Camp David Accords
Opening day of the 1978 Camp David summit
View full image ↗ How was this image made?
The creative brief sent to the image model. These are instructions, not a record of what actually happened.
Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗The summit opened with two separate helicopter welcomes — and the official record labels both of them non-substantive.
Two arrivals, more than two hours apart
On 5 September 1978, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin arrived separately at Camp David, the U.S. presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains, for a summit convened by President Jimmy Carter.
Carter welcomed Sadat at the helipad from about 2:30 to 2:57 p.m., and Begin from about 4:40 to 5:16 p.m. The official chronology describes both welcomes as non-substantive. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance had accompanied Sadat from Andrews Air Force Base.
The evening meeting
The first substantive presidential discussion of the day ran from 8:30 to 10:53 p.m., and it was Carter with Begin alone. They covered the proposed summit procedure and the importance of the conference.
Sadat and Begin did not hold a substantive joint negotiation that day.
Nothing signed
Direct Egypt–Israel contacts had stalled after Sadat's 1977 Jerusalem initiative, which is why Carter had invited both leaders to a secluded tripartite summit.
By nightfall both delegations were installed and the summit was underway. It ran through 17 September — twelve elapsed days across thirteen calendar dates.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 4 sources 2 audit passes
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →
What the sources leave uncertain
- Sources describe the summit as either twelve or thirteen days. September 5–17 covers twelve elapsed days but thirteen calendar dates; the opening and closing dates are not disputed.