The landmark deal Egypt and Israel signed 30 years ago offers lessons for today's peacemakers
'Pyramids in his eyes and peace in his pipe," went the lyrics of an Israeli pop song released after President Anwar Sadat of Egypt travelled to Jerusalem in 1977. The resulting peace treaty, signed 30 years ago tomorrow, has weathered many storms. But the circumstances that produced it are unlikely ever to be repeated.
Egypt, where the agreement is deeply unpopular - despite restoring all territory lost in 1967 - will not be marking the anniversary, especially after the onslaught on Gaza. Israel will hark back nostalgically to a time of unique promise in relations with the Arab world.
Still, the treaty's very survival in the face of two wars in Lebanon, two Palestinian uprisings and two wars in the Gulf - and its evident limits - teach important lessons about how, if ever, a wider peace in the Middle East might be achieved.
Sadat was reviled for his treachery and assassinated by jihadists who later formed al-Qaida. The crime of the "pharaoh" was to put Egypt first. His call to the Palestinians to negotiate with Israel on "autonomy" for the West Bank and Gaza was rebuffed by Yasser Arafat's PLO, whose raison d'etre was to speak for Palestinian interests. Egypt, proud standard-bearer of Nasser's pan-Arab solidarity, was humiliatingly expelled from the Arab League.
Jimmy Carter always refused to acknowledge that he had said that Sadat "didn't give a shit about the West Bank". What is certain is that the treaty secured Egypt US financial aid on a scale second only to Israel - underwriting Hosni Mubarak's authoritarian rule to this day.
The case for the Palestinian track rests on the argument that in the late 1970s Jewish settlers were far less powerful. Yet it is unfair to include this in Israel's narrative of "missed Palestinian opportunities". Menachem Begin, the Likud prime minister, would never have dealt with the PLO or accepted minimum Palestinian demands: as he removed outposts from Sinai he put up new ones on West Bank hilltops.
Arab divisions are as relevant now as then. The origins of the Gaza war lie in the disastrous split between the PLO in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. Bitter rivals Syria and Saudi Arabia are trying to present a united front at this weekend's Arab League summit in Qatar. But it will be a miracle if they can bridge the gap between Palestinian camps.
The landscape is bleak on the other side of the hill. Likud's Bibi Netanyahu - explicitly against a Palestinian state - is forming a coalition government that will include the noxious Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister; he has already told Mubarak to "go to hell" and suggested Israel could bomb the Aswan dam.
The Qatar summiteers will reiterate their commitment to the Arab peace initiative. Its all-or-none approach is a ghostly rebuke to Sadat - offering Israel the recognition of all 22 members for a return to the 1967 borders. But to imagine it staying on the table much longer is hard. Syria's Bashar al-Assad has pointed out that if he regained the Golan Heights he could sign a treaty with Israel, but like Egypt's it would be a cold peace unless the Palestinians were satisifed.
Several lessons stand out. First, swapping land for peace works. Second, bilateral deals between Israel and individual Arab countries, though better than nothing, are not enough. This is true too of the treaty between Israel and Jordan in 1994, when the Oslo talks with the PLO still had some credibility.
For Barack Obama, without whom nothing that matters will happen in the Middle East, the goal must be a comprehensive agreement that ends the Arab-Israeli conflict in all its aspects and on all fronts. For the third and most important lesson is that without a resolution of the Palestinian issue any peace will remain partial, cold, or dangerously fragile. It was true in 1979 and it is true today too.
ian.black@guardian.co.uk
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