It was a watershed moment in Middle East history that raised the prospect of a truce between two nations that had been at war for decades: In November 1977, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt flew to Israel and called for peace in an address to lawmakers.
But within weeks, talks were deadlocked. A few months later, frustrated by the lack of progress, Mr. Sadat floated the possibility of breaking direct contact with the Israelis. A lifeline for the negotiations came in the form of an overture made by President Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Carter invited Mr. Sadat and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel to a summit at Camp David, the presidential retreat in rural Maryland, and offered to serve as a mediator. It was not Mr. Carter’s first foray into Egyptian-Israeli diplomacy and it would not be his last.
Soon after taking office in January 1977, Mr. Carter had met separately in Washington with Mr. Sadat and Mr. Begin. When the three leaders gathered at Camp David in September 1978, the Egyptian and Israeli contingents were quickly at an impasse. What kept the talks going was Mr. Carter’s persistence — for more than a week, he and his aides shuttled a single draft document between the sides until a deal was reached.
But a final resolution proved elusive. What emerged was only the framework of a peace treaty that came to be known as the Camp David Accords. It outlined the withdrawal of Israel from the Sinai Peninsula and the gradual return of the peninsula to Egypt. It also laid out a pathway for Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and the West Bank.
The agreement helped Mr. Begin and Mr. Sadat win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. Mr. Carter was not included because of a technicality; he was not nominated in time. (He would win the award years later.)
Before the final agreement was clinched, Mr. Carter had to play the role of facilitator yet again, flying to both Cairo and Jerusalem for another push. In March 1979, the peace treaty was signed at the White House.
It required remarkable statesmanship from all three leaders and earned Mr. Carter recognition as a peacemaker, setting him on course for the role of international diplomat that he embraced after he lost his bid for a second presidential term and left office in 1981.
The peace treaty, however, was not popular in the Arab world, where nations were furious about Egypt’s engagement with Israel and the fact that the agreement did not include a separate Palestinian state. Mr. Sadat, isolated in the region, was assassinated in October 1981.
