How much money have we given to egypt specifically in the camp david accords to maintain their peace with israel? How much in total? How much per year? Is this a loan we forgive or is it a grant
Executive summary
The United States agreed to provide substantial military and economic assistance to Egypt as part of the diplomacy that produced the 1978 Camp David Accords and the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty; contemporary reporting and official summaries state Egypt receives about $1.3 billion a year in Foreign Military Financing, and U.S. bilateral aid since 1946 totals roughly $85–90 billion in historical dollars, with the big rise coming after the treaty [1] [2] [3]. Available sources do not give a single line-item “Camp David total” but show a continuing annual package (not a one-time loan) that long became mostly grant-based Foreign Military Financing and other assistance [1] [3] [4].
1. Peace through subsidies: what the treaty set in motion
The Camp David process led to a formal Egypt–Israel peace treaty in March 1979 and, in parallel, U.S. commitments to provide both military and economic assistance to shore up the new peace—language and subsequent memoranda tied sustained U.S. help to implementation and stability [5] [6]. Contemporary histories and summaries emphasize that the U.S. package was meant to make the peace durable by undercutting Egypt’s incentives to return to war and by modernizing its armed forces [1] [7].
2. How much per year? The headline $1.3 billion
Multiple sources state that Egypt’s core U.S. military assistance in recent years is roughly $1.3 billion annually under the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program—a figure cited repeatedly in history summaries and reporting about conditionality or waivers [1] [8] [9]. Analysts also sometimes cite a combined military-plus-economic number around $1.5 billion when economic support funds are included [7].
3. How much in total since Camp David? Numbers in broad bands
Congressional and industry summaries report that U.S. bilateral aid to Egypt since the late 1940s is on the order of tens of billions: “over $85 billion” or “nearly $90 billion” in historical (non-inflation-adjusted) dollars, with much of the surge occurring after the 1979 treaty [3] [2] [10]. Some NGO and congressional statements break that into “more than $50 billion in military aid and $30 billion in economic assistance” since the treaty era, but the exact totals vary by source and the accounting method [11].
4. One-time loan vs. ongoing grant: the mechanics of U.S. aid
The assistance created to cement the treaty became an ongoing program of U.S. grants and financing, not a single loan to be repaid; FMF is grant-based funding that Egypt uses mainly to buy U.S. defense equipment and services, while Economic Support Funds and other programs provide grants for development and projects [3] [12]. Historical law and congressional policy framed ongoing U.S. support as a policy choice to support the treaty—Congressional language authorized funds and requested the President seek international support for implementation [13].
5. Conditionality, waivers and political leverage
While the underlying structure is grant aid, Congress has built human-rights and policy conditions into tranches of aid. For example, in recent years portions of the $1.3 billion FMF have been conditioned on human-rights benchmarks or held pending administration waivers—a dynamic publicized in 2022–2024 reporting and NGO commentary [8] [14] [9]. Administrations sometimes waive or partially release conditioned tranches citing national security or regional-stability reasons [9] [14].
6. Why the aid matters—and why totals are contested
Scholars and policy analysts say the aid preserved Egyptian capacity to demobilize from a wartime footing and anchored a U.S.-Egypt strategic relationship; critics argue the assistance has enabled abuses or entrenched military-led priorities [7] [8]. Different sources use different accounting (historical dollars vs. inflation-adjusted, inclusion of all agencies’ programs vs. FMF/ESF only), which explains why total figures vary across reporting [2] [3].
7. What reporting does not settle
Available sources do not supply a single “Camp David Accords total” that isolates only those dollars explicitly labeled as Camp David funding at signature; instead they show a shift to sustained annual assistance that began with the treaty and has continued in grant-based FMF and related programs [1] [3]. Precise lifetime totals depend on accounting choices and whether one includes all U.S. agencies and inflation adjustments—sources present broad ranges rather than one definitive number [2] [10].
If you’d like, I can: (a) pull year-by-year ForeignAssistance.gov obligation data for Egypt to compute cumulative totals under FMF and ESF, or (b) make a table comparing the different totals reported by Congress, ForeignAssistance.gov, and independent analysts and explain the accounting differences.