President Jimmy Carter believed that Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin made "the greatest sacrifice of all" in the Camp David accords, author Laurence Wright told Newsmax.
"Begin came to Camp David thinking he was going to spend two or three days — and at the end of that time, they would come out with an agreement to keep talking," he said.
Wright is the author of the new book,
"Thirteen Days in September," on the inside drama of the Camp David negotiations.
Under the accords, which Begin signed with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1979 in Washington, he agreed to withdraw the Israeli Defense Forces from the Sinai Peninsula over three years in exchange for Egypt ending its state of war in the region.
"Nobody in his delegation believed that he was intending to make peace or sacrifice a single inch of Sinai — and yet they all wanted this more than he did," Wright said. "So, Camp David was agony for Menachem Begin and he wanted to leave. He tried to leave."
Wright said that Begin, who shared the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize with Sadat for the agreement, had an undying loyalty to Israel — developed from his experience as a Holocaust survivor.
"He was a very obdurate and wounded figure, and he was scarred by the Holocaust, driven to try to do everything he could to protect the Jews. It came down to the question of land or peace, and it was the hardest decision he ever had to make in his life.
"He was going to trade 130 miles of sand, which protected Israel from the main body of the Egyptian Army, for a piece of paper that said 'peace' on it," Wright added. "He was being asked to trust his most formidable enemy. It was a tremendous sacrifice."
The author told Newsmax that his goal was "not to rehabilitate" Carter's reputation, which has come under fire in recent years by Jewish leaders for his support of Hamas and other terrorist groups, but was to show the 39th president's effort to broker the accords.
"He really excluded himself at Camp David, as all three men did," Wright said. "But in Carter's case, his weaknesses — such as his tendency to micromanage, his obsessiveness with detail and his kind of emotional tone-deafness — they all worked as strengths at Camp David.
"I don't think anybody could've hold off Camp David at that time except for Carter."
But Wright also hoped to convey Begin's anguish over his Sinai decision. He died in 1992. Sadat was assassinated in 1981.
"What I hoped to depict in the book was a man in agony over this decision about whether he could make that sacrifice and the fact is he made the correct choice, as history has proven."
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