Man of peace
In his on-going re-assessment of the achievements of President Sadat, Ibrahim Nafie focuses on events surrounding the signing of the Camp David accords
Many of Sadat's critics might have forgiven him for what they consider his sins were it not for the fact he had signed a peace treaty with Israel. These same critics were forever ready to indulge other Arab leaders for waging wars, claiming thousands of innocent lives, against other Arab countries, just as long as they did not commit that greater evil, even if it meant prolonging the occupation of their territory. It is also curious that while criticism of Sadat mounted during disengagement negotiations on the Syrian and Egyptian fronts Syria remained immune to censure, even though it too was seeking to capitalise on the outcome of the October War. It was Sadat's dramatic visit to Jerusalem on 19 November 1977 that unleashed the most vituperative invective, invective that has pursued the late Egyptian president beyond the grave, especially at times when the peace process he spearheaded floundered.
In 1977 parliamentary elections in Israel brought to power a conservative coalition with Manachem Begin as prime minister. In Sadat, Pharaoh of Egypt, Thiery De Jardin observed that President Carter, like Sadat, quickly realised the advantages of talks with an Israeli hardliner such as Begin. A hardliner would be poised to take bolder steps than Israeli moderates, ever vulnerable to charges of treachery. Thus, in June 1977, Carter wrote to Sadat and, although the contents of the letter have not been disclosed, one imagines that the US president cited the possibilities presented by the election of the new Israeli prime minister. He may also have suggested a face-to-face meeting between the Egyptian and Israeli leaders.
Shortly after Sadat flew to Romania to meet with Nicolae Ceaucescu, who had often acted as an intermediary in the Middle East conflict and who was acquainted with Begin, having met with him several weeks earlier in Bucharest. Sadat pumped the Romanian president for as much information as he could get about the Israeli prime minister. Ceaucescu responded that Begin was "very Zionist" but that he sensed Begin was keen to go down in history as the man who had brought Israel peace.
Back on board the presidential plane on his way from Bucharest to Tehran Sadat considered his options in light of what Ceaucescu had told him. Suddenly he had an idea, which he confided to Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmi who was sitting next to him. He would go to Jerusalem and he would ask Carter, Brezhnev, Callaghan, d'Estaing and Hua Guofeng -- leaders of the five permanent members of the Security Council -- to come with him. Sadat imagined a major international conference bringing together these nations, the front line states -- Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt -- and the Palestinians "in order to demonstrate to Begin that we have decided to prepare seriously for the Geneva conference". Fahmi objected on the grounds that the presence of those nations in Jerusalem would constitute tacit international and Arab recognition of Israel's occupation of the holy city. Although decidedly pro-American, Fahmi suspected that Sadat was being lured into an American-laid trap.
In spite of these cautions Sadat aired his plan during talks with the Shah of Iran, and then set off for Morocco. King Hassan II, whose meetings with Israelis were an open secret and who believed that problems were best resolved through direct talks, was needed as an intermediary. In October 1977 the Moroccan monarch arranged a secret meeting in Rabat between Hassan El-Tahami, representing the president of Egypt, and Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan. According to PLO intelligence chief Abu Iyad, the Israeli foreign minister promised that the Israelis would offer major concessions if President Sadat visited Israel. Simultaneously, the king of Morocco encouraged Sadat to undertake this visit, saying that it would be an historic event and that Sadat would have his full support. On 9 November, in his famous speech before the People's Assembly, Sadat announced his plan. He was ready to go to the ends of the earth, "even to Israel to meet with Israeli officials in their home in the Knesset if that would serve the interests of peace".
Regretfully, today, very few people are willing to step forward and credit Sadat for breathing life into the hope for peace, which Sharon has shattered and which we now so desperately lack. On the contrary, Sadat's legacy appears only to have earned him lasting censure. Since his trip to Jerusalem, which initiated the Middle East peace process, the many accusations that have been levelled against him, however remote they are from the facts, have evolved into national platitudes.
One of the most naïve, yet widely accepted, myths is that Sadat was Washington's puppet and Kissinger's dupe. That this former US secretary of state devoted the second volume of his memoirs, Years of Upheaval, solely to Sadat should put paid to such contentions. Ranking Sadat among the world's great leaders, Kissinger acknowledges his great debt of gratitude to Sadat whom he had the honour to work with in his first steps towards peace. He said that Sadat did more for his people and the peoples of the region than all other leaders and their grandiloquent speeches. That Sadat accomplished in a few years what would ordinarily have taken decades was nothing short of a miracle.
In a similar vein, US Ambassador Ronald Bergson wrote, "Sadat made mistakes, like any human being, but, as a human being, too, the achievements he made for his people and the Arab world were magnificent. During the years of his rule he convinced first one and then the other of the two to make huge contributions towards the realisation of Egypt's goals and the prosperity of the Egyptian people. He single-handedly broke through the barriers that had been imposed on the region through generations of hatred and pride.
A second accusation levelled at Sadat was that he was a poor negotiator who, in his haste to produce results, revealed all his cards to Kissinger while Israeli negotiators only showed theirs after long and arduous negotiations during which they forced Egypt into more and more concessions. To judge Sadat's negotiating strategy by ordinary standards does great injustice to the breakthroughs he made through his peace initiative. The many opportunities that Arabs have forfeited in their negotiations with successive Israeli governments are, perhaps, the best measure of a negotiating acumen that enabled Sadat to secure so many gains in such a short time from a conservative Likud government with the US mediator on its side. His peace initiative, which took the world as much by surprise as did the October war, put Israel and the US on the moral defensive and succeeded in producing new and irrevocable realities.
One of the most absurd charges against Sadat was that he sacrificed Egyptian sovereignty over territories regained through war. The accusation betrays a deliberate attempt to belittle Sadat's achievement in liberating the Sinai and an ignorance of the notion of sovereignty, as distinct from demilitarised zones, disarmament agreements and other commonly accepted international security arrangements. The demilitarised zones agreed upon in Camp David and the subsequent Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement exist on both sides of the borders and do not impinge on Egypt's sovereignty over Sinai.
Given the vilification of Sadat in this regard, we should also note that Nasser approved of international observers and UN forces in the Sinai following the tripartite invasion of 1956. In addition, UN Security Council Resolution 242, still considered the cornerstone for a viable peace in the Middle East, provides for "guaranteeing the territorial freedom and political independence of each state in the region through measures that include the creation of demilitarised zones". The same provision was reiterated in the Rogers peace initiative approved by Nasser.
A more insidious slur against Sadat was that in signing a peace accord with Israel he placed Egypt's interests above those of the rest of the Arab world and sowed the seeds of dissension in Arab ranks. The October war brought an unprecedented degree of inter-Arab solidarity -- the Arab oil embargo, Bahrain's cancellation of contracts providing port facilities to the US, the extensive flow of financial and military aid to Egypt and Syria from other Arab countries. Yet, while we should not underestimate the significance of this unity it must be examined in context. Such extensive co-ordination during the heat of battle should not obscure the incessant and bitter inter-Arab disputes both before and after. Indeed, even during the war Sadat and Assad were at odds over strategy and tactics.
A related and no less pernicious charge is that Sadat sold out the Arab cause. This claim is belied in black and white in the framework agreement for a Middle East settlement signed by Egypt and Israel on 17 September 1978 and the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord of 29 March the following year. The preambles of both documents explicitly state that the Egyptian-Israeli accord is a step towards a comprehensive regional peace settlement and called upon other nations in the region to enter similar agreements.
However, beyond the preambles, Sadat worked to secure a tangible link between the Egyptian and Palestinian tracks so as to ensure progress towards the realisation of Palestinian rights. The framework agreement detailed specific provisions for the West Bank and Gaza. It called for popular elections to create an autonomous administrative council for a five-year interim period. As soon as elections were held Israel would withdraw its civil and military forces from the West Bank and Gaza, to be replaced by a civilian force, made up of Palestinians, Jordanians, or both, depending upon the agreement reached by the contracting parties. Then, three years into the interim period, final status talks would begin regarding the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza. In addition, the framework agreement and peace treaty made explicit reference to the need for a just resolution to the plight of the Palestinian refugees.
According to William Quant disputes between Sadat and Begin over their interpretations of the Camp David provisions pertaining to the linkage of the Egyptian and Palestinian tracks almost jettisoned the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord. Sadat was so committed to the principle of linkage that when Begin maintained circumstances were not conducive to Palestinian elections, Sadat offered to postpone the first phase of the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai so that elections and the withdrawal could take place in tandem. Ultimately, however, he had to abandon the idea, as Begin could all too easily have exploited his offer to defer both processes indefinitely, jeopardising both the gains of war and of peace.
During Sadat's meeting with Egyptian editors-in-chief in Washington following the Camp David negotiations, senior negotiator Ashraf Gharbal, visibly drained from lengthy rounds of wrangling, said: "I am not going to deceive anyone. This is what we were able to achieve. But we have not reached a solution on Jerusalem, although we registered our stand in an exchange of letters with the US. Nor have we succeeded in creating a Palestinian state. However, we did reach an agreement that will lead to the right of self-determination for the Palestinians."
Perhaps Sadat's most important achievement for Arab countries with territories occupied in 1967 was to establish, in Camp David, the principle of land for peace. This is apparent in the text of the framework accord. "This framework forms the basis of peace," it states, "not only between Egypt and Israel but also between Israel and all of its neighbours who accept to negotiate for peace on its bases." Beneath the heading "Associated Principles" we read: "Egypt and Israel hold that the principles and precedents herein shall apply to the peace treaties between Israel and each of its neighbours: Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon."
Most of Sadat's critics have not read the Camp David accords. They are happy hurling unfounded charges against a man who has done more for Arab causes than any other Arab leader.
