Weeks after signing the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty on the White House lawn, the two nations exchanged ratification documents, making Egypt the first Arab state to formally recognize Israel. The agreement, brokered by President Carter following the Camp David Accords, returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and set a template—still rare—for Arab-Israeli reconciliation.
The treaty had been signed on March 26, 1979, on the White House lawn, with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin shaking hands under Jimmy Carter's beaming gaze, ending a state of war that had persisted, with four major conflicts, since Israel's founding in 1948. But treaties require ratification to take legal effect, and within days both governments moved to formalize the deal, exchanging the instruments that made peace official.
The agreement's core bargain was straightforward but seismic: Israel would withdraw completely from the Sinai Peninsula, captured in the 1967 Six-Day War, in exchange for full diplomatic recognition and a demilitarized buffer zone. Egypt became the first Arab nation to recognize Israel's right to exist, a move that isolated Sadat within the Arab League, which suspended Egypt's membership and relocated its headquarters out of Cairo in protest.
Sadat paid the ultimate price for the peace two years later, assassinated in 1981 by Islamist militants who viewed the treaty as betrayal. Yet the accord held, becoming the durable cornerstone of Egyptian-Israeli relations for over four decades and demonstrating, against long odds, that American-brokered diplomacy could convert war into cold but lasting peace.
Key people: Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, Jimmy Carter