The one-term Democratic president provided the blueprint for an Arab-Israeli normalisation process that has abandoned Palestinian liberation.
More than four decades after leaving the White House, Jimmy Carter is remembered as a pivotal figure in Middle East diplomacy – a legacy defined by his greatest achievement but also tied to the challenges that ultimately ended his presidency.
The former president, who passed away on Sunday at the age of 100, brokered the historic peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, altering the course of the Palestinian struggle for statehood and paving the way for the Arab-Israeli normalisation process.
However, his triumph was soon overshadowed by the Iran hostage crisis, which erupted just months after the signing of the Egypt-Israel treaty. The crisis dominated the remainder of his presidency and was a key factor in his landslide defeat to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election.
A peace that sidelined the Palestinian struggle
Immediately after assuming office in 1977, the Carter administration made brokering a peace deal between Israel and its neighbouring Arab countries a top foreign policy priority and had as its goal an ambitious regional settlement that would end the 30-year conflict for good.
Though Carter had expressed support for a Palestinian “homeland”, Israel’s refusal to engage with the Palestinians as well as divisions among Arab states led him to abandon a multilateral Palestinian-Israeli peace in favour of a bilateral pact between Israel and its most powerful Arab foe at the time – Egypt.
The months of negotiations with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin that followed culminated in the two countries agreeing to normalise relations in September 1978.
The Camp David Accords, signed after almost two weeks of secret talks at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, saw Israel hand control of the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt in return for full recognition by its erstwhile enemy.
The agreement has been heralded as a landmark US diplomatic success and is seen as the high-water mark of the Carter administration, though its long-term impact has been to put a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict even further out of reach.
The accords provided the blueprint for a normalisation process that has permitted Israel to further entrench its occupation and expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank. From Jordan in 1994 through to the Abraham Accords in 2020, another five Arab states have since signed peace treaties unconditioned on the recognition of Palestinian rights.
Crisis in Tehran
A few months after the signing of the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, the fallout from the Iranian revolution triggered what was to become the administration’s most damaging international crisis as it prepared to fight the 1980 presidential election.
In early November 1979, hundreds of Iranian students stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage. Though some were released, Iran continued to hold 52 diplomats and embassy staff for more than 14 months.
Despite engaging in several rounds of talks with the new Iranian government, Carter was unable to negotiate their release. The administration’s impotence was encapsulated by a disastrous rescue attempt that resulted in two military aircraft colliding, killing eight US personnel.
The 444-day hostage crisis resulted in Carter suffering a huge decline in popularity at the height of the election campaign and is seen as playing a decisive factor in his failure to win a second term in office.
He was only able to bring an end to the crisis after the election was lost, with Iran agreeing to release the hostages on the day of Reagan’s inauguration in January 1981.
Peace, not apartheid
In the years since leaving office, Carter became increasingly critical of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians and called out its role in obstructing the establishment of a Palestinian state.
In his 2006 best-seller Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, he criticised Israel”s colonisation of Palestinian land and its system of segregation in the occupied West Bank.
He was also a staunch critic of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, calling it one of the most “gross and damaging mistakes our nation ever made”.
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