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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 July 2000 Issue No. 490 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 July 2000 Issue No. 490
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Focus International Economy Opinion Interview Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Peaceful retreat
CAMP DAVID, the chosen locale for the Israeli-Palestinian summit, has been a second home for US presidents since 1942. It has been a place where successive presidents, and sometimes high-profile guests, have been able to feel closer to nature in a setting where, despite appearances, security is tight.
Originally slated to become a national park, Camp David extends over 50 hectares of wooded land among the Catoctin mountains of eastern Maryland. It is just a two-hour drive, or half an hour by helicopter, from downtown Washington.
As a getaway from the pressures of life in the White House, it sports 20 rustic chalets, each named after a tree, as well as a pool, a golf course, tennis courts and a gymnasium. All are kept under strict military surveillance.
It was Franklin Roosevelt who as president in the early 1940s had the idea of having somewhere to escape the humid heat of Washington without straying too far from the White House. Camp David is named after the grandson of another president, Dwight Eisenhower, in office from 1953 to 1961.
Later, former President Jimmy Carter wrote in his memoirs that the place "engenders an atmosphere of both isolation and intimacy, conducive to easing tension and encouraging informality."
Camp David is nowadays best known as the setting for the 11-day summit in September 1978, in which Carter, then US president, met with late President Anwar El-Sadat and late Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. The summit resulted in the first peace treaty signed between Israel and an Arab country six months later. But it was also at Camp David decades earlier, during the Second World War, that Roosevelt sat down with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to plan the Allied invasion of Europe.
Each US president has had his own particular relationship with Camp David. John Kennedy found that his wife Jackie loved spending time there with their children.
Ronald and Nancy Reagan went on long horse rides there as often as they could. And president Bill Clinton often took refuge there as the Lewinsky scandal held center-stage in Washington.
