ATLANTA — In 1979, President Jimmy Carter finished one of his greatest accomplishments. He brokered peace between Israel and Egypt -- the first time that happened with any Middle Eastern country.
On Mar. 26, 1979, it was an iconic image of Carter’s presidency as he put his hands over the historic handshake between Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin.
He sat with them for 14 days at Camp David to help make peace between the two nations.
“He was known for bringing together two very crusty, grizzled nationalists who really didn’t like each other,” Emory professor Ken Stein said. “He interceded and that’s what he does best. He’s very good at having people talk to him. And what he did, was he massaged their words and then reworked them into a meaningful text.”
[PHOTO: Jimmy Carter through the years]
And just as amazing as it being the first treaty, Carter’s peace deal has held up.
“Not a single word of that peace treaty has been violated on either side,” Carter said.
Stein said Carter was able to get it done because of his ability to talk to people and his sheer knowledge of the Middle East.
“He’d throw out a piece of information and he would stun people with his knowledge. and I’d sit there and grin,” Stein said.
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In 1978, Sadat and Begin won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Carter was supposed to win it alongside them but because of a technicality -- a missed deadline as a nominee -- he couldn’t be.
Still, Carter said it was a moment he was incredibly proud of.
This deal was the first of its kind, but not the last. It opened the door for an Israel-Jordan deal in 1994.
Sudan, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco all normalized relations in 2020.
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