Last year, 2019, was a good year to write about Menachem Begin. It was the fortieth anniversary of Israel's first peace treaty with a neighbor, which has survived Sadat's assassination, Israeli military operations against Arab countries and entities, and two regime changes in Egypt; which broke taboo and opened the way for other peace treaties; and which has provided (and continues to provide) inestimable value to Israeli national security. In addition, Begin has, in the decades since his brief tenure, taken his place in the slightly airbrushed pantheon of Israel's greats, especially since claimants to be his ideological and political successors have governed Israel for thirty-eight of the last forty-two years. In a drawn-out election year and amid internecine struggle on the political Right, claims to his mantle have become cherished political currency.One of the challenges in analyzing Begin's role and positions in the Camp David process—indeed, his legacy in general—is the fact that he never published memoirs, or even gave fulsome interviews after leaving office. His sudden departure from office and near-hermetic existence in the nine years until his death meant that his “take” on most of the major decisions and processes of his term of office is missing. As Steinberg and Rubinovitz note, it was left to other participants—Jimmy Carter and his advisors, and Begin's Israeli subordinates—to tell the story of the Israel-Egypt peace process. These mostly personal accounts, which have largely shaped the narrative, stress psychological and personal dimensions; often diminish Begin's role as chief negotiator and decision-maker on the Israeli side; and present him as “a reluctant peacemaker,” a right-wing ideologue dragged to the peace agreement.The authors seek to restore Begin to his central and essential role. Gerald Steinberg is a professor at Bar Ilan University, originally a specialist in international security and arms control and now an investigator and analyst of nongovernmental organizations, their funders, and other stakeholders, primarily in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict: he began work on this book over fifteen years ago. Ziv Rubinovitz of Sonoma State University, also an Israeli political scientist, did much of the archival research. Their analysis is based on recently declassified Israeli (and some American) documents, including protocols of internal meetings and debates of the Israeli side during Camp David, official diplomatic cables, and internal assessments (they've done a service by embedding a link in the book itself to a dedicated website where the documentation can be viewed). These they have compared to extant accounts to corroborate established narratives, but also to point out significant contradictions, as well as reexamine conventional wisdom.1The first half of the book presents the development of Begin's approach to peace with the Arab states, up until Camp David. In the authors' view, this provides much-needed context to his behavior at and after Camp David and weakens the narrative of a sudden change in his positions, following Sadat's visit and Carter's mediation and pressure. They find important foreshadowing of Begin's later positions, in his time as a minister-without-portfolio and member of the Ministerial Defense Committee (“the security cabinet”) in the national unity governments between June 1967 and August 1970. This was the first time he had national responsibility, legitimacy, and experience, after two decades of total political marginalization. Steinberg and Rubinovitz show how Begin in these governments endorsed the land-for-peace formula vis-à-vis Egypt and Syria (with Sinai and the Golan as “deposits for peace”) and enunciated his view of the importance of a full-fledged peace treaty, achieved through direct negotiations, as opposed to partial or interim agreements (45).Begin assumed office on May 18, 1977; Sadat visited Jerusalem a mere six months later. Days after his election, Begin declared to US ambassador Samuel Lewis that his first task as prime minister was to enter peace negotiations with Egypt (59). His diplomatic agenda was also made clear by his appointment (chagrining his own party) of Moshe Dayan, previously of the Labor Party, as foreign minister. They inherited an incremental process of diplomacy on the Egyptian track that had started with the interim disengagement agreements (Sinai I and II) in 1974–75. Dayan and Begin quickly began exploring other possible channels and, in July, opened the “Romanian Channel” through Ceausescu and revived the “Moroccan Channel” opened by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1976 (71–75).The Carter administration, for its part, entered office with a comprehensive plan for Middle East peace, based on the Brookings Plan of 1975. For the Americans, the Egyptian-Israeli talks were a fulcrum to achieve a comprehensive settlement, including for the Palestinians: a bilateral treaty that did not lead to a wider regional solution would be considered a failure. The authors note the early American commitment to the Geneva Conference concept, which was rejected by both Begin and Sadat because it entailed reinjecting the Soviets into the region. The Americans were concerned after Sadat's visit to Israel that they had effectively been frozen out of the diplomatic action and lost influence and control over the process (98). In the event, momentum in the bilateral process flagged and was renewed by the American invitation of the two sides to Camp David: “Begin consistently sought bilateral negotiations, without the United States (similar to the Oslo process and the negotiations between Rabin and Hussein in 1994, which produced a peace treaty), but under the circumstances, the summit seemed a reasonable gamble” (132).The authors strongly reject the thesis (often heard on the Israeli right) that Begin was isolated and passive at Camp David, while Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, and Legal Advisor Aharon Barak connived with Carter to manipulate the outcome. They do agree that within the Israeli delegation, each member, with his own ideological and political agenda, had a significant input. The absence of a coordinated Israeli strategy, systematic preparation, or simulations (in sharp contrast to the Americans, who came with briefing books, psychological profiles, and game plans) allowed individual Israelis to speak freely to Carter and the other American officials, becoming conduits of information and sources of bridging proposals. However, the documents show, the authors claim, that Begin was at the center of every stage of the negotiations, giving instructions, receiving detailed summaries of every meeting involving Israeli officials, and closely (even obsessively) involved in the wording of every official joint document. He made the most difficult decisions, both in terms of concessions on the Sinai (full withdrawal and dismantling of settlements) and with respect to refusing Carter's demands on the West Bank and Jerusalem.The authors speak (admiringly) of Begin's “negotiations by attrition.” He by and large achieved the goals he set out for himself and avoided significant modifications (with the notable exceptions of dismantling settlements and of agreeing to autonomy talks). Steinberg and Rubinovitz see Begin's handling of the negotiations as reflecting his ideological views honed by the experiences of the preceding decade, his realist disposition in calculation of Israel's interest, and his detailed understanding of what was politically achievable domestically. Particularly interesting is the presentation in chapter 7, of Begin's unbending attitude, facing pressure and impatience over “haggling over details” from the “floundering” American administration in the period between Camp David and the signing of the treaty. The latter were pressed to present a political success, especially on the background of the deteriorating situation in Iran, which culminated in the shah's departure in January 1979.Begin never intended to go further on linkage between the Egyptian treaty and the Palestinian issue than an agreement to negotiations on Palestinian personal, cultural and limited political—not territorial—autonomy, without a timetable for implementation and without predetermination of their ultimate goal. The Americans, on the other hand, envisioned explicit linkage and a timetable that led to a comprehensive settlement centered on a Palestinian homeland. After six months of intense debate and pressure on Begin following Camp David, Carter and Sadat faced in March 1979 the choice of accepting the core Israeli positions or being left without an agreement (201).The authors find no evidence for the claim that Begin regretted the results of Camp David: Lewis, the American ambassador in Israel, spoke later of Begin's “buyer's remorse” (141). Begin's behavior in the weeks and months after Camp David is described in-depth in the book and included determined efforts to direct the negotiations to a positive outcome, as well as build popular, parliamentary, and intraparty support for the agreement. This is inconsistent with the image of a physically and politically weak Israeli prime minister “under siege,” unable to control events and forced to make concessions against his will and in contradiction to his life-long ideology.Another important contribution of the authors is their careful reconstruction and analysis of the domestic context of Begin's actions and decision before, during, and after Camp David. The Americans were shocked by Begin's electoral victory and were ill-informed about his positions. They saw his election as a fluke, a passing interlude before the return of their better-known and more congenial interlocutors on the Center-Left. During the negotiations, they did not afford adequate weight to Begin's estrangement from the right wing of his own party, and his need to build a complex coalition to support his peace moves, excluding some of his historic allies and including some of his political rivals. Carter and the Americans thought that Begin was using domestic politics to justify refusal to make additional compromises and concessions (6), for instance in his repeated insistence on bringing proposed texts to the approval of the government and the Knesset. The authors describe an American president unable to understand the different authorities and powers afforded a prime minister in a parliamentary system, and preferring to regard Begin and Sadat as “unitary actors operating in a domestic political vacuum” (99). They opine that a failure to understand Israeli domestic political dynamics has continued to plague US peace efforts since.The authors for their part dedicate a chapter to analyzing the domestic political factors and the framework and limitations they imposed on Begin's flexibility. In their view, Begin's success in keeping control of his government and shepherding the Camp David agreement and subsequent peace treaty through the political system “are testimony to his skills as a political leader, as well as to his commitment to a durable peace with Egypt (114) … for Begin, a win-set that both satisfied the core domestic political constituencies and was acceptable to Sadat, required complex negotiations” (234). Ultimately, only two-thirds of his governing coalition (and an even smaller percentage of Likud MKs) voted for the Camp David framework, which required the opposition's votes to pass (176). Members of his coalition, including from his core Herut constituency, were closely involved in extraparliamentary activity against the peace agreement, especially the dismantling of the Sinai settlements. The agreement and its implementation caused a split in Likud, creating the enduring (and until then, unknown) Israeli political phenomenon of parties to the right of Likud.There are some brief forays in the book into theory, mainly in the introduction and in the final chapter (“analysis and implications”). These basically provide a theoretical patina to what is overwhelmingly a book of political and diplomatic history. There is a consistent invocation of the “two-level model,” which dictates that external and internal factors need to be addressed simultaneously. The final chapter is useful (certainly for a political scientist) in that it summarizes and highlights lessons learned. These include the importance of ideology (the subtitle of the book, “Between Ideology and Political Realism,” summarizes the authors' approach), and the American tendency to disregard it and downplay its significance as a motivator. A second issue that is stressed is the criticality of domestic politics. And a third is American overemphasis on psychology and personality. The authors note that the American side made conscious use of negotiation theories and of psychological analysis. They are skeptical whether these actually contributed to the success of the process: there is a wry description on page 154 of how the Americans took the delegations to Gettysburg to foster informal communication based on then-popular “contact theory”; the expectations were not met. “In examining the record of the negotiations, there is little or no evidence that Carter's emphasis on psychology was justified or that it worked. The use of exaggerated flattery at the beginning and what might be called bullying at Camp David and afterward to force a change in Begin's positions came at the expense of focusing on interests, ideology, and domestic politics” (233).In the final chapter, the authors also briefly analyze Carter's behavior and role through the perspective of international mediation theory. Carter's position was sometimes the crucial one of mediator and facilitator; he invited the sides to Camp David at a critical time; he provided side guarantees regarding security, including putting together the Multinational Force; and he agreed to fund the transfer of air bases from Sinai to the Negev and proposed generous aid packages. But he also fluctuated into attempts at pressure, manipulation, and imposing his own agenda. This created distrust, frustration, and disappointment with Carter on the Israeli side, and an anomalous situation in which: the six months of talks between the framework agreements and the final treaty were essentially negotiations between Washington and Jerusalem regarding autonomy on the West Bank…. Instead of serving as active and effective third-party mediators, as envisioned in theories of international diplomacy, Carter and the American officials became the main protagonists sitting across the table from Begin and the Israelis. (207) One lacuna in this book is the rather sketchy presentation and analysis of the Egyptian side. The book concentrates on the Israeli and American side and especially the dynamic between them: the Egyptians, at Camp David and after, are presented as a mostly passive player, “on the sidelines” (209). Part of this may have to do with the preferences and expertise of the authors, and the availability of new documentation. On a more general level, the fact that it became clear to Egypt that its specific demands regarding Sinai were to be met led to the lower priority which they, as opposed to Carter, afforded the Palestinian issue, and their more limited engagement after Camp David. Contributing to this was their fear that Carter's quest for a comprehensive agreement might derail the almost-achieved bilateral one, with drastic political repercussions for Sadat.The Camp David process has, as the authors of this book note, a unique and significant place in the study of international relations. It is viewed as a textbook case of diplomatic mediation and hands-on deal-making, and often as an operational template for settling stubborn conflicts. In the Israeli-Arab conflict alone, attempts have been made by subsequent US administrations to intimately bring together enemies in a remote location and replicate the alchemy (Wye Plantation in 1998, Shepherdstown and Camp David II in 2000, Annapolis in 2007). Most of these were not successful because, the authors aver, they were based on an incomplete picture of events and a misunderstanding of the lessons to be learned.