The autumn of Camp David

In the 1970s, as Anwar Sadat embarked on his peace gamble with Israel, critics and skeptics repeated the slogan “I fear that on the day of victory, we will regain Sinai but lose Egypt.” What if time has passed and we are now at a point when both Sinai, and with it Egypt, are truly in danger of being lost?

This is neither exaggeration nor metaphor. The political and geographic unit called Egypt, like any other country, rests on resources, sovereignty, decision‑making, and a contented populace. Sovereignty over wealth, over choices, over land, and above all, a people who strive and hope for a better future where they can live with dignity and humanity.

Where is all that today?

Israel is running rampant along our border, confident in our long peace, committing genocide against Palestinians—no hyperbole. At the same time, a large portion of Egyptians are on the brink of starvation. Our coastal bays are sold to Gulf investors to pay interest and principal on debts that soar skyward like the Iconic Tower. Egypt opens its arms to refugees from Sudan, Yemen, and Syria, who blend into its fabric, because Egyptians inside Egypt live little better than “refugees” themselves.

Palestinians on the brink of annihilation now knock on Sinai’s doors, hoping to escape from an unstoppable conflagration. Some have begun to call Sinai “Organi’s Peninsula,” a nod to the growing sway of local businessman Ibrahim Al-Organi, as the picture grows murkier and suspicion deepens of a creeping threat to Egypt’s sovereignty. Israel has become a rabid, unbound state, impossible to read without grasping its werewolf phase cloaked in an unprecedentedly aggressive US imperial cover, marked by criminality in its methods and blindness in its calculations.

We must remember that Egypt did not market the Camp David Accords as a surrender to Israel’s superior force. They were sold as a path to prosperity, global integration, and modern technology. Peace was packaged with promises of progress, democracy, and freedom.

Where are we now, and what remains of those promises?

A main reason both Egypt and Israel have upheld the treaty for decades was their shared conviction that neither could defeat the other militarily. The October 1973 war cemented that belief. But what if, over decades, Israel has imposed its political will and strategic vision on us without firing a shot? What meaning does the treaty then hold, except to chip away at Egypt’s independence?

The full restoration of Sinai was the cornerstone that gave Camp David legitimacy for a wide cross-section of the Egyptian people. By the same logic, some form of threat to Sinai becomes the gateway to revisiting the accords, and possibly resuming some form of conflict with Israel, regardless of the thick web of interests built over decades of peace.

Why Camp David has grown obsolete

Camp David as Egypt envisioned it at the time of signing was a framework for Arab‑Israeli relations from which Cairo could play a pivotal regional role, has had its day. After Hosni Mubarak’s failed efforts in the 1990s to broker a resolution between Palestinians and Israelis, it became clear that the deal was nothing more than a bilateral pact.

From one angle, Israel has shown time and again that it is a country with which peace cannot be made, especially after the forces most inclined towards a political settlement have been adrift since the mid-1990s. Across decades, Israel refused to integrate into the region on any cooperative basis. It is either an aggressive belligerent power or a bunker state, weaving ties with Arab regimes hostile to freedom, progress, and the popular will, becoming -in their imagination- a model of “modern” success.

From another perspective, many Gulf states have gone far in deepening ties with Israel. Their project has proven, in many ways, more damaging than Israel itself, economically, militarily, and security-wise, to most Arab countries.

From a third perspective, Sinai has become truly threatened, after Egypt failed to demographically join it to the Nile Valley. Though North Sinai’s population is only about half a million, state control there now depends on tribal formations loyal to Cairo.

Israeli ambitions also declare themselves by pushing the peninsula into chaos through the displacement of Palestinians. Israel knows its survival depends on keeping Egypt weak and off balance. Between Israel and Egypt, the enmity is existential, restrained only by a treaty under international auspices.

Camp David’s obsolescence also has domestic implications. The Egyptian army cannot rely on the accords as a permanent framework for its domestic and regional roles. Egypt needs an army that keeps the conflict with Israel as a watchful priority over any other task, whatever it may be. In practice, Camp David provided the pretext for military‑security conglomerates to expand their role in local markets and economic competition.

The accords also created local political and economic complexes that took this country backwards. What I am saying is not a bravado call for war, but an invitation for vigilance and readiness. We should not fear war, because the mission of armies is to always remain prepared to face strategic enemies, not to offload their fears onto society so that we find ourselves trapped in the depths of endless misery.

The Gulf‑driven order of the Middle East invested heavily in casting Iran as the Arabs’ primary enemy. Egypt need not accept that view. Iran’s clerical rule may end; it may find internal accommodations after Ali Khamenei’s death; it may change gradually or violently. In any case, the Iranian nation will remain whether under populist Islamic rule or nationalist Persian dominance. None of that applies to Israel; a settler-colonial state bent on expansion, treating the region’s peoples as enemies and threatening them with annihilation in moments of frenzy.

Perhaps this is a sketch of a future not yet born. What is certain is that the Camp David era is drawing to a close. Egypt must prepare for what comes after—whatever its present condition, and whatever turns lie ahead.

(*) A version of this article first appeared in Arabic on Feb. 22, 2024