SIXTY YEARS OF LOST OPPORTUNITIES 9 JUNE

Review essay by Richard Falk

Dr. Shake al-Nabulsi, a Jordanian intellectual posted an article on the website of the Arabic online daily, Elaph, with the title, “The Losers and the Winners from Camp David.” The occasion was the thirtieth anniversary of the Camp David Peace Accord entered into between Egypt and Israel on March 26, 1979.

The purposes of this study is to explore the development of events since Sadat assumed presidency in 1970, abandoned Nassir's policies and established a close alliance with the United States, eventually signing the Camp David Accords. This study focuses primarily on this historic peace treaty and its economic, cultural and political impacts on both Egypt and Israel in specific and the Middle East in general. The study demonstrates that the Camp David Accords were a watershed in The Middle East affairs, however, this achievement will remain problematic until a broader Middle East peace has been achieved

Brook. J. Int'l L., 2005

What follows is the lightly edited text of a lecture delivered at the Brooklyn Law School Symposium on War and Trade on September 22, 2005. I argued that, as of the date of the lecture, the United States had already been defeated in Iraq, predicted an exit strategy likely to be adopted by the Bush administration, and assessed the likely consequences of the defeat for the various participants in the conflict. I ended with a statement that we should embrace our defeat as good for the world at large, however terrible for the Iraqi people. Of course, by the time the text went to the printer, much had changed, and by the time it finds its way into the reader's hands, yet more will have changed. I am grateful to the Brooklyn Journal of International Law for its willingness to publish the lecture nonetheless, as a contribution to the debate on the war and also to the archive of anti-war speeches that may interest future historians of the domestic conflict over the conflict.**

5. Peace in Tatters: Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East, 2006

This book chapter critically analyzes the failure of the Camp David summit (2000). The memoirs of Clinton, Albright, and Ross documented the exclusive responsibility of Arafat for the failure to reach a peace agreement. These claims were consistent with the declarations Barak made at and, in particular, following Camp David. Upon his return from the failed summit, he stated: “We did not succeed for we did not find a partner prepared to make decisions. . . . we did what we could, we left no stone unturned, we exhausted every possibility to bring about an end to conflict and a secure future for Israel.” Few were aware that the blame for the failure and even the formulation of the accusations had already been composed by Barak’s advisers during the early days of the summit, long before serious negotiations had begun.

Rome, IAI, September 2018, 14 p. (IAI Papers ; 18|15), ISBN 978-88-9368-082-0, 2018

Forty years ago, the Camp David Accords were signed, making the US the key broker in the Middle East and sidelining the United Nations and a comprehensive approach to peace-making. In the past forty years, the US approach has focused on bilateral step-by-step negotiations which were meant gradually to weave Arab states into a web of relations gravitating around US power; it never built a comprehensive regional security architecture that could survive its own power and provide a mechanism to absorb the growing power competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran. With US President Donald Trump currently tearing down the basic parameters of the US approach, the EU should throw its weight behind international law, the United Nations, and comprehensive diplomacy again.