Summary
President of Egypt, whose astonishing overture to and subsequent peace with Israel Said treats in Chapter Four as an entirely Egyptian program: a theatrical dismantling of Nasser’s programs and legacy, conducted not by fighting Israel directly but by attacking Israel’s monopoly of support in the United States.
Details
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As early as 1971, during Gunnar Jarring’s UN mission, Sadat promised Israel recognition and normalization of relations in return for territory; the Palestinian compartment of his politics has always been an annex to his central Egyptian bulwark, in which he was unlike Abdel Nasser and unlike the Syrian Baathists (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.220 / printed p.199).
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Sadat conducted the 1973 war against Israel as an Egyptian political war, designed at a carefully chosen moment to involve the United States directly in subsequent events; the 1973 war was the first important move that would finally lead to Jerusalem and then Washington (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.220 / printed p.199).
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Sadat took the steps he did in Sinai II in order to begin to regain his territory, whereas Syria saw lost territory as to be retrieved after a comprehensive settlement; the crucial year 1975 began the parting of the ways between Egypt and Syria (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.221-222 / printed p.200-201).
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Sadat opposed the joint U.S.-USSR statement of October 1, 1977, which put the Palestinian question on a par with the return of Egyptian territory and meant a clear victory for Syrian pan-Arabism; after the Egyptian food riots of early 1977 he could not risk postponing getting back land, opening Egypt politically, or neglecting its economic and social disintegration, and everything he did in 1977 was designed to assure him of U.S. attention (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.222-223 / printed p.201-202).
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His announcement of his trip to Jerusalem on November 17 changed everything; Said does not think it a complete surprise, since everything Sadat had been doing for at least seven years indicated his willingness to make peace with Israel unilaterally (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.223 / printed p.202).
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Sadat detached himself from the PLO, silenced the entire nationalist opposition inside Egypt, and rephrased the Palestinian cause so as to seem its champion; during his Jerusalem visit his acting foreign minister was told by Dayan to delete any mention of the PLO from his Knesset speech, and at the signing ceremonies on March 26, 1979, Sadat left out of his spoken comments any mention of the Palestinians for fear it might irritate the Israelis (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.213-214, p.223 / printed p.192-193, p.202).
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In Ismailia on December 26, 1977, Begin wrung from Sadat the admission that Israel’s 1967 attack on the Arabs was defensive (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.227 / printed p.206).
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In Pappe, Chapter 11: Sadat’s 1977 peace initiative to Menachem Begin proposed allowing Israel to maintain control over the occupied Palestinian territories while granting the Palestinians internal autonomy — in essence another version of partition, leaving Israel in direct possession of eighty per cent of Palestine and indirect control over the remaining twenty per cent (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.277).
Related pages
The Question of Palestine, Camp David Accords, Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin