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Sadat and the Egyptian–Israeli Peace Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Ibrahim A. Karawan
Ibrahim A. Karawan
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Utah, 252 Orson Spencer Hall, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112, U.S.A.
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Extract

With the resumption of the search for an Arab–Israeli settlement, analysts have been debating the factors that have frustrated it for so many years. The fact that one Arab country, namely Egypt, concluded a peace treaty with Israel almost a decade and a half ago led some to reexamine that case to see what made it possible. The available literature on Egypt's disengagement from the Arab–Israeli conflict has been voluminous, as many policy makers and analysts in Egypt, Israel, the rest of the Arab world, and the United States published their accounts of this development. Despite many ideological and political differences among these writers, they all concluded that this foreign-policy shift represented a radical alteration of Arab policies toward Israel and that with Egypt out of the war equation, the regional balance of power had changed dramatically. Many of them also emphasized the centrality of President Sadat's role in explaining Egypt's exit from the conflict with Israel. One or another of Sadat's personal characteristics has been singled out by his admirers and critics alike as being the main factor behind the Egyptian foreign-policy shift. It is not that they considered other factors such as socioeconomic variables and regional or global structures irrelevant. They simply assessed them as not decisive in terms of their relative explanatory power.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , May 1994 , pp. 249 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I am indebted to Ali Dessouki. Bahgat Korany, Arthur Stein, Louis Cantori, Afaf Marsot, Peter Diamond, and especially Richard Sklar for helpful comments on earlier versions. However, I do absolve all of them from responsibility for any errors. Personal interviews proved to be invaluable, particularly those with Tahseen Bashir, Usama al-Baz, Ismail Fahmy, Butros Ghali, and Hassan al-Tuhami. I am grateful to all of them for sharing their insights, as well as to Janessa and Suhayla Karawan for their constant support.

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9 Although the Egyptian Foreign Ministry has its specialized structures and highly competent diplomats, its role concerning important matters has been limited. For the general argument on bureaucratic politics, see Allison, Graham, “Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” American Political Science Review 63, 3 (09 1969): 689–718CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Allison, Graham and Halperin, Morton, “Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications,” World Politics 24 (Spring 1972): 40–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krasner, Stephen D., “Allison's Wonderland: Are Bureaucrats Important?” Foreign Policy 7 (Summer 1972): 159–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For discussions of Third World cases, see East, Maurice, “Size and Foreign Policy Behavior,” World Politics 25, 4 (07 1973): 556–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Foreign Policy Making in Small States,” Policy Sciences 4, 4 (December 1973): 491–508Google Scholar; Weinstein, Franklin B., “The Uses of Foreign Policy in Indonesia: An Approach to the Analysis of Foreign Policy in the Less-Developed Countries,” World Politics 24, 3 (04 1972): 356–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Indonesian Foreign Policy and the Dilemmas of Dependence (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1976)Google Scholar. For studies that aimed at formulating general propositions to explain LDC foreign policy, see Migdal, Joel, “International Structures and External Behavior: Explaining Foreign Policy of the Third World States,” International Relations 4, 5 (05 1974): 510–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Korany, Bahgat, “Foreign Policy in the Third World,” International Political Science Review 5, 1 (1984): 7–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Foreign Policy Models and Their Empirical Relevance to Third World Countries,” International Social Science Journal 26, I (March 1976): 70–94Google Scholar.

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11 Nasser, Gamal Abdul, Egypt's Liberation: The Philosophy of the Revolution (Washington D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1955), 87–88Google Scholar. See also Naṣr, Marlyn, al-Taṣawwur al-Qawmī al-ʿArabīfī Filer Jamāl ʿAbd al-Nāṣir (The Arab Nationalist Conception in the Thought of Jamal ʿAbd al-Nasir) (Beirut: Markaz Dirāsāt al-Waḥda al-ʿArabiyya, 1981)Google Scholar.

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13 Ibid., 99; Baram, Amatzia, “Territorial Nationalism in the Middle East,” Middle Eastern Studies 26, 4 (October 1990): 431–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Israeli, Raphael, “Sadat between Arabism and Africanism,” Middle East Review 11, 3 (Spring 1979): 39–48Google Scholar. See Aronson, Shlomo, Sadat's Initiative and Israel's Response: The Strategy of Peace and the Strategy of Strategy, n. 14 (Los Angeles, Calif.: Center for Arms Control and International Security, UCLA, 1978), 1–5Google Scholar; Burrell, R. Michael and Kelidar, Abbas, Egypt: The Dilemmas of a Nation (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1977), 58Google Scholar. Salwa Gomaa argued that Sadat's selfimage played a predominant role in influencing his objectives and actions. According to her, in studying his foreign policy, one of the main questions has to be: “Did Sadat see himself as an Arab or an Egyptian?… The question of identity is very important because if Sadat saw himself principally as an Arab, then his definition of any given situation, his objectives, and his strategy have to be tied to Arab aspirations, acceptance, and support. But if he saw himself as an Egyptian first of all, then his definition of the situation would be more flexible.” Gomaa, , Egyptian Diplomacy in the Seventies, 12–13, 53–56Google Scholar. Another study based in part on analyzing the political language used by Egyptian leaders concluded that, whereas “Nasser perceived Egypt as merely a part of the Arab ummah, Sadat perceived Egypt as a nation by itself.” Mustafa, Muhammad Hussein, “The Role of Cognitive Perceptions: Nasser and Sadat” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1985), 377Google Scholar. For the detailed comparison, see ibid., 348–425.

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15 Dishon, Daniel, “Sadat's Arab Adversaries,” Jerusalem Quarterly 8 (Summer 1978): 13–15.Google ScholarAccording to Quandt, Sadat had “informed Secretary [of State Cyrus] Vance in 08 1977Google Scholar that a single Arab delegation [to the suggested Geneva conference would] lead to an ‘explosion’, because of attempts by each Arab party to impose its will on the others. Egypt in particular … could not accept Arab dictation of what it can and cannot accept.” Quandt, William, Camp David: Peacemaking and Politics (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1986), 88, 135.Google ScholarDuring the summer and early fall of 1977Google Scholar, Syria insisted that any peace negotiations would have to take place between a unified Arab delegation, including the PLO, and Israel according to a formula characterized on the Arab side by collective bargaining and mutual vetoes. On 22 October 1977, Assad's envoy, General Naji al-Jamil, discussed the Syrian position with Sadat and reportedly lectured him “on his duty as an Arab nationalist, which greatly irritated the Egyptian leader.” (ibid., 142). See also al-Ahrām, 27 11 1977Google Scholar; Karawan, Ibrahim, “Sadat on the Road to Jerusalem: Four Levels of Analysis” (Paper presented at the Middle East Studies Association Annual meeting in Seattle, 11 1981), 23–24Google Scholar.

16 Many studies focused on Sadat's anti-Sovietism as an explanation of his pursuit of a separate peace with Israel, particularly after the Soviet–American communique of 1 10 1977Google Scholar. For examples, see Tucker, Robert, “The Middle East: For a Separate Peace,” Commentary 65, 3 (03 1978): 25–31;Google ScholarAvineri, Shlomo, “Peacemaking: The Arab-Israeli Conflict,” Foreign Affairs 57, 1 (Fall 1978): 51–69;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBen-Dor, Gabriel, interview with Point International, 19 12 1977, 16Google Scholar. However, in assessing this argument it is important first to recall that the communique mentioned earlier did not last more than a few days due to opposition by Israel and the pro-Israeli lobby in the United States; see Cohen, Raymond, “Israel and the Soviet-American Statement of October 1, 1977: The Limits of Patron-Client Influence,” Orbis 22, 3 (Fall 1978): 613–33Google Scholar. Second, Sadat's assessment of the communique was rather mixed. On the one hand, in his public statements (which aimed primarily at ridiculing the Soviet Union's leftist friends in Egypt and the Arab world), he characterized the communique as one more proof of the similarity of the basic positions of the superpowers, regardless of any allegations to the contrary. As Sadat pointed out, the communique had shown that the Soviet position has taken a step backward by supporting normalization of relations between the parties, dropping the PLO's name as far as Palestinian representation was concerned, and accepting less than total Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Arab lands. The American position took a step forward by accepting to treat the Palestinian problem as a core issue of the conflict and recognizing the “national rights of the Palestinian people.” See al-Ahrām, 710 1977Google Scholar and Akhbār al-Yawm, 16 10 1977Google Scholar. On the other hand, in his dealings with American officials he described the communiqué as “a brilliant maneuver” to pressure Syria to adopt a more flexible position in the Geneva conference; see Eilts, Ambassador Hermann, “The Syrians Have Been Their Own Worst Enemies,” New York Times, 12 01 1982Google Scholar; Quandt, , Camp David, 123Google Scholar.

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23 Zahran, , al-Siyāsa al-Khārijiyya li-Misr, 260Google Scholar. See also the statement by Sadat: “Since I became President, there has hardly been a day without some quarrel with the Russians. They never trusted me. They said I was pro-American and convinced Ali Sabri that I was selling Egypt out to the Americans,” Newsweek, 7 08 1972Google Scholar.

24 Interview with a former high-ranking official, Cairo, 09 1979Google Scholar; also see Sadat, , In Search of Identity, 225–26Google Scholar.

25 Al-Ahrām, 27 11 1977Google Scholar. On the foreign-policy and security implications of Egypt's global realignment in the mid-1970s, see Karawan, Ibrahim, “Egypt and the Western Alliance: The Politics of Westomania?” in The Middle East and the Western Alliance, ed. Spiegel, Steven (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982), 163–81Google Scholar; idem, “Egypt's Defense Policy,” in Defense Planning in Less-Industrialized States, ed. Neuman, Stephanie (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1984), 147–65Google Scholar.

26 Personal interview with Hassan al-Tuhami, deputy prime minister in the presidential palace, Cairo, 23 09 1979Google Scholar. See Tuhami's interview in Rūz al-Yūsif, no. 2695, 4 02 1980, 12–13, and in al-Muṣawwar, no. 3007, 28 05 1982Google Scholar.

27 Quoted in Indyk, Martin, To the Ends of the Earth: Sadat's Jerusalem Initiative (Cambridge: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, 1984), 20Google Scholar. See also ʿAbdal-Rāziq, Huṣayn, Misṛ fi 18 wa-19 Yanāyir (Egypt on the 18th and 19th of January) (Beirut: Dār al-Kalima, 1984), 13–86Google Scholar; Bāshā, Haṣan Abū, Mudhakkirāt ft al-Amn wa-al-Siyāsa (Memoirs in Security and Politics) (Cairo: Dār al- Hillāl, 1990), 50–55.Google Scholar

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47 According to Borschgrave, Arnold de, Newsweek's political correspondent in the Middle East in the 1970Google Scholar President Sadat, told him as early as February 1972 that “it was necessary to open a direct dialogue with Israel as a way of bypassing the two superpowers and liberating Egypt's policy from their influence. However, he asked him not to publish that part then” (al-Nahār al-ʿArabī wa-al Dawlī, 10 12 1977)Google Scholar. See, along similar lines, the memoirs of former deputy prime minister al-Zayyāt, Muḥammad ʿAbdal-Salām in al-Ahālī (Cairo), 25 11 1987, 10.Google Scholar

48 As quoted in the New York Times, 19 01 1977Google Scholar.

49 For a discussion of Third World and specifically Arab cases, see Korany, Bahgat, “The Take-Off of Third World Studies? The Case of Foreign Policy,” World Politics 35, 3 (04 1983): 456–87Google Scholar; idem, “When and How Do Personality Factors Influence Foreign Policy?” Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 9, 3 (Spring 1986): 35–59; idem, “Dirasat al-Siyāsāt al-ʿArabiyya al-Khārijiyya: Taqyīm wa-Naqd” (The Study of Arab Foreign Policies: An Evaluation and Critique), al-Majalla al-ʿArabiyya lil-Dirāsāt al-Dawliyya 1, 1 (Winter 1978–1988): 5–28Google Scholar. For more on the political economy of the Egyptian case, see Karawan, Ibrahim, “Foreign Policy Restructuring: Egyptās Disengagement from the Arab–Israeli Conflict Reconsidered” (Unpublished manuscript, Political Science Department, University of Utah, 08 1993)Google Scholar.