Sadat and Begin Sign the Camp David Accords
Twelve days of negotiation at a presidential retreat produce Egypt's first peace with Israel
Quick facts
- Sadat's Jerusalem visit
- November 1977
- Camp David Accords signed
- 17 September 1978
- Formal peace treaty
- 26 March 1979
- Recognition
- 1978 Nobel Peace Prize, shared by Sadat and Begin
What happened
President Anwar Sadat had stunned the world in November 1977 by announcing he would travel to Jerusalem, a direct overture to Israel that no Arab head of state had made before. In September 1978, President Jimmy Carter invited Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to the presidential retreat at Camp David in Maryland, where after twelve days of difficult negotiations, including stretches when Begin and Sadat refused to see each other and Carter personally shuttled draft agreements between the two delegations, the three leaders signed the Camp David Accords on 17 September 1978. The accords did not themselves constitute a final peace treaty but established a framework that led, after further negotiation, to a formal Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty signed on 26 March 1979, which provided for the complete Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula.
Why it matters
Egypt became the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel, ending decades of formal war between the two countries and recovering the Sinai Peninsula that Egypt had lost in 1967. Sadat and Begin shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize for the accords, but the peace made Sadat a target for Islamist and pan-Arab critics who saw it as a betrayal of the wider Arab cause against Israel.
How we know
The Camp David negotiations and the resulting accords are documented in detail by the US State Department's official historical account of the summit, and the September 1978 signing is independently confirmed by History's account of the same event.
Sources
- US Department of State, Office of the Historian. The Camp David Accords and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process · Reputable sourcehistory.state.gov · The domain "history.state.gov" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- History (A&E Television Networks). Camp David Accords signed · Reputable sourcehistory.com · The domain "history.com" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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