While Mr. Sadat was initially eager to support Mr. Carter’s plans for a revival of a regional peace conference, his impatience with the Arab divisions and Israeli negotiating tactics led to his unilateral decision to visit Jerusalem in 1977 in an effort to resuscitate talks. In so doing, he broke with the wider Arab world and inadvertently set in motion the possibility of a narrower bilateral peace.

At a time when the Middle East seemed finally poised for a regional settlement, bringing an end to three decades of war and settling the issue of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, Mr. Begin, Israel’s new right-wing leader, had other plans as well. In parallel, both leaders hindered a major breakthrough based on Washington’s blueprint.

Israel had its own ideas

Mr. Begin had long stressed the impossibility of a Palestinian state. His views on the central importance for the Jewish people of “Judea and Samaria” — using the biblical term for the territories of the West Bank — were well known. After he was elected in May 1977, becoming the first prime minister from the right-wing Likud party, he declared he would “encourage settlements, both rural and urban, on the land of the homeland.”

The Sinai was another story. Israel had captured the peninsula from Egypt in 1967, but though the territory was a welcome strategic buffer, it held none of the religious appeal of the West Bank. Mr. Begin indicated early on a clear willingness to withdraw forces substantially in the Sinai as part of a peace deal with Egypt; the West Bank and Gaza Strip were never part of his negotiations.

These “peace principles” were made clear to Mr. Carter during Mr. Begin’s first visit to the White House. “Concerning Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip our position is that we shall not place them under any foreign rule or sovereignty,” Mr. Begin said, according to newly declassified Israeli records.

The American government believed it could reconcile these clashing views on territory by drawing a distinction between Israel’s opening position and the final outcome of negotiations with Mr. Sadat in late 1977 and 1978. It did not count on the Egyptian leader undercutting Palestinian demands in the process.

Mr. Begin also put forward his own ideas to address this divergence of views, encapsulated in his extensive “Home Rule for Palestinian Arabs, Residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District.” Instead of allowing for collective self-determination, Israel would retain the territories acquired in 1967 while promising local authority for elected Arab officials to guide decisions in areas like commerce, education, health and transport. At its heart, Mr. Begin’s offer of autonomy was couched in benevolent language but predicated on the denial of self-determination for Palestinians.