Nonetheless, Israelis swooned at the prospect of co-existence with an Arab State, and the Americans, led by President Jimmy "I am sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust" Carter began full frontal pressure on Israel. Sadat's outrageous demands became the terms of America's policy as well, and Begin was forced to surrender settlements (including the city of Yamit), oil fields, and two state-of-the art military air bases that had been built in the Sinai. In addition to Begin's surrender, Egypt pocketed billions in American civilian and military aid.

Immediately after the signing of the Camp David Accords, Egypt flouted every single relevant paragraph of the treaty with Israel. There was never any exchange of information, or commerce, or real reciprocal tourism, or genuine peace. The Egyptian press, the clergy, the schoolbooks, the media continued to indulge in anti-Semitic tantrums. And, despite the billions in U.S. aid, they remained resolutely anti-American. This abysmal failure is considered the great policy achievement of our Nobel laureate former president -- who also crafted the similarly ignored 1994 "agreement" with North Korea.

After Israel's lightning invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982, Secretary of State Shultz and President Ronald Reagan pressured Israel into a cease-fire that left Lebanon in tatters and a rescued PLO relocated to Tunisia. The Arab response? Terrorism, which killed hundreds of American servicemen in Lebanon.

Under the first President Bush, Secretary of State James Baker turned appeasement of Arab oil states into downright bootlicking, reminiscent of the tributes paid by England and America during the Barbary Wars.

President Clinton, buoyed by Oslo, was arguably even more obsequious. Under his watch, Yasser Arafat visited the White House more often than any single foreign visitor. He was courted by Mme Albright, Samuel Berger, Dennis Ross and assorted government functionaries who all displayed anger with Israel for not making even more concessions quickly enough, in the face of unbridled Arab terror. All this won the U.S. no brownie points in the Arab world. As Rael Jean Isaac and Jeffrey Daube demonstrate in their new pamphlet, Dubious Allies, the very Arab countries whose governments were most ardently courted by the Clinton administration could hardly contain their jubilation at the events of 9/11.

Why revisit these colossal blunders? At present, American carriers are streaming to the Gulf with aircraft and troops. On the brink of war with Iraq, we are pleading with Middle Eastern nations for landing rights, field bases, and fly-over agreements. At this writing, Turkey is holding out for yet more billions than the U.S. has already offered as the price for giving such rights. If Israel had retained control of the Sinai, which in fact, does not historically belong to Egypt, America would have been provided with bases, airfields, a friendly host nation, a security apparatus in place, a field hospital prepared for serious casualties and trauma, a land based refueling center, and personnel with experience and high standards in maintenance and repair of advanced weapons -- all this within a short flight from the combat zone. (It is worth remembering that had it not been for the Etzion base in Sinai, Saddam Hussein might have had a full-fledged nuclear deterrent in 1991. Ilan Ramon took off from that base, the youngest pilot in the raid on the Osirak reactor, and experts believe Israel could not have staged that raid without the Sinai base -- the planes would have come on the radar of Jordan and other hostile nations.) Today, because of the more difficult logistics of war from aircraft carriers and minor bases in nations that remain hospitable to anti-American terrorism, America may well sustain greater casualties than it would have, if the Sinai had been open to American forces.

Such are the consequences of fifty years of appeasing Arabs at the expense of America's most trustworthy ally in the Middle East.  

Ruth King is a member of the executive committee of Americans For a Safe Israel.

March 2003               - 11 -               Outpost