Word: arabism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Sadat in those days was optimistic, and thought that peace could come quickly with the backing of the U.S. When Henry Kissinger began his shuttle diplomacy to negotiate a Sinai disengagement, Sadat wrapped him in the full Arab embrace and called him "my dear friend Henry." But the momentum died. A Geneva conference was delayed. The Syrians postponed a disengagement on the Golan Heights for months while they quibbled over details. Then U.S. policy became paralyzed by Watergate and the collapse of Richard Nixon's authority. When Gerald Ford became President, Sadat tried again for a peace agreement...
...seemingly addicted to surprise, Sadat has a talent for patience. He waited for the 1976 U.S. presidential election, and then Carter's inauguration. Meanwhile, the savage Lebanese civil war split the Arab world into quarreling camps and reduced all peace talk once more to diplomatic abstraction...
Sadat said, again and again, "In the game of Middle Eastern peace, the U.S. holds 99% of the cards." He switched from the old Arab policy of trying to force the U.S. to abandon Israel in favor of the Arabs. He knew that only as a friend of Israel could the U.S. influence it. "You have a special relationship with Israel," he told a group of American businessmen on a TlME-sponsored tour of the Middle East, "and I want you to keep that relationship." While Sadat encouraged American leaders to believe that a Middle East peace was in their...
Israel had built up an arsenal of sophisticated arms, including nuclear weapons, that beggared the Arab military potential. General Mohamed Abdel Ghany Gamassy, Egypt's Minister of War and overall commander of the armed forces, told Sadat that if war broke out, his army would be devastated. Because of Sadat's frosty relations with Moscow, there was no longer a Soviet supply link; Egyptian forces had slipped badly in relation to the Israelis since the strike across the Suez in 1973. Now Cairo began to hear rumors that Menachem Begin was ready to use his hardware for a pre-emptive...
...Egyptian was led to his historic leap of imagination. It represented such a total change in Arab behavior that at first no one believed that Sadat meant what he said. In a speech on Nov. 9 to the Egyptian parliament, Sadat declared: "There is no time to lose. I am ready to go to the ends of the earth if that will save one of my soldiers, one of my officers, from being scratched. I am ready to go to their house, to the Knesset, to discuss peace with the Israeli leaders...