Earlier Camp David Accords?

Assuming that the Yom Kippur War happened as in our timeline would it be possible to have an earlier Camp David Accords, say by a couple of years? This is for a Nixon timeline I'm kicking around where the Watergate scandal, and other situations, never happens so that he's secure in his office. Nixon was always a foreign policy guy and he's got the ruthlessness to make things happen but I don't know enough about the personalities on the Israeli side, so thought I'd ask to see if it was even potentially possible before starting any major research. Thanks.
 
Assuming that the Yom Kippur War happened as in our timeline would it be possible to have an earlier Camp David Accords, say by a couple of years? This is for a Nixon timeline I'm kicking around where the Watergate scandal, and other situations, never happens so that he's secure in his office. Nixon was always a foreign policy guy and he's got the ruthlessness to make things happen but I don't know enough about the personalities on the Israeli side, so thought I'd ask to see if it was even potentially possible before starting any major research. Thanks.

Before I started seriously studying Israeli history, I'd always assumed that Camp David and the subsequent peace treaty sort of happened spontaneously under pressure from Jimmy Carter, the Great Peacemaker (as it happens, I have no idea if he was actually a great peacemaker when he was president or if that's just something he picked up afterwards, but such is life as a young person, ignorant of real history...)

As it happens, Camp David was the end of a gradual drawing-down of hostilities that begins with a "disengagement treaty" in January 1974 (some 3 months after the war's end) which basically formalized the ceasefire and theoretically committed the two sides to seek a peaceable solution to the problem. This was followed up with the "interim agreement" of September 1975 reaffirming borders and reaffirming the commitment to a peaceful solution, with the added caveat of a UN controlled buffer zone (this ended up not quite happening). This was followed by Camp David in September '78 and the treaty in March '79.

So, can we accelerate the whole process? Well, your POD is a good one; arguably a lot of the reason that Camp David didn't happen earlier is because Jimmy Carter and Yizchak Rabin couldn't stand each other. That said, it wasn't all peaches and cream with Nixon, either. Rabin, like Golda Meir before him, didn't much like Kissinger (though, in fairness, I don't think anyone did). Kissinger generally supported a policy of building ties with Arab countries and spurning Israel if that's what it took to get the former (despite what many contemporaries said, I don't think that Kissinger was a self-hating Jew or anything; I think he was just an American patriot and valued realpolitik enough to throw Israel under the bus if that's what he felt was best for the US). Arguably, Camp David happened about as quickly as it could have following the exit of Rabin and Kissinger, replaced by Begin and Cyrus Vance, though I think Vance was a less significant figure anyway.

Keeping Nixon in office instead of Ford doesn't change Kissinger. But...

Immediately after the elections in April 1974, Rabin had a very very narrow majority coalition in the Knesset, but it was a magical one for peace: a coalition of every leftist and liberal party in the country, and the Arab party; now, this was before the left in Israel became synonymous with "pro-peace", but the coalition still had all of the pro-peace parties with none of the most anti-peace ones. This arrangement lasted until October, when Rabin ditched Ratz (the most dovish party, predecessor to today's Meretz, if you know them). This period is also before Kissinger went full-on "screw Israel, get Arab oil". This period could theoretically see a strong push for peace, going for full momentum and formalizing something like the Interim Agreement after a few months instead of almost 2 years, and once that gets rolling, Rabin's coalition change shouldn't matter too too much. Still, I'm not sure it can get rolling fast enough before Kissinger's realignment - though Nixon could well override him; I know that they had a very...odd relationship. Plus, Rabin was notoriously hawkish, even though he oversaw the interim agreements (arguably, this hawkishness is why the whole process was so slow - Rabin didn't trust the Egyptians, and they didn't trust him).

One alternative is to have Golda Meir stay in power instead of resigning in 1974, leading to Rabin's ascent; or Shimon Peres beating Rabin out, though the latter is difficult as while Peres was a little more dovish than Rabin, that was basically exactly why Rabin won the election - after all, in the immediate aftermath of a devastating war (to this day, Israel remembers Yom Kippur as a terrible almost-defeat rather than as a victory), who better to lead the country than a former Chief of Staff? Who won the Six Day War? Golda Meir staying in power is also somewhat difficult - she was basically the scapegoat for Yom Kippur (again, the Israeli public saw the war as basically a loss). If Peres somehow wins the Labor internal election - say by having Rabin's wife's foreign accounts revealed a few years early, as this scandal is what made him step down in 1977 - then he might be able to push peace through more quickly, though it's possible that he'll face opposition from the army, who thought that Rabin was a god but Peres was just another politician (Peres had served in the Haganah, of course, but as chief of arms acquisition, hardly a "proper" soldier).

On the Egyptian side, it's all Anwar Sadat, of course. Despite general hate of Israel in Egypt, there wasn't a lot of opposition to peace (yes, Sadat would eventually be killed for the peace treaty, but that's 8 years away and was done by a radical fringe group anyway). I don't think Sadat would have any trouble with an accelerated time-table.

As an aside, I want to point out how ridiculous it is that the Yom Kippur war is regarded by Israel as a terrible defeat and by Egypt as a great victory even though it was clearly an Israeli victory and Israel basically had artillery within range of Cairo at the end.
 
As it happens, Camp David was the end of a gradual drawing-down of hostilities that begins with a "disengagement treaty" in January 1974 (some 3 months after the war's end) which basically formalized the ceasefire and theoretically committed the two sides to seek a peaceable solution to the problem. This was followed up with the "interim agreement" of September 1975 reaffirming borders and reaffirming the commitment to a peaceful solution).
Yeah, my initial idea had been to have Nixon get tired of what he saw as Israeli giving the US the runaround and dropping the 'reassessment of United States policy in the region' hammer after things had been going on for a year or so rather than the 17 months Ford took, and then have the greater pressure see the Sinai Interim Agreement take place in a month or two less to take six or seven months off compared to our timeline. The problem though is that the disengagement agreements with Egypt and Syria didn't happen occur until January and May of 1975 so I doubt much can happen before then.


Immediately after the elections in April 1974, Rabin had a very very narrow majority coalition in the Knesset, but it was a magical one for peace: a coalition of every leftist and liberal party in the country, and the Arab party; now, this was before the left in Israel became synonymous with "pro-peace", but the coalition still had all of the pro-peace parties with none of the most anti-peace ones. This arrangement lasted until October, when Rabin ditched Ratz (the most dovish party, predecessor to today's Meretz, if you know them).
Well this is interesting, what caused him to drop them? Had been looking at sending the reassessment cable after say six months of shuttle diplomacy in November 1974 and then more pressure sees the Interim Sinai Agreement signed after 4 months in March 1975 but that falls outside the timeframe of the coalition. If the cable had turned up in October before the split would Rabin have still parted ways with Meretz do you think?
 
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