Thirteen days in September is at once a window into history and a lesson in negotiation. Lawrence Wright has successfully brought the tensions of the 1970s Middle East to life and in the process he has also shown what courage can do.

The book is based on the thirteen days long negotiation between Egypt and Israel at Camp David in September 1978, which resulted in the cessation of state of war between the two countries and established diplomatic relationships between them. The book is rich in details of the conflict and the impact of that on the two nations as well as on the Arab world as a whole. As part of the proceedings, Wright delves in the history of the conflict and narrates the key events to present a revealing portrait of the region during the thirty years since Israel’s independence in 1978.

In this book, there are three leaders as the main characters – two of them, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, won the Nobel Peace Prize soon after the negotiations ended. But the hero of the story is unmistakably Jimmy Carter, the then president of the USA. The book starts with giving the reader an overview in the personality of the leaders and their backgrounds. Wright paints an interesting picture of Carter’s life from his early age to his eventual rise to become the President of the United States. The story is of values, ambition and love between Jimmy and Rosalynn. Compared to Carter’s life – the early life of Sadat and Begin looks quite stark. Both of them were part of militant movements and both had served time in jail. However, with time both rose to become the head of their respective countries. But this rise to power also cemented the ideologies in which both had unshakeable belief.

Carter thought that he will be able to bring peace to the holy land, and to prepare for the negotiations he asked CIA to get answers to the below questions about the two leaders –

1. “What made them leaders? What was the original root of their ambition?
2. What were their goals?
3. What previous events had shaped their characters?
4. What were their religious beliefs? Were they sincere?
5. Who was important to them? What were their family relations?
6. How was their health?
7. What promises and obligations had they made?
8. How did they react under pressure?
9. What were their strengths and weaknesses?
10. What were their attitudes toward the U.S. and Carter personally?
11. What did they think of each other?
12. Whom did they trust, especially within their delegations?“

The picture he got from the CIA portrayed Sadat as a bold visionary who was also reckless. Sadat was willing to be flexible for his goals. Interestingly, Sadat was of mixed parentage and was very conscious of it. Sadat believed himself to be a grand strategic thinker and he had what the CIA called the “Nobel Prize Complex”. He thought that on his own initiative he will be able to bring peace to the Middle East.

Begin was very different from Sadat. He had lost both his parents in the Holocaust and he believed that history is full of tragedies. As far as his stance on Israel was concerned, he believed that the entire Promised Land belonged to the Jews. He was against any radical change in this stance. He had his roots in Jew militancy and he was secretive and legalistic.

The road to the negotiation

Between the formation of Israel in 1948 and the Camp David Accords in 1978, there were four Arab-Israeli wars. The third of these was the Six-day war in 1967 in which Israel did a pre-emptive strike against Egypt, Jordan and Syria. In these six days, Israel captured Gaza strip as well as the entire Sinai peninsula from Egypt, got control of West Bank of the Jordan river from Jordan and captured Golan heights from Syria. This was a big setback to the combined Arab armies. In the aftermath of the war, Israel aggressively built settlements in the captured areas.

Egypt retaliated with the Yom Kippur war in 1973, which was also the fourth Arab-Israeli war. Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal and inflicted heavy damage to the Israeli defensive positions destroying the once considered impregnable Bar-Lev line. In this war Egypt was able to capture some of the territory of the Sinai Peninsula from Israel before the international pressure caused both the nations to call for ceasing of hostilities.

Given this background, both the Egyptian and Israeli forces were in permanent state of readiness for resumption of hostilities. This usage of resources and the cost of four wars had ruined the Egyptian economy in particular. The then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat recognized that being in a permanent state of war is a big impediment in the path of economic prosperity. He initiated talks with Israel regarding the disengagement of forces and there were two agreements signed in 1974 and 1975 to achieve partial peace. However, almost all of Sinai peninsula was still under Israeli occupation and comprehensive peace was still elusive.

In 1977, Anwar Sadat surprised the world by declaring that he will go to Israel with a peace proposal and will present his proposal in the Knesset (Israeli parliament). He did that on 19th November. However, after his visit the relations between the two countries deteriorated. Attacks by Palestinian terrorists in Israel was a major reason.

Jimmy Carter was not happy with the events after the historic visit of Sadat, and he became increasingly concerned at the rhetoric from both the sides. In a desperate attempt to broker peace between the two countries he called both Sadat and Begin to Camp David, the presidential country retreat, to facilitate the peace process. He had believed that given his friendship with Sadat and Israel’s dependence on USA for military and economic aid he will be able to get the two leaders to arrive at an agreement.

For the Camp David summit, Carter created the below list of key items on which he wanted Sadat and Begin to reach agreement –

Issue	Sadat’s position	Begin’s position
Sinai	Entire territory to be returned to Egypt	Flexible on allowing sovereignty of Egypt over the peninsula
Settlements	Israel should dismantle all the settlements from Sinai and other territories including Gaza	No dismantling of the settlements. These were to act as defensive positions for Israel
Palestine’s status	Independent Palestinian state, affiliated with Jordan or Israel. Or, at least autonomy	Symbolic autonomy for Palestinians where Israel will still have a say and will have military presence in the territory
The West Bank	West Bank belongs to Palestinians	West Bank was captured in defensive war and hence belonged to Israel
Jerusalem	Jerusalem to be international city as per UN plan	Jerusalem was the ancient capital of the Jewish people. No compromise.
Sinai Airfields	All to be dismantled	U.S. could take over the operation of bases where Israelis will still have access to them
Suez canal	Access blocked to Israeli ships	Unrestricted passage of Israeli ships

Both Sadat and Begin brought delegates with them and it is an interesting cast of characters. The enigmatic deputy Prime Minister Hassan el-Tohamy who was a kind of guru for Anwar Sadat. Mohamed Ibrahim Kamel, the Egyptian foreign minister who was appointed as the foreign minister because the previous ones resigned their position in protest over Sadat’s trip to Jerusalem. Kamel also paid the price for Sadat’s peace and resigned his position while on Camp David. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the minister of state for foreign affairs and a Coptic Christian whom Tohamy was trying to persuade to convert to Islam. Boutros Ghali later went on to become the sixth Secretary General of the United Nations. With Begin, we had Moshe Dayan – the legendary one-eyed Military leader who was the hero of the Six Day War and the villain of the Yom Kippur War for the Israelis. Ezer Weizman, who was the only one in the Israeli team with a good relationship with Sadat and who later went on to become the seventh President of Israel. Yechiel Kadishai, who had initiated Begin in the Jewish underground.

Along with the team there were two lawyers as well – Aharon Barak from Israel, who went on to become the President of the Supreme Court of Israel and Osama el-Baz from Egypt, who later became senior advisor to president Hosni Mubarak. These two will play a pivotal role in the negotiations. Carter had the support of the Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Advisor Zbig Brzezinski.

The negotiations

Day 1,2 and 3 – Both countries presented their own version of what peace means and what are the things they want. They both reject each other’s plans.

Day 4 – Deadlock continues where both the parties refuse to budge on any of their demands.

Day 5 – Carter decides to exercise authority and present an American plan for peace which will incorporate the must have issues for both the sides. Cy Vance had a fortuitous meeting several weeks before the talks began with Roger Fisher, who taught negotiation at the Harvard Law School. Vance asked for Fisher’s opinion on how to handle the upcoming negotiations. Fisher gave him the draft of a book titled “International Mediation, a Working Guide: Ideas for the Practitioner”. Vance got the idea of “one-text procedure” where rather than having two parties present their own set of demands separately, a single document can be utilized to reach an agreement. Fisher’s ideas developed in the “International Mediation” were later reflected in the Bestselling negotiation classic “Getting to YES: Negotiating agreement without giving in”. However, the talks again break down with heated exchanges between the two leaders.

Day 6 – Given the heated situation at Camp David, Carter proposes a break from the negotiations on the sixth day and takes both the leaders to Gettysburg battlefield. The graves at Gettysburg being a stark reminder of the price of war.

Day 7 – The American plan gets rejected by Begin. The Egyptian delegation believes that Sadat is under thrall of Carter if he agrees to the plan in the present state. Carter realizes that the personality and emotions of the two leaders will never allow for a peace treaty.

Day 8 – Carter proposes that he will work on the peace proposal with his chosen representatives from both sides rather than the leaders.

Day 9 – Carter along with Vance met with Osama el-Baz and Aharon Barak for 11 hours to draft a peace proposal in the absence of both Sadat and Begin.

Day 10 – The peace proposal is again rejected by both the leaders. The American team seems to accept the fate that the talks have failed. During the night of the tenth day Carter made a list of the things that separated the two sides and realized that there is not much that distances the two side. He decided that another push may work.

Day 11 – Anwar Sadat orders a helicopter to leave Camp David. In his meeting with Carter he says – “We are wasting our time with this man!”, referring to Begin. Carter uses his influence as the president of a super power and tells Sadat that if he leaves the summit, that will mean an end of Egypt-USA relationship. Carter also declares on the same day that the talks will be over on the second day from now whatever be the result. This declaration pushes Begin to start compromising on his positions. None of the leaders wanted to take the blame of failure of talks for peace on themselves.

Day 12 – The American team drafts another peace treaty incorporating all the discussion points. Both Begin and Sadat suggest changes in the language of the treaty to make things fuzzier and acceptable.

Day 13 – Finally, after more than 20 revisions the treaty is signed by the three leaders in White House. Peace is declared.

The major issues agreed upon were –

Issues	Agreement
Recognition	Mutual recognition of each other. Cessation of state of war. Diplomatic relationships
Sinai	Complete withdrawal of Israel from the Sinai peninsula
Suez Canal	Free passage to Israeli ships through the canal and recognition of Straits of Tiran and Gulf of Aqaba as international waterways
Palestine	Autonomy to be negotiated
West Bank	To be negotiated separately with the relevant parties
Settlements	Cessation of establishing settlements in the occupied territories by Israel for three months

Aftermath

• Nobel peace prize for Sadat and Begin for negotiating peace
• There has been no war between the two countries since then
• Suspension of Egypt from the Arab League which had its headquarters in Cairo at that time. With the suspension the headquarters was moved to Tunis.
• Economic boom in Egypt during the peaceful period
• Assassination of Sadat in 1981
• Israel’s aggressive expansion of settlements in the occupied territories of West bank and Gaza

The peace with Egypt allowed Israel to focus its resources on Lebanon and the delusion of making sure that there is no threat to its territory from Palestinian refugees. In June 1982, Begin sent the Israeli army under the leadership of Ariel Sharon into Lebanon to root out the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Begin acknowledged that it was a “war of choice” and he had assured Franklin Roosevelt that the army will not need to go farther than forty kilometers from the border to achieve its objective. However, eventually the Israeli army invaded West Beirut and what was originally planned as a forty eight hours operation extended to eighteen years of conflict.

Wright quotes Thomas Friedman, who was a young correspondent with The New York Times at that time – “Two targets in particular seemed to interest Sharon’s army.” One was an archive of Old Palestine which contained the evidence of Arab settlements before the state of Israel was created and the other one was two Palestinian Refugee camps called Sabra and Shatila. Thomas Friedman later wrote about his observations and experience in the book – “From Beirut to Jerusalem” which is a lesson in History in itself. But for this blog, that is a story for some other time.

The question is whether the Camp David Accords were able to achieve what the three leaders wanted to achieve? I believe Begin came out as a better negotiator by not giving up his position of power that came from the occupied territories. However, when faced with difficult choices in the path to peace, the courage of Jimmy Carter and the initiative of Anwar Sadat are traits that the world leaders today will do well to emulate.

If you are interested in History or Negotiation, Thirteen days in September is a fascinating read. May we keep inspiring each other.