What Trump’s team could learn from Sadat’s landmark pact
The Egyptian president was instrumental in regaining Sinai peninsula without losing principles
The Donald Trump administration is busy putting together a “concrete blueprint” for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to The New York Times.
Blueprints are fine. So are good intentions, State Department position papers, CIA maps of disputed territory, economic inducements and diplomatic pressure. Every American president since Richard Nixon has had them for the Middle East. But they have never been enough to achieve what Trump calls, “the ultimate deal.”
And it is not enough now. An essential ingredient is missing: A Palestinian leader who reminds Israelis of Anwar Sadat.
This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Egyptian president’s visit to Jerusalem, the first ever by an Arab leader — and proof that Israelis know how to say yes to the right man.
It was a personal initiative, negotiated in secrecy between Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, behind the back of US President Jimmy Carter. They sprung it on the world with less than a week’s notice.
The announcement was greeted with shock and opposition on both sides. The Arab League and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation denounced Sadat as a traitor. His foreign minister, Ismail Fahmy, resigned in protest. “I believed it would harm Egypt’s national security, damage our relations with other Arab countries and destroy our leadership of the Arab world,” Fahmy later explained. He added that Sadat “could not demonstrate any proof that the Israelis would respond to his move with comparable good will.”
In Israel, the Egyptian president was seen as an arch-enemy. Four years earlier, he and President Hafez Al Assad of Syria launched the Yom Kippur War, a surprise attack in which 3,000 Israeli soldiers died in per-capita terms, a number comparable to American losses in the Vietnam war.
Bereaved parents were incensed by the idea that Sadat would be allowed to address the Knesset. Hardliners in Begin’s coalition accused him of selling out for a mere gesture. The Israeli Defence Forces chief of staff, fearing another sneak attack, put the army on a high state of alert, an order quickly countermanded by Defence Minister Ezer Weizmann, one of the few cabinet officials fully in the picture.
The basic outline of the visit was clear. Sadat would arrive on a Saturday night, late enough to allow Orthodox cabinet ministers to get to the airport without violating the Sabbath, something that would have likely brought down the coalition government. Sadat would receive a red-carpet reception, broadcast live. On Sunday afternoon, he was scheduled to address the Knesset. During the visit, he and Begin planned to engage in closed-door diplomatic talks. On Monday morning Sadat would fly back to Cairo to face the consequences of his bold diplomacy.
That much was known four days before Sadat’s arrival. The rest of the itinerary was yet to be set-
Sadat had come to win hearts and minds, and he did. His charm and sincerity proved irresistible. The public wanted peace, and Begin, against his better judgement, surrendered the Sinai.
tled. This was the job of a working group convened by the prime minister’s chief of staff, Eli Ben-Elissar, and included the chief of the national police, a senior official of the state security service, the Shin Bet (charged with protecting the Egyptian prime minister during his visit), the director-general of the foreign ministry, a high-ranking military liaison and a couple of others. One of those others was me. As the head of the government press office, it was my task to coordinate the media arrangements for the 2,000 or so journalists who were already arriving. I had absolutely no idea how to do this.
The first order of business was figuring out what Sadat wanted to do in his spare time. There was a usual protocol for heads of state, but we were doubtful that it would meet with Sadat’s approval. The suggestion that he go Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum, got a snicker but we put it on the list anyway. Even more skeptically, we proposed a wreath-laying ceremony at the memorial to Israel’s fallen soldiers. Since Israel had no diplomatic channel with Cairo, these ideas were conveyed via the US embassy.
To our amazement, the answers came back affirmative. The president of Egypt would be honoured to visit Yad Vashem and salute Israel’s war dead. He also asked to pray at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque, a request that freaked out the Shin Bet, who thought Sadat’s life would be in danger from Palestinian assassins.
The trip came off as planned. No Egyptian commandos burst forth from the presidential plane upon landing, as some of the Israeli officials on the red carpet feared. Sadat greeted his hosts with a warm smile and a dignified bearing he maintained for the next two days. At the Knesset, he set out his conditions for peace — the full return of the Sinai Peninsula, which had been captured by Israel in the Six Day War — in a firm but gentle tone.
Begin didn’t applaud the speech, but he also didn’t say a definitive “no.” There were bumps in the negotiations, but 16 months later a formal peace was signed.
Sadat’s departure from Israel was televised. I watched in my office. As he boarded his plane for the 50-minute flight to Cairo — a destination that only a week before had seemed a million miles away — he turned and waved.
Sadat had come to win hearts and minds, and he did. His charm and sincerity proved irresistible. The public wanted peace, and Begin, against his better judgment, surrendered the Sinai. He had no reason to regret it. The peace has not only held, it is a cornerstone of Israel’s national security, something to honour and celebrate.
It happens that this week is also the 13th anniversary of PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s death.
This is the problem facing the Trump team as they draw up their plans. No deal will work without a Palestinian leader who can win Israel’s confidence. If a Palestinian Sadat emerges, the Israeli public’s latent desire for a genuine peace will almost certainly take on an irresistible political momentum. Until one does, Trump’s concrete blueprints will produce nothing more than castles in the air. — Zev Chafets is a journalist and author of 14 books. He was a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the founding managing editor of the Jerusalem Report Magazine