In 2020, I wrote a column summarizing some of the material in Stuart Eizenstat’s 2018 book: “President Carter: The White House Years.” I thought it would be appropriate to republish some of what I wrote and add a bit more.

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Jimmy Carter will always be remembered—to his great credit—for obtaining an agreement between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat at Camp David in September of 1978, after 13 days of negotiations. Eizenstat, who had a strong Jewish background, was Carter’s chief White House domestic policy adviser during the Carter presidency.

Here are some insights from his book:

I. The Period Before Camp David

• We all know of Carter dealing with Begin. But this book reminds us that it was Yitzchak Rabin who was Israel’s prime minister when Carter was elected. That is who Carter expected to be dealing with in his ambitious initial plans to achieve a comprehensive Mideast peace.
• Early in Carter’s term, there was a visit by Rabin to the White House. The author describes their meeting as disastrous for a variety of reasons. One story he tells is that—to help establish a personal rapport—Carter planned to have Rabin join him in putting his child, Amy, to sleep and in saying “good night” to her. But Rabin declined and Carter felt very insulted.
• At the time of this visit, Rabin was apprehensive due to the forthcoming election. Why was there a forthcoming election? A few months before, four Phantom jet fighters had been delivered from the United States to Israel, but they landed after Shabbat had started. Nevertheless, they were given an official welcome. The Agudat Israel party filed a motion of no confidence due to the Shabbat violation. Then Labor’s Orthodox coalition party—the NRP—also could not vote for the government because of the Shabbat violation. They had to abstain. This brought down the government and forced a new election! The author writes: “No one imagined the winner would be Begin … Of such quirks history is made.”
• Thereafter came the matter of Rabin’s wife having left money in a United States bank in violation of Israel’s currency laws. Rabin agreed that he would resign when the new Prime Minister would take office. Shimon Peres became the Labor candidate in his place.
• Before Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in November 1977, Carter had tried to get Israel to sit down at a conference with all the Arab leaders and with the Soviet Union, and work out a comprehensive peace. But this grand idea did not work. This failure motivated Sadat to decide to gamble and visit Jerusalem. He did this without consulting Carter.
• Carter’s initial reaction upon hearing that Sadat decided to come to Jerusalem? “Stu, I think I am going to oppose Sadat’s visit. It will be the end of any hope of a comprehensive peace and will result only at best in a bilateral agreement between Egypt and Israel.” Fortunately, Carter changed his mind and decided to support the visit. Two days before the visit—as a gesture—Begin sent Carter a letter saying that the visit “would have been impossible without Carter’s efforts.”

II. Insights About Camp David

• After Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem, the negotiations stalled. The idea of bringing Begin and Sadat together to this retreat at some point seems to have been Rosalynn’s. Rosalynn wrote in her book that the suggestion had come from her husband. But later, he reminded her that she suggested it to him before that. She said something like: “I don’t see how they could do anything (but make progress;) it’s so peaceful and quiet and nice up here.”
• Regarding Carter inviting Begin and Sadat to Camp David, the author writes: “It cannot be overemphasized how unprecedented this conduct was for an American president. Time-honored practice is to test the waters before inviting another head of state … without even knowing whether he or she would accept.”
• Begin and Sadat had completely different expectations for what would happen at Camp David. The author writes that, “Begin envisioned an agenda-setting conference that would demand little commitment.”

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Sadat and Begin were kept apart for most of the 13 days, to prevent tensions from flaring up between them. The Americans shuttled between them.

III. Miscellaneous Insights

• The author writes that, “It was clear from first sight that (Sadat) was a devout Muslim, since his forehead bore the mark that comes from a lifetime of kneeling with head to the ground during daily prayers.” (Similarly, we have our hair flattened by our yarmulkes. If one of us takes off our yarmulke temporarily for whatever legitimate reason, we can still be identified.)
• Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan told the author that his family had learned that his maternal grandmother was Jewish. He also once quipped that if a certain peace proposal was accepted, he would change his last name to “Judea and Samaria.”
• Carter’s advisers had prepared a book for him outlining the strategy he should employ in the debate with Reagan that was taking place one week before the 1980 election. But someone stole the book and gave it to James Baker of the Reagan camp. The Reagan team knew everything Carter would say in advance! Baker told the author that he “probably shouldn’t have passed it on, but I did.”
• Begin and Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski were both from Poland. Brzezinski’s father had saved many Jewish lives from the Nazis while he was a Polish diplomat. One time, Begin arranged for a private breakfast together so he could give Brzezinski some records that he had located from an archive that documented the heroic activities of the father. Brzezinski was deeply touched.
• Brzezinski was from a highly educated Polish diplomatic family, while Begin’s roots were in a poor Polish shtetl. Begin’s advisor, Yechiel Kadishai, once quipped that they were “Poles apart.”

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All of the above was included in what I wrote in 2020. I would like to add a bit more.

• Eizenstat’s book was only about the White House years. He did not deal with the book that Carter wrote in 2004: “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” with that false and offensive title.
• Michael Oren wrote a piece for the Jerusalem Post after Carter’s death. The title: “Jimmy Carter: A Jewish Tragedy.” Oren wrote that when he met with Carter a few years after the 1979 treaty, Carter insisted that Israel was violating United Nations Resolution 242 by not withdrawing to the pre-Six Day War boundaries and failing to create a Palestinian state. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge knows that: 1) Resolution 242 did not obligate Israel to withdraw from “all” the territories gained from that war (which was of course a defensive war), and 2) Resolution 242 made no mention of the Palestinians, much less of a state for them. Oren made these points to Carter and Carter just brushed him off.

(The Arabs who fled Israel in 1947-49 and 1967 were correctly not viewed as a separate people deserving of their own new state, given that Jordan had already been created—out of territory initially intended for the Jewish state and Jordan’s population was, and still is, mostly Palestinian Arabs. About refugees, the resolution stated only that there was an objective of “achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.” That last statement also alluded to the 850,000 Jews displaced from Arab lands.)

Oren continues: “From a mere misreading of 242, Carter descended into a dark obsession with Israel, casting it as the source of all Middle Eastern instability and a world-leading violator of human rights … He lambasts secular Israelis for abandoning Jewish law and condemns national religious Jews for fulfilling it. Whether right or left, Jews can do no right by Jimmy Carter.”

Finally, Jimmy Carter was the first United States president to call for a “Palestinian homeland.” He first did this in unscripted remarks in 1977. He viewed them as if they were Blacks being discriminated against in the American South. Israel has been suffering from this potential “two-state solution” approach for almost 50 years now. Perhaps things will finally change with President Trump. (Note that in 1977, a leading Palestine Liberation Organization official admitted: “The Palestinian people do not exist … The existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons … ”)

Mitchell First can be reached at [email protected].