Anwar Sadat

Anwar Sadat (born December 25, 1918, Mīt Abū al-Kawm, Al-Minūfiyyah governorate, Egypt—died October 6, 1981, Cairo) was an Egyptian army officer and politician who was president of Egypt from 1970 until his assassination in 1981. He initiated serious peace negotiations with Israel, an achievement for which he shared the 1978 Nobel Prize for Peace with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Under their leadership, Egypt and Israel made peace with each other in 1979.

(Read Britannica’s 1980 interview with Anwar Sadat.)

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Egypt: The Sadat regime

Sadat graduated from the Cairo Military Academy in 1938. During World War II he plotted to expel the British from Egypt with the help of the Germans. The British arrested and imprisoned him in 1942, but he escaped two years later. In 1946 Sadat was arrested after being implicated in the assassination of pro-British minister Amin Othman; he was imprisoned until his acquittal in 1948. In 1950 he joined Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Free Officers organization; he participated in its armed coup against the Egyptian monarchy in 1952 and supported Nasser’s election to the presidency in 1956. Sadat held various high offices that led to his serving in the vice presidency (1964–66, 1969–70). He became acting president upon Nasser’s death, on September 28, 1970, and was elected president in a plebiscite on October 15.

Sadat’s domestic and foreign policies were partly a reaction against those of Nasser and reflected Sadat’s efforts to emerge from his predecessor’s shadow. One of Sadat’s most important domestic initiatives was the open-door policy known as infitāḥ (Arabic: “opening”), a program of dramatic economic change that included decentralization and diversification of the economy as well as efforts to attract trade and foreign investment. Sadat’s efforts to liberalize the economy came at significant cost, including high inflation and an uneven distribution of wealth, deepening inequality and leading to discontent that would later contribute to food riots in January 1977.

It was in foreign affairs that Sadat made his most dramatic efforts. Feeling that the Soviet Union gave him inadequate support in Egypt’s continuing confrontation with Israel, he expelled thousands of Soviet technicians and advisers from the country in 1972. In addition, Egyptian peace overtures toward Israel were initiated early in Sadat’s presidency, when he made known his willingness to reach a peaceful settlement if Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula (captured by that country in the Six-Day [June] War of 1967). Following the failure of this initiative, Sadat launched a military attack in coordination with Syria to retake the territory, sparking the Arab-Israeli war of October 1973. The Egyptian army achieved a tactical surprise in its October 6 attack on the seemingly impenetrable Israeli fortifications along the east bank of the Suez Canal, and, though Israel staved off any advance by Egypt to recapture the Sinai Peninsula, it sustained heavy casualties and loss of military equipment. Sadat emerged from the war with greatly enhanced prestige as the first Arab leader to have actually retaken some territory from Israel. (See Arab-Israeli wars.)

After the war, Sadat worked toward peace in the Middle East. He made a historic visit to Israel (November 19–20, 1977), during which he traveled to Jerusalem to place his plan for a peace settlement before the Israeli Knesset (parliament). This initiated a series of diplomatic efforts that Sadat continued despite strong opposition from most of the Arab world and the Soviet Union. U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter mediated the negotiations between Sadat and Begin that resulted in the Camp David Accords (September 17, 1978), a preliminary peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. Sadat and Begin were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1978, and their continued political negotiations resulted in the signing on March 26, 1979, of a treaty of peace between Egypt and Israel—the first between the latter and any Arab country.

While Sadat’s popularity rose in the West, it fell dramatically in Egypt because of internal opposition to the treaty, a worsening economic crisis, and Sadat’s suppression of the resulting public dissent. In September 1981 he ordered a massive police strike against his opponents, jailing more than 1,500 people from across the political spectrum. The following month Sadat was assassinated by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad during the Armed Forces Day military parade commemorating the Arab-Israeli war of October 1973.

Sadat’s autobiography, In Search of Identity, was published in 1978.