(This book was selected as one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2014. For the rest of the list, click here.)
On March 11, 1978, 11 Palestinian militants came ashore in Zodiac boats north of Tel Aviv and set about murdering as many Israelis as they could with guns and grenades. They hijacked a taxi and two buses; 38 were killed, including 13 children. The massacre was intended as a provocation; a disproportionate Israeli response was assumed. And three days later, Israel invaded southern Lebanon, which was then controlled by the Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasir Arafat. “Those who killed Jews in our times cannot enjoy impunity,” the Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin said. More than a thousand Palestinian civilians were killed; more than 100,000 were left homeless. The world, including President Jimmy Carter, was horrified. Following another invasion in 1982, Israel would occupy parts of southern Lebanon until May 2000. The similarity to recent events in Gaza is striking, of course. The Middle East never changes.
Except, very occasionally, when it does. A mere six months after the Lebanon incursion, Begin and the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, would negotiate peace between their countries, having been hounded into a very tentative comity by Carter during 13 days spent in isolation at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountain Park. It was not a happy two weeks for the participants; Begin and Sadat could barely look at each other; no one sang “Kumbaya.” A great deal of what Carter and Sadat wanted to accomplish — a comprehensive plan to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands — had to be set aside. But a framework for peace between Egypt and Israel, the region’s principal adversaries, was beaten into shape during marathon sessions of what can only be called bare-knuckle diplomacy. The final peace treaty was signed at the White House on March 26, 1979, after even more haggling. Thirty-five years later, the peace between Israel and Egypt stands, sometimes unsteadily, as the most profound diplomatic achievement to emerge from the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Lawrence Wright’s “Thirteen Days in September” is a magnificent book with an unusual provenance. It began as a play called “Camp David,” which Wright wrote at the behest of Gerald Rafshoon, Carter’s old media meister. The negotiations were a natural piece of theater, filled with strange and colorful characters, constant plot twists and deathbed-dark humor; the play was mounted successfully at Washington’s Arena Stage in the spring of 2014. But Wright, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and one of our finest nonfiction writers, wasn’t satisfied. The Camp David process was more than just stirring drama; it was a hinge in the history of the region, and a tutorial in negotiating strategy. Yet, aside from the memoirs of the participants, it has received relatively skimpy consideration by historians.
Perhaps the greatest service rendered by “Thirteen Days in September” is the gift of context. In his minute-by-minute account of the talks Wright intersperses a concise history of Egyptian-Israeli relations dating from the story of Exodus. Even more important is Wright’s understanding that Sadat, Begin and Carter were not just political leaders, but exemplars of the Holy Land’s three internecine religious traditions. Carter, the born-again Christian, “had come to believe that God wanted him to bring peace.” Sadat, a devout Muslim, brought along his deputy prime minister and astrologer, Hassan al-Tohamy, a Sufi mystic, because “he has something godly in him and he can see the unknown.” Tohamy reported “prophetic dreams or conversations he had just had with angels.” The rest of the Egyptian delegation thought he was mad.
Menachem Begin was the most secular of the three. His Judaism was litigious, drawn from the Talmudic tradition of worrying the law to distraction, fighting over every codicil. But even Begin had his mystical moments. When Carter proposed that Israel allow a Jordanian flag to fly over the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, Begin responded, “Never. . . . What will happen when the Messiah comes?” He agreed to participate in the negotiations because “President Carter knows the Bible by heart, so he knows to whom this land by right belongs.”
In most thumbnail accounts of Camp David, Sadat emerges the hero, with good reason. He’s the visionary who started the reconciliation process by going to Jerusalem in 1977; he pays for the treaty with his life when he is assassinated in 1981. He is a more sympathetic character than Begin, a sourpuss extremist. But Sadat also has a clear, tough-minded sense of what was about to happen: He would offer a comprehensive peace plan for the region, Begin would reject it, Carter would pressure the Israelis to accept it. If Begin didn’t cave, he would be held responsible for the failure of the summit. Begin didn’t cave on anything except giving up the Sinai Peninsula, but Sadat did the unthinkable — he recognized Israel — and emerged from the haggling an almost saintly presence (in the West, at least), and Egypt gained crucial economic and military aid from the United States.
It is a measure of Wright’s fairness and subtlety that Begin comes across as an almost-sympathetic character. He isn’t dashing; he isn’t eloquent; he doesn’t smile. But there is integrity and brilliance to his stubbornness. He is a former terrorist who believes that not just Gaza and the West Bank, but also the Sinai Peninsula, are integral to Israel. He knows he’s going to have to give up Sinai, but he refuses to relinquish the Jewish settlements there. This is a central issue in the talks, resolved in a bolt of cleverness by Israel’s Moshe Dayan, who suggests that Begin pass the decision along to his parliament, the Knesset. Carter allows the gambit, with a private vow from Begin that he won’t campaign against the proposition.
In the end, Camp David is Jimmy Carter’s triumph, although it is not a transcendent one. Somehow, Carter, the unlovable Sunday school teacher, always eludes the credit he deserves. He conducts the discussions thoughtfully, at one point asking Begin and Sadat to talk about their days as political prisoners, which they do. But this doesn’t create a bond. He asks them to dress casually for the talks — Begin refuses — as if informality can induce intimacy. He brings no eloquence to the table, and little charm. He is a brilliant, dogged negotiator, but a self-righteous and curiously joyless one. He has staked his presidency on the talks and somehow manages to hold them together for 13 days, despite regular attempts by Begin and Sadat to walk away. He gets into shouting matches with both men, and at critical moments threatens them — effectively — with the loss of American aid and friendship.
But he is also able to rise above the clutter of the moment and change tactics. He arrives at Camp David expecting to be a facilitator, but by Day 5 he realizes that he has to take the lead. He proposes a detailed American peace plan, which becomes the template for the final agreement. (Barack Obama has been far more cautious — unwilling to present a detailed American plan, unwilling to call the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to the mountaintop.)
Wright reminds us that Carter’s Camp David was an act of surpassing political courage. At a time of double-digit inflation, sluggish economic growth, soaring gas prices and a real-time revolution in Iran, he dropped everything for two weeks and took a long shot at creating peace. He won his treaty, but lost his presidency because most Americans blamed him for not doing more to address the things they really cared about. There is a stubborn myopia to Carter’s quest, but also integrity and real honor — and now, a 35-year track record of a grudging but effective peace. Lawrence Wright makes a masterly case that it is time we gave Jimmy Carter full credit for all the lives his inspired diplomacy saved.