Project Showcase: Israel State Archives publication on 1979 Egypt/Israel peace treaty
19 May 2014 – editors
The Israel State Archives in Jerusalem is Israel’s national archives. It holds the records of the state of Israel, founded in 1948, and some material from Turkish and Mandatory Palestine. Most of the documents in the Israel archives are from government bodies, but the repository also has a rich collection of private archives, maps, postage stamps, photographs and other audio-visual material.
The archives’ policy is to declassify as much material as possible and to make that material available to the public, especially on the website. Publications in Hebrew and English deal with many different subjects, such as the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem (1961), Martin Luther King, Jr. and Israel, and Israel’s foreign relations. The website also has a blog in English.
On March 26, 1979, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty between their two nations. To mark the 35th anniversary of the treaty, the Israel State Archives has issued a special publication of 67 documents, 18 of them in English, recording crucial stages in the diplomatic contacts leading up to the Camp David conference, the conference itself, and the negotiations on the treaty before the actual signing in Washington. It is a continuation of the publication on President Sadat’s visit to Israel, released in 2012.
The aim of the 35th-anniversary commemorative publication is to present the Israeli view of the negotiations, often addressed in other sources only in passing. The documents illustrate the aims of the government, the factors which influenced policy, and the extent to which the policy succeeded in achieving those aims. The publication includes handwritten minutes by Professor Aharon Barak of meetings between the Israeli delegation to Camp David and the the US negotiators, presented here for the first time.The publication is presented as a free app in Hebrew and as an English publication on the ISA website. The English publication includes translations of the introductions, of the list of documents with summaries and of two of the Hebrew documents, plus there is a selection of photographs and caricatures.
~ Louise Fischer, Israel State Archives