From War to Peace
The 1976 elections in Israel brought the Likud Party to power, after the Labor Party dominated the Israeli government for a very long time. The new Prime Minister Menachem Begin was considered by outsiders to be less likely to make peace with the Arabic states. However, from the beginning he reiterated the commitment of all previous Israeli Prime Ministers for permanent peace in the region and called upon the Arab leaders to come to the negotiating table.
The cycle of constant Arab rejections of Israel's appeals for peace was broken with the visit of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem in November 1977, followed by negotiations between Egypt and Israel with the US acting as the mediator. In September, 1978 after difficult negotiations at Camp David, an accord has been reached. The Camp David Accord contained a framework for a comprehensive peace in the Middle East, including a detailed proposal for self-government for the Palestinians. On March 26, 1979, Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in Washington, DC, bringing the 30-year state of war between them to an end.
In accordance with the terms of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty, Israel completed its withdrawal from the Sinai peninsula (Sinai is three times the size of the rest of Israel including the territories it acquired after the UN partition plan. Egypt is fifty times larger than Israel and it has 10 times more people) in April 1982, exchanging former cease-fire lines and armistice agreements for mutually recognized international boundaries. Such move by Israel shows her will for peace. Currently, Israel has to buy oil from other countries. Had Israel kept the Sinai peninsula, it would've been fully independent of foreign oil.
The agreement has been a success for both countries. First of all, Israel and Egypt received financial aid from the US, with the former receiving $3M and the latter getting $2.1M. Furthermore, the two countries opened trade and tourism, which helped economies of both states. The fact that they didn't war with each other ever since, has helped not only save lives, but also helped the economy of both countries. Israel, moreover, gained when some of the African states which had severed ties with Israel as a result of Arab pressure during the 1973 oil crisis, restored contacts in the 1980s, giving renewed momentum to economic relations, as well as re-establishing formal diplomatic ties.
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