By 1978 the thirty-year war that had been fought between Egypt and Israel had come to a point where there was a chance for peace. The area that had been at the center of the turmoil was the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip. The problem was that both countries believed that they had the rights to this land: Israel, biblically and Egypt, politically. So an invitation by President Jimmy Carter to President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel was extended. The invitation was for a meeting in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland at the presidential retreat, Camp David. The meeting was so that the framework of a peace agreement, known as the Camp David Accord, could be laid out between Sadat and Begin, with Carter as the mediator. Both Sadat and Begin had their reputations and their countries' futures on the line, not to mention the future of the Middle East. All of the countries neighboring Egypt and Israel would be affected by an Egyptian/Israeli agreement of any kind and maybe encouraged to come to an agreement of some sort for that region.

A lot of problems had to be overcome for this summit to be a success. One of them was that the ha

¨Sadat demanded that Israel agree eventually to withdraw its military forces and civilian settlements from all occupied Arab land. The main withdrawal would be from the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip. Then that the 1.1 million Palestinians living there be allowed to determine who would govern them.

This is a copy of the framework for a peace treaty as spelled out at the Camp David Accords, as recorded in Current History:

In advance of the summit, the President received in-depth psychological profiles of both Sadat and Begin from the CIA (Blitzer 48). The American delegates thought that if the Egyptian and Israeli leaders were to budge it would be necessary to understand them and the way they thought (Blitzer 48). It was also decided that the Camp David meetings would be completely unstructured, without even an agenda to get them started, (Three 227) the hope was that this would be more conducive to the free exchange of thoughts and ideas. As the summit convened Rosalynn Carter (President Carter's wife) recognized that the three men had one thing in common, that is, their deep religious convictions (Blitzer 48). She suggested that the summit begin with some sort of prayer. So on September 6, 1978, as the summit was starting, the three leaders issued a prayer for peace to the world, saying: "Conscious of the grave issues which face us, we place our trust in the God of our fathers, from whom we seek wisdom and guidance."(Mideast 29)

Sadat on the other hand wanted a set agreement, one that would mollify Arabs who suspected him of selling out their cause. The agreement he wanted would spell out a schedule or time frame for the return of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to Arab sovereignty. During the transition the two ethnic areas would have autonomy in local self-government, but with a limited Israeli military presence (Szulc 13).

Israel Map. 1997. The University of Texas at Austin. 19 April 1999 http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/middle_east_and_asia/ Israel_sm97.gif.

A. No more than one division (mechanized or infantry) of Egyptian armed forces will be stationed within as area lying approximately 50 kilometers (km) east of the Gulf of Suez and the Suez Canal.

"Move in the Chess Game, A." Time 21 Aug. 1978: 24-26.

(e) The construction of a highway between the Sinai and the Jordan near Elat with guaranteed free and peaceful passage by Egypt and Jordan; and

Some common words found in the essay are:
Sadat Begin, Camp David, West Bank, Gaza Strip, Strip Arab, President Carter's, United Nations, Gulf Aqaba, Current History, President Carter, camp david, sadat begin, west bank, blitzer 48, gaza strip, mideast 26, west bank gaza, president carter, military forces, one-on-one meetings, bank gaza, bank gaza strip, jordan river gaza, river gaza strip, bank jordan river,
Approximate Word count = 1784
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)