Jimmy Carter: Who is the American president who is considered the godfather of Camp David?

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The announcement of the death of former US President Jimmy Carter at the age of 100 came to an end to a life full of major events and contributions that did not stop after his departure from the White House.

Jimmy Carter’s presidency between 1976 and 1980 was associated with many external and internal crises that greatly contributed to his failure to be renewed for a second term. After leaving the White House, his name was also associated with the tireless peace efforts he made, from the Middle East to Africa and from Bosnia to Tibet.

Just as the Camp David peace agreement between Egypt and Israel was one of the most prominent achievements of his rule, his role in paving the way for a peace agreement in Bosnia constituted an important point in his subsequent path after his departure from the White House, in addition to the peace efforts he made in many hotspots of tension in the world.

Jimmy Carter was the thirty-ninth president of the United States, having been elected in 1976 on the basis of his political platform and personal integrity, but his only term as president ended with a diplomatic setback represented by the hostage crisis in Iran.

Carter was born in 1924 in the rural town of Plains, Georgia, to a farmer father and a nurse mother who, at sixty-eight, joined the US Peace Corps (established under President John F. Kennedy), where she spent two years working in India.

Carter graduated from the Naval College in Annapolis, after which he served seven years as an officer in the submarine corps. But he returned to his hometown to manage the family farm after his father died.

He quickly became involved in local political activity. After a brief stint in the Georgia State Senate, he became governor of the state in 1970.

His upbringing as a high school basketball champion, a devout Christian, and the son of a farmer helped shape his political philosophy.

In 1974, Carter launched his campaign for president, and the United States was then suffering from the effects of the Watergate scandal and the fall of former President Richard Nixon.

Carter took “building trust” as his campaign slogan, and pledged not to allow “lying or misleading voters.” But his commitment to integrity and honesty led him to make political missteps on more than one occasion. Some people close to him believe that, despite his open political style, his personality is characterized by some complexity.

But in other respects he was considered an unconventional president, prone to wearing jeans and running in the White House gardens.

Even at his inauguration ceremony, he was not traditional when he walked hand in hand with his wife from the Congress building to the White House, or in his participation in radio and television talk shows.

But the momentum of that renewal gradually faded, perhaps due to time constraints. He was a president who wanted to personally deal with every national and international dilemma, but then he found himself facing the problems of economic inflation, unemployment, and the fuel crisis, and in the midst of the Iran and Afghanistan crises.

His popularity with the American public soon began to decline, as the first two years of his term witnessed a steady decline in voter support for him.

He faced difficulties in convincing Americans to accept strict measures to deal with the energy crisis.

But his initiative to bring peace to the Middle East is referred to as Lebanon, as he worked patiently to bring Egypt and Israel to one table. It was considered a personal victory for him when the late Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat, and the then Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, signed the Camp David Accords in 1978.

In June 1979, Carter went to the Austrian capital, Vienna, to sign the SALT-2 agreement to limit the spread of strategic weapons with the former Soviet Union, which paved the way for his meeting, for the first time, with Leonid Brezhnev, the president of the Soviet Union at the time.

But Carter’s success abroad did not last long, as the Shah of Iran was overthrown following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, followed by the hostage-taking at the American embassy, ​​and then the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which put his administration before difficult tests.

In April 1980, the United States severed diplomatic and trade relations with Iran. The failure of an attempt to rescue American hostages who were detained inside the headquarters of their country’s embassy in Tehran led to a storm of criticism, followed by the resignation of Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance.

Meanwhile, preparations for the Moscow Olympics were at their peak, but Washington decided to boycott it in protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and a number of other countries supported the decision to boycott the games, but that was not enough to cancel the Olympics.

In the 1980 presidential race, Carter won the Democratic nomination, but lost the election to the Republican candidate, Ronald Reagan. Hostage-taking in Iran and economic inflation contributed to its defeat.

On the last day of his presidency, Carter announced the success of the negotiations to release the hostages, but the Iranian authorities postponed their release until Reagan was sworn in as president.

Carter went to Germany to receive the hostages who were transferred there, as a representative of the new president.

Perhaps one of the indicators of his failure is that the politician who entered the White House enjoying a high degree of popular satisfaction left it and was unable to gain the support of only 6 states after 4 years.

After leaving the White House, Carter made peace trips to China to mediate with Beijing over Tibet, as well as to Africa to resolve the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrean factions.

He led a delegation that persuaded Haitian leaders to hand over power, and brokered a ceasefire in Bosnia, paving the way for a peace agreement in Bosnia later.

His visit to the Middle East was part of his peace and reconnaissance tours, and he also visited Sudan to discuss the prospects for peace there.

He also became a strong critic of some American policies, especially during the era of former President George W. Bush.

The founding of the Carter Center in Atlanta represented a decisive turning point in its subsequent activity, as the center was not limited to being a traditional presidential library, but rather became an arena for exchanging ideas and opinions to find solutions to international crises.

Among the center’s important programs is what is known as Global 2000, which is a relief organization that seeks to enhance means of disease control and improve agricultural production in Third World countries.

In 2002, Carter became the third American president to win the Nobel Peace Prize after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

During his four years in office, Carter was a supporter of civil rights and equality, and his period was characterized by a liberal and humanitarian tendency.

In 2006, Carter strongly attacked the policies followed by the Israeli government towards the Palestinians. He said at the annual Hay Book Festival held in Wales, Britain, that “one of the biggest human rights crimes in the world is the starvation and imprisonment of 1.6 million Palestinians,” which sparked criticism from Israel.

A year later, Carter joined the late African leader Nelson Mandela on the Committee of the Wise, a group of global leaders committed to working for peace and promoting human rights.

Carter was an advocate of gun control, a supporter of same-sex marriage, and the abolition of the death penalty. He was also an opponent of the mistreatment of Guantanamo detainees and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

He did not hesitate to criticize US President Donald Trump, as in an interview with the Washington Post in 2018, he described Trump as a “disaster” and “ignorant.”

Carter lived a modest life after leaving the White House, unlike previous presidents. The peanut farm that he owned before entering the White House accumulated debts amounting to $1.5 million during his time in the White House.

Carter refused to receive any material benefit during his time in power, and said: “I never aspired to be rich.”

He turned down numerous offers to speak for large sums or take corporate positions, and instead lived a modest life with his wife in their home state of Georgia.

In 2018, he and his wife, Rosalyn, celebrated their 72nd wedding anniversary. He is the only president who returned to the same house in which he lived before he entered the field of political work.

After leaving the White House, he returned to his modest home, which had only two bedrooms.

The Washington Post estimated the value of Carter’s house at about $167,000, which is less than the price of the security cars that park in front of his house to protect him.