab-Israeli Dilemma.​ 11
8
​Morris, ​Righteous Victims. 13
9
​Traditional in the sense that is both well established and popular in the minds of civilians and government
officials alike and has survived the passage of time in relation to how Israelis have viewed historical events with
the Arab world.
10
Khouri. ​The Arab-Israeli Dilemma. ​124
11
​Kenneth W. Stein, Yosef Gorny, and Chaya Galai. "Zionism and the Arabs, 1882-1948: A Study of Ideology."
The American Historical Review​ 94, no. 3 (1989): 824.
belief that Palestine would have a Jewish majority. In effect, the Jewish Question initially
lead the conversation of how the Jewry entered the peace negotiations, although this has
consequently evolved through the decades into the trend we now know as the two-state
solution. Generally speaking, the Zionist enterprise would have it that the indigenous Arab
population of the region become a gratuitous accessory existing on the sympathy of the
Jewish majority, even if they were to have full citizenship - a superfluous presence.12 This
discourse entertains not only historical analysis but also uncovers the depth of contemporary
Israeli strategic thinking. Indeed, ideological rationalizations of the Zionist movement were
not only to fulfill a Jewish homeland in the historical Land of Israel, but also to liberate the
Jews from the prolonged anti-semitism and threats to their security that they experienced
during their diaspora. Thus, Israel’s expectation of a peace negotiation was largely centered
around its concerns of security, fearing the hostile nature of Palestinian movements such as
Hamas and other extremist Islamic movement threatening its existence and that of its peoples.
13
The Oslo and Camp David agreements were ultimately for the Israelis to alleviate these
anxieties by establishing a Palestinian government that would admonish violence against the
Jewish nation and in return the Palestinian Arabs were to see a halt in Israel’s land expansion
and a promise of return.14
The Camp David Accords were first initiated in 1978 and signed by Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin with the help of then President of
the United States of America Jimmy Carter.15 The United States foreign policy during
Carter’s presidency adopted the stance that the Palestinian refugees deserved a homeland
which would be the first step in the US’s side of supporting a Palestinian state and in that
direction - a two state solution.16 This Egyption-Israeli diplomatic negotiation, that went on to
win the signatories a Nobel Peace Prize, was hardly to be a resolution to the problem in the
long term - forty one years later and we are still amidst a failed peace process. I argue that the
Camp David accords were significant yet ambivalent: it provided an unprecedented
framework for Arab-Jew relations but fell short of implementing it. The "Framework for
Peace in the Middle East" was drafted and formulated Egyptian-Israeli relations and
Palestine's autonomous authority over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; however, the
framework did next to nothing to deal with the Palestinian Right of Return and nor the status
of Jerusalem. The lack of discourse regarding the Palestinian refugee crisis in the documents
lead to it being regarded as invalid and rejected in front of the United Nations General
Assembly through resolutions 33/28 A and 34/65 B17, who also commented on the fact that
the future and status of Palestine was being mandated without official Palestinian or PLO
participation. Scholars of the Middle Eastern region have continuously argued since
regarding the fact that fundamental issues such the Palestinian refugee crisis not being
addressed properly being one of the reasons that the Accords failed to bring relief to the
conflict, even if it fostered relative stability between Israel and its most powerful Arab foe.18
Afterall, as discussed earlier in my essay, the Palestinian Right of Return remains a

12
Norman G. Finkelstein. ​Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.​ (London : New York: Verso,
2001.), 12
13
Ibid, 184-186
14
​Illan ​Pappé, ​A History of Modern Palestine : One Land, Two Peoples​. (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2005.), 242
15
​Berry and Philo, ​Israel and Palestine. 7​ 2-74
16
​Jimmy Carter. ​Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. ​(First Simon and Schuster Tradeback Paperback ed., 2007)
17
​Myron J. Aronoff, "Camp David Rashomon: Contested Interpretations of the Israel/Palestine Peace Process."
Political Science Quarterly​ 124, no. 1 (2009): 152
18
​Ibid, 166-167
cornerstone to their cause and the existence of more than 1,500,00 Arab refugees dispersed
restlessly by the time of the June Wars did not help abate the increasingly hostile emotions
between the two groups.19 The framework only ever states “​Egypt and Israel will work with
each other and other interested parties to establish agreed procedures for a prompt, just and
permanent implementation of the resolution of the refugee problem,20” ​which does little to
nothing of dealing with the actual problem at hand. What it is postulating instead is not a
solution to the problem but a procedure that proposes establishing yet another procedure:
Identifying who these “interested parties” are, then establishing a “procedure,” and then
“implementing” this procedure.
Further, The Camp David Accords provide no substantial illumination on two other
fundamental Palestinian issues: self-determination and sovereignty; it is more occupied with
bringing a well needed relief to the conflict between the neighboring Arab nations and Israel
The one clause in the agreements “​The solution from the negotiations must also recognize the
legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and their just requirements​,” is a reflection of the
superficial and hollow nature of the document.21 What exactly is a “legitimate right?” Does
that imply that there are such things as “illegitimate” rights? Were the said “legitimate” rights
of the Palestinians actually realized in the years that followed the signing of the accords? Not
only do these explicit statements and implicit terms leave the document up for a rather
unnecessary amount of flexible interpretation, but also brings to question the intentions of the
architects of the agreement. Egyptian-Israeli negotiations with Sadat and Begin were more
concerned with ​conflict management​ than ​conflict resolution​: to deal with the boundaries that
defined the interstate conflict which was the more urgent problem over an approach for the
long term future of Palestine envisioned by the Palestinians themselves. The potential of the
Camp David Accords for the Palestinian people would be that a portion of their population
(primarily ones living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) would attain a portion of the rights
they held prior to Israeli invasion only through bequeathing their right to a national identity
and being represented by the PLO to foreign arbitrators.22
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat on September 13,
1993 signed the First of the Oslo agreements. This would prove to be a crux in
Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations due to its emphasis on “right of the Palestinian people
to self-determination” and the status of Jerusalem which were left uncovered in the Camp
David Accords of 1978.23 Moreover, although the Accords did not specify the idea of a
sovereign Palestinian nation state, this was the universal expectation of all involved.24 The
Oslo Accords failed primarily, I will argue, due to two core reasons: (1) the promise of
security to Israelis was left unfulfilled and (2) Israel fell short of keeping up to its own
provision of withdrawing control from certain Palestinian territories. With the influx of
Hamas attacks and the assassination of its Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the peace
negotiations went up into smoke for the Israelis. Meanwhile, Israel continued after the
Accords to continue building illegal settlements through destroying Palestinian villages that
went against the Geneva convention25 In reaction, Palestinian leaders displayed their actions

19
​Khouri. ​The Arab-Israeli Dilemma. 346
20
​"Oslo Accords: Documents." 2010, Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
21
​Fayez A. Sayegh "The Camp David Agreement and the Palestine Problem." ​Journal of Palestine Studies​ 8,
no. 2 (1979): 27
22
Ibid., 37-39
23
​Ibid., 12
24
​Jerome Slater. "What Went Wrong? The Collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process." ​Political Science
Quarterly​ 116, no. 2 (2001): 176
25
​Pappé, ​A History of Modern Palestine : One Land, Two Peoples​. 244-245
as long heroic struggle for independence against tyrannical regime while Israel brushed off
the increasing criticism from the international community towards its ever growing
settlements.26 Just like the Camp David Accords, the signatories received a Nobel Peace Prize
for their contributions to the discourse regarding peace in the Middle East, but just akin to the
former this certain negotiation failed to actually bring peace to the region. The common
discernible pattern here is that (1) The parties directly involved are failing to comply with the
provisions of the documents and (2) there is no neutral third party governing body to
prosecute/rectify these actions.27
Ultimately, the Israeli and Palestinian side have both put gravity into their respective
domestic political matters but have fallen short of recognising the same political curtailments
on the other side. Thus, each side showed a considerable, and many times inflated, amount of
appreciation for their own cause, principles, and demands, but fell many times than not hard
of hearing to the needs and values of the opposition.28 Compromise, which lies at the heart of
negotiation, was hard to reach beyond a superficial level and a middle ground for a two state
proposal fell short of the expectations of the two sides. I will further argue that this conflict is
a highly emotionally charged one, and the Accords were documents nullified of any
sentimental value. When discussing the perceptions of Arabs and Jews alike regarding the
situation, much of it is rooted through psychological ties to the land, and the peace
negotiations will need to deal with this aspect of the conflict in order to both understand and
resolve the issue at hand. Zionist ideology has blinded Israelis of their contribution to the
hegemonic oppression of the Palestinian peoples and the Palestinian Arabs are in turn finding
acts of extreme violence and terror justified through their continual victimization by the
Jewish state. The psychological prerequisite to a long term peace negotiation would see both
parties relieve themselves of these emotional attachments, like claiming Israel “belongs” to
the Jewish people, and pursue logical and rational steps for the greater good; however, it is
also arguable that is neither possible nor pertainable due to the rigid moral obligations of
honour of the semitic peoples regarding their past injustices. Lastly, although the fashioners
of the negotiations drafted and postulated the provision with confidence and trust between
each other for a hopeful resolution for peace in the Middle East, they did not put in process
what would safeguard and even punish violations of the agreements - A “Plan B”; leaving the
documents prey to the entrenched hatred and deep seated acts of violence as a form of
retaliation existing between the groups with no consequences. Till these major differences are
dealt with, peace in the Middle East will remain endangered.

Bibliography

Aronoff, Myron J. "Camp David Rashomon: Contested Interpretations of the Israel/Palestine

Peace Process." ​Political Science Quarterly​ 124, no. 1 (2009): 143-67.

26
​Oren Barak. “The Failure of the Israeli–Palestinian Peace Process, 1993–2000.”​ Journal of Peace Research
vol. 42, no. 6 (2005): 728
27
​Ibid, 733
28
Yoram Meital, ​Peace in Tatters: Israel, Palestine and the Middle East​. (​Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005.), 2
View publication stats

Barak, Oren. "The Failure of the Israeli–Palestinian Peace Process, 1993–2000." ​Journal of
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Berry, Mike, and Greg. Philo. ​Israel and Palestine : Competing Histories.​ Expanded ed.
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Freedman, Robert Owen. ​The Middle East and the Peace Process : The Impact of the Oslo
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Meital, Yoram. ​Peace in Tatters: Israel, Palestine and the Middle East​. ​Lynne Rienner
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"Oslo Accords: Documents." 2010, Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

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Sayegh, Fayez A. "The Camp David Agreement and the Palestine Problem." ​Journal of
Palestine Studies​ 8, no. 2 (1979): 3-40.

Slater, Jerome. "What Went Wrong? The Collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process."
Political Science Quarterly​ 116, no. 2 (2001): 171-99.

Stein, Kenneth W., Yosef Gorny, and Chaya Galai. "Zionism and the Arabs, 1882-1948: A
Study of Ideology." ​The American Historical Review​ 94, no. 3 (1989): 824.

Shavit, Uriya. “The Failures of Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process: Balance and Imbalance”
The Journal for Interdisciplinary Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 2. ​(2018): 1-20