Word: egyptians
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...wonderment and euphoria in Israel was diluted only by doubts about Sadat's true intentions. Until the Egyptian advance team arrived, some Israelis wondered whether the visit would actually take place: perhaps it was all a ruse to lull Israel into complacency. Among the skeptics was the army's chief of staff, Lieut. General Mordechai Gur, who defied a gag order from Defense Minister Ezer Weizman and gave an interview to the Hebrew daily Yedioth Aharonoth, in which he offered a "worst case" scenario. Gur suggested that Sadat was preparing to launch a surprise attack on Israeli-occupied Sinai, similar...
More serious than the fleeting speculation about war were Israeli fears about the political impact of Sadat's appearance before the Knesset. Standing in the Israeli parliament, the Egyptian President would have a unique pulpit. The mere fact of his presence made him, and by extension the Arabs, seem like the true seekers for peace in the Middle East. The Israelis would be viewed as the intransigents, squabbling over details and fearful of confronting Arabs at the negotiating table. All that would add to the world pressure on Israel to move on to Geneva, where, in the Israeli view...
...Egyptian embassies were attacked in four capitals. In Athens, a band of Arab protesters were chased off with gunfire that killed one of them; in Beirut, another man died when rocket fire hit the embassy; in Damascus, small bombs exploded outside the Egyptian building; in Tripoli, Libyans burned the embassy...
Arab opposition to the trip was based on three specific worries: 1) Sadat might abandon the Pan-Arab cause and seek a separate peace agreement with Israel; 2) the Egyptian President, by setting foot in Israel, was granting de facto recognition to a state that radical Arabs refuse to accept; 3) in speaking to the Knesset, he was also acknowledging Israel's right to consider Jerusalem as its capital (even the U.S. maintains its embassy in Tel Aviv). Attempting to blunt such criticism in advance of his trip, Sadat last week flew to Damascus to confer with Syrian President Hafez...
...interview, Assad said that it was "painful that I could not convince him nor dissuade him from making the trip." Yasser Arafat also deplored the mission on the ground that it threatened Arab unity, and pleaded with Sadat to cancel the trip. The embarrassed Arafat was sitting in the Egyptian parliament as a guest when Sadat announced his willingness to visit Israel. "He looked at me and I stopped applauding," the P.L.O. leader told other Arabs...