17 September 2026 marks 48 years since the Camp David Accords were signed. The documents were the result of negotiations between the leaders of Egypt and Israel, mediated by US President Jimmy Carter.

The talks brought together Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the presidential retreat of Camp David, in Maryland. After 13 days of negotiations, two framework documents were signed on 17 September 1978, not a final peace treaty.

In a diplomatic letter sent that day, preserved in Foreign Relations of the United States, Carter explained that one document concerned a framework for peace in the Middle East. The other provided a framework for concluding a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

The accords did not themselves replace the bilateral treaty. The process continued. Egypt and Israel signed the peace treaty in March 1979. The broader regional framework and the Palestinian question nevertheless remained subjects of later dispute and negotiation.

The significance of 17 September 1978 lies in turning intensive talks into written commitments. Sadat and Begin later received the Nobel Peace Prize for this effort. Carter acted as White House mediator, not as a contracting party to the Egyptian-Israeli treaty.

Forty-eight years later, Camp David remains a landmark of late-1970s Middle East diplomacy. The date marks the signing of the Camp David frameworks, not every political consequence of the bilateral peace that followed in 1979.

Photo: National Archives. Signing of the Camp David Accords, 17 September 1978. Public domain. Cropped to 16:9.

Source consulted: FRUS, 1977–1980, Volume VI, Document 144 | Office of the Historian.