Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you missed in history class from
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com. In celebration of the reopening
Speaker 1: of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum and the
Speaker 1: former president's eighty five birthday, we sat down with Noble
Speaker 1: Laureate Jimmy Carter to talk about the highlights of his
Speaker 1: presidency and his hopes for the Carter Senate. Well, you
Speaker 1: have quite a legacy of of mediating, and um, perhaps
Speaker 1: the Camp David Accords would come to mind. Can you
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about that experience and what
Speaker 1: that was like. Well, when I was when I became president,
Speaker 1: there had been twenty there had been five four wars.
Speaker 1: Student when when I became president, there had been four
Speaker 1: wars in the previous twenty five years, all of them
Speaker 1: attacks on Israel, led by Egypt, which is the most
Speaker 1: formidable Arab country in military capability, since they were lied
Speaker 1: with weapons by the Soviet Union of Russia at that time.
Speaker 1: And I thought that the Midias was a very important
Speaker 1: place for America and for the Soviet Union, and was
Speaker 1: the most likely place that we could actually erupt into
Speaker 1: another World war. And so I decided to make my
Speaker 1: best effort to resolve the problem between Israel and Egypt,
Speaker 1: and hopefully between Israel and the Palestinians, and Israel and Jordan,
Speaker 1: Israel and Syria, Israel and Lebanon. So just a few
Speaker 1: days after I became president, we began working on this.
Speaker 1: I knew I had to do it the first year
Speaker 1: I was in office, or it never would get done.
Speaker 1: And so I met with all the leaders and eventually
Speaker 1: was able to bring the two very courageous leaders to
Speaker 1: Camp David. They despised each other. They had, as I said,
Speaker 1: been at war, and both sides had killed the young
Speaker 1: men and women of the other side, and they had
Speaker 1: bombed each other and condemned each other, you know, in
Speaker 1: published state. But they came. But Alcolm began from Israel
Speaker 1: and and worser debt president of US Egypt, and they
Speaker 1: were the men were quite different. Shortly before I went
Speaker 1: to Camp David, I went on vacation, and I had
Speaker 1: two enormous books prepared to me by psychiatrists and psychologists
Speaker 1: and historians analyzing psychologically, Bagan and Sada. So I memorized
Speaker 1: those books before we got to Camp David, and learned
Speaker 1: the difference between the two men and what they had
Speaker 1: in common, and so when I got to Camp David,
Speaker 1: I knew how to deal with them as best I
Speaker 1: could learn in advance us and worsad Uh considered himself
Speaker 1: to be my personal friend, and he maybe trusted me
Speaker 1: too much, and man Alcolm Began was suspicious of me
Speaker 1: and he didn't trust me enough, So that was a
Speaker 1: different US between them. Basically, when we got to Camp
Speaker 1: David and all the Egyptians thought that that was too
Speaker 1: easy in making concessions compromises, and all the Israeli delegation
Speaker 1: about fifty on each side, I thought Began was too stingy,
Speaker 1: too reluctant to make concessions for peace. And because the
Speaker 1: two men were so different, I was able eventually to
Speaker 1: kind of you to weave them. So they worked out
Speaker 1: on the eventual compromises and success ah. I tried to
Speaker 1: have the two men negotiate with me personally for three
Speaker 1: days in a little room in my cabin, and they
Speaker 1: were so incompatible that we couldn't make any progress. So
Speaker 1: for the last ten days we were Camp David, I
Speaker 1: never let them see each other, and so I went
Speaker 1: back and forth to Bagan and negotiate. I could have
Speaker 1: sad and negotiate, they would go to sleep. I would
Speaker 1: have to continue to keep on working, and we did
Speaker 1: this for ten days and eventually worked out on agreement
Speaker 1: that led to a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt
Speaker 1: thirty years ago, not a single word of which has
Speaker 1: ever been validated. You still have a way to go
Speaker 1: between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel and Syria and Levanon.
Speaker 1: But I hope that will come under President Obama. And
Speaker 1: we had heard about your one sheet method. Actually we
Speaker 1: were wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 1: It really more than a sheet, it's a one document method.
Speaker 1: Other negotiators and mediators have have had an inclination to
Speaker 1: tell one side one thing and to tell the other
Speaker 1: side something different in order to try to get them
Speaker 1: somehow to come together. I decided when I became a
Speaker 1: mediator that I would just have one document, one text,
Speaker 1: and what I would do in case of Camp David
Speaker 1: and other negotiations is to try to understand in advance
Speaker 1: on both sides and to try to draft myself on
Speaker 1: my own computer or back in those days, on a
Speaker 1: tablet paper, what I thought was a fair agreement, and
Speaker 1: then I would take that same paper to s Dot
Speaker 1: and he would look at Owen said I can't agree
Speaker 1: to this. I can't agree to that. And then I
Speaker 1: would take the same document exactly to beg in and
Speaker 1: say said Dot agrees with this, he doesn't agree with that,
Speaker 1: and then as they agreed, then I would improve the
Speaker 1: document to include fewer and fewer disagreements as we agreed
Speaker 1: on a few things. And so I've done that, but
Speaker 1: I convinced both sides in every case of mediation that
Speaker 1: I was telling both sides exactly the same thing, so
Speaker 1: they would trust not only me, but trust the other
Speaker 1: side as well, and we would narrow down the disagreements
Speaker 1: until the final day, when hopefully, in most cases, a
Speaker 1: complete agreement on every issue would be reached. That's not
Speaker 1: always possible. It wasn't, Kim David. But I've had other
Speaker 1: efforts when it wasn't quite possible to reach agreement at
Speaker 1: that time. Sometimes we went back again and tried and
Speaker 1: had success. Sometimes we were not able to prevent unfortunately
Speaker 1: a war be short to Tune in every Wednesday in
Speaker 1: September for more of our interview with President Carter to
Speaker 1: learn more about the Carter Center and its mission of
Speaker 1: waging peace, fighting disease, and building help visit www dot
Speaker 1: Carter Center dot org and, as always, for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, is it housetuf works
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