Anwar Sadat
Anwar Sadat was the third president of Egypt, from 1970 to 1981. A member of the Free Officers, he worked to get rid of British influence and overthrow the Egyptian monarchy.
As President, he called for bold domestic policies that included decentralization of the Egyptian economy and reestablishment of the multi-party system. "In foreign affairs, Anwar Sadat stood out for his courage and bold diplomacy. He did not hesitate to expel Soviet forces from Egypt in 1972, even as he planned a military campaign to regain control of the Sinai Peninsula from Israel. The Egyptian army achieved a tactical surprise in its attack on the Israeli-held Sinai Peninsula in October 1973, and, although Israel successfully counterattacked, Sadat emerged from the war with greatly enhanced prestige." |
Afterwards, he began to reach out to Israel for peace in the Middle East. He invited Billy Graham to visit Egypt in order to gain American support, especially that of Evangelical Christians, for his peace plan. He also visited the Vatican, where Pope Paul VI declared support for his peace initiative with Israel. During his historic visit to Jerusalem in 1977, he addressed the Knesset with his plan for peace.
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"The main reason Sadat did this - two reasons. Sadat really believed that he had a historic mission to be a peacemaker. You can’t deny that. But Camp David was part of a larger process that he began already in the early 1970s, pulling away from the Soviet Union. Sadat felt that the Soviet Union was not able to provide Egypt with the aid, strategic and economic aid, military support, etc. that Egypt needed to develop, continue to develop, that Sadat’s predecessor Nasser had raised specific kinds of policies, socialist-oriented policies, they had many successes in terms of raising living standards for very poor Egyptians, redistributing land and all kinds of things like that, but by the early mid-1970s, they had run out, they had in many ways run their course and were not working as well, because Israel won the 1967 war very easily. It was clear that it was a much stronger country, and Sadat realized that he could no longer follow the Soviet Union. He needed to take Egypt out of the Soviet orbit and put it into the US orbit."
- Interview with Mark Levine
"...I have come to you so that together we should build a durable peace based on justice to avoid the shedding of one single drop of blood by both sides. It is for this reason that I have proclaimed my readiness to go to the farthest corner of the earth. Here I would go back to the big question. -Excerpt from Sadat's Speech to the Knesset
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"Anwar Sadat - Biography"
Excerpt from Sadat's Speech to the Knesset
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