US Prez Joe Biden hosts Japan and South Korea’s leaders at Camp David: A history of the famous Presidential retreat

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat with US President Jimmy Carter at Camp David in September 1978. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Three countries again met at the site, though amid different circumstances and warmer ties between them. Of late, there has been an attempt at developing closer relations between the two Asian countries, in spite of their historic disagreements. What is the significance of Camp David as a location for this summit? We take a look at its history.

What is Camp David?

Camp David is located 96 km away from the USA’s capital Washington DC. According to the White House website, it was originally built as a camp for federal employees and their families, completed in 1938 as part of the New Deal. This was a programme meant to stimulate the economy during the Great Depression, a period of mass unemployment and poverty in the early 20th Century. The New Deal, in response to the economic crisis, saw many public works being undertaken to generate employment and aid the poor.

The site began to be used by Presidents under Franklin Roosevelt, who until then used a yacht called the USS Potomac as a site for relaxation. But after America entered World War II, security officials became concerned about his safety in the waters.

Roosevelt then asked for sites to be identified for a retreat, within a close distance of the White House. In 1942, he visited Camp David, which was then known as Camp Hi-Catoctin, and selected it. Eventually, it would become a US Naval installation, operated by military personnel. Roosevelt renamed Camp Hi-Catoctin “Shangri-La” from the James Hilton novel The Lost Horizon, which uses the term for a utopian monastery.

President Dwight Eisenhower changed the facility’s name again as he found “Shangri-La” to be “just a little fancy” for him. He chose “Camp David” after his grandson. His wife Mamie named the presidential cabin “Aspen”. Several guest lodges are also located here.

US President Franklin Roosevelt with UK PM Winston Churchill at Camp David, then known as Shangri-La, in May 1943. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

It has since hosted leaders such as UK PM Winston Churchill, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, Russian President Vladimir Putin and all of the G8 leaders during the 2012 Summit. Leaders have had informal interactions here, even watching films and football matches. The most famous diplomatic event, however, was the US-Egypt-Israel meetings of 1978.

David Cameron, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, José Manuel Barroso, François Hollande, and others watching a football match during a 2012 summit at Camp David. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Camp David Accords

Under President Jimmy Carter, the US decided to call Egypt and Israel’s leaders to broker an agreement, following the contestations in West Asia about the fate of Israel and Palestine.

In 1947, the UK administered Palestine but it then referred the issue of its control to the UN, after its attempt to support the establishment of a homeland for Jewish people there failed. Its 1917 Balfour Declaration supported a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. But this drew widespread criticism from Arab nations. The UN then voted to partition Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an independent Jerusalem under a UN trusteeship — the proposal was opposed by the Arabs again.

The UK ended its control of the region on May 15, 1948, and Israel proclaimed its independence, triggering the first Arab-Israeli war. By then, a large number of Jewish refugees from Europe had migrated to the region, due to persecution during World War II. They also believed in the Balfour Declaration’s principle.

Egypt then took control of the Gaza Strip along the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan assumed sovereignty over the West Bank, the territory between Israel’s eastern border and the Jordan River, including East Jerusalem.

Map showing the status of Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories as of 2018. (Credits: Wikimedia Commons)

Then, during the Six-Day War of June 1967, Israel occupied those territories as well as the Golan Heights — a patch of Syrian land on Israel’s northeastern border — and the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt.

What happened at Camp David?

The US’s historic allyship towards Israel resulted in Carter, who was elected President in 1977, advocating for a settlement under UN Resolution 242 of 1967. It had called for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the occupied territories and acknowledged the claim of sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the region.

Further, in 1977, in a surprise move, Egypt’s Sadat visited Israel and addressed its Parliament, though this did not lead to much headway in their talks. But this may have made the leaders willing to try for an agreement.

From September 5 to September 17, 1978, the two leaders and Carter went to Camp David. The Americans hoped that the secluded nature of the location would help the two leaders see each other in a more neutral light, away from formalities and media glare. But in the first few days, discussions would often escalate into heated arguments and it seemed the talks were about to fail.

They then began to meet with Carter separately. “Land, always the source of Middle East conflict, remained the major sticking point. After Carter realized that agreement might hinge on the status of the Sinai peninsula, he decided to draft a proposal — ‘Framework for a Settlement in the Sinai,’” according to The Jimmy Carter Library.

Carter wrote in his book Keeping Faith, “I decided to work that afternoon on the terms for an Egyptian-Israeli treaty, and spread the Sinai maps out on the dining table to begin this task, writing the proposed agreement on a yellow scratch pad.” Later, they followed an approach where a single page listed their points of common agreement, and this would be reworked constantly after conversations with the two leaders. Finally, the Framework for Peace was released, dubbed the ‘Camp David Accords’, mediated by the US.

It said Israel was to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula and from land acquired during the Six-Day War in the West Bank. Also, Egypt, Israel, and Jordan would agree on the modalities for establishing elected self-governing authority in the West Bank and Gaza. It further added that the solution must “recognize the legitimate right of the Palestinian peoples and their just requirements. In this way, the Palestinians will participate in the determination of their own future…”

What has happened since the Camp David Accords?

The Accords’ success has been debated. On one hand, it helped normalise ties between Egypt and Israel. In 1979, the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty was signed at the White House. However, the Arab world initially rejected it and ousted Egypt from the Arab League grouping (it would be re-admitted a few years later). At present, however, a growing number of countries in the region are establishing full-scale diplomatic relations with Israel or are participating in trade with it.

The question of Palestine has not been addressed to date, though. The Accords also made note of resolving the “refugee problem”, referring to the Palestinian refugees of the wars, but not much progress has been made on that end.

A 2018 critique in The Washington Post argued that to bring Israel on board, the language of the Accords was watered down to remove aspects of demanding a Palestinian state. It quotes Carter as writing in his 1985 book ‘The Blood of Abraham’, that through the Framework, the US and Israel “removed Egypt’s considerable strength from the military equation of the Middle East and thus gave the Israelis renewed freedom to pursue their goals of fortifying and settling the occupied territories and removing perceived threats by preemptive military strikes against some of their neighbors.”