down the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the city of Beirut. The trauma in Lebanon reverberated throughout the Middle East. Any notion of a peace process going forward between Arabs and Israelis, with the Israeli army at that moment laying siege to an Arab capital, was impossible. Perhaps even worse, the relationship between Israel and Egypt, given life by the Camp David Accords of 1978, was swiftly deteriorating.

The Arab world had been infuriated by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s courageous visit to Jerusalem in 1977. Egypt’s subsequent peace treaty with Israel further heightened tensions. Arab League nations broke off relations with Egypt. Sadat was assassinated. Now, with an Arab-Israeli war raging, Egypt’s leaders were under enormous pressure. Egypt’s large Arab population was deeply aggrieved and was muttering about itsown government in Cairo. The negotiations for autonomy called for in Camp David—as a step toward a solution to the Palestinian problem and to the status of the occupied territories on the West Bank and Gaza—were dead. The keystone of peace, the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, was under the gun. The United States had to act quickly, I knew.

The four-hour flight passed like a flash. Upon arrival, O’Bie and I were met at Dulles Airport by what would now be my security detail and by the president’s top White House advisers: Chief of Staff Jim Baker, Counselor to the President Ed Meese, Assistant to the President Mike Deaver, and National Security adviser Bill Clark. It was noon on Saturday. The president and the first lady had gone to Camp