7 - From Sadat to Mubarak, 1970 to the present day

Summary

The Cairenes invented a story about Sadat that epitomized the difference between his form of government and that followed by Nasser. The story goes that on the first day Sadat got into the presidential limousine he waited until the car reached a crossroads and then asked the chauffeur, ‘Where did the rais turn here?’ ‘He turned left’, was the answer. ‘Signal left and turn right’, said Sadat. Sadat believed the only way out of the morass of a foreign occupation of Sinai was to turn to the West, and especially to the United States, and get the American government to put pressure on the Israelis to evacuate Arab territories. When talk seemed to lead nowhere he determined to break the deadlock by a limited invasion of Sinai, which could change the situation and lead to negotiations that would, he believed, end in the evacuation of Egyptian territory. From 1971 he announced to the people that this was the year of decision. As the year went on and nothing was decided, the people greeted his statements with derision and claimed the new rais had changed the calendar and doubled or tripled the number of days in the year.

Meanwhile that year, after the Israelis had shot down thirteen Syrian jets, Sadat had a mini summit meeting with King Hussein of Jordan and President Hafiz al-Assad of Syria. Together they agreed to move against Israel. From that time on Egyptian and Syrian officers planned a coordinated attack against Israel to regain occupied territories.