Towards a post-camp david paradigm? US foreign policy in a reshuffled middle east

Abstract

This chapter discusses the reasons for the continuing relevance of the Camp David paradigm in the contemporary Middle East and its relation with US foreign policy towards Israel and Egypt since the 1970s. It argues that the 1978 Camp David Accords, that led to the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, resulted in the institution of a foreign policy paradigm that was informed by the regional vision held by the Carter administration at the time in which the treaties were negotiated. In the following decades many components of this vision became outdated, and yet some of its core tenets survive to this day. As a result, the Camp David paradigm is still at the heart of US policy-making towards the Middle East, even if its exact content is being reshaped by the changing nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the dynamics of post-Arab Spring Egypt and the alliance between Bedouins and Islamist groups in the Sinai Peninsula.