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Egypt Modern History &
The Middle East
Anwar al-Sadat – Curriculum Vitae
Born 25th December 1918 in Tala District, Menufia
Governorate, Egypt
Married to Jihan Sadat
Education: Military College
Editor Al Jumhuriya and Al Tahrir  1955-56
Minister of State  1955-56
Vice-Chairman National Assembly  1957-60
Chairman National Assembly  1960-68
General Secretary Egyptian National Union 1957-61
Chairman Afro-Asian Solidarity Council  1961
Member Presidential Council  1962-1964
Vice-president of Egypt  1964-66, 1969-70
President of Egypt  1970
Prime Minister  1973-74
Chairman Arab Socialist Union  1970
Member Higher Council on Nuclear Energy  1975
The Nobel Peace Prize 1978
Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat was assassinated in 1981.

Books By  Sadat
Revolt on the Nile. New York: Day, 1957. (The revolt
of the army officers.)
In Search of Identity: An Autobiography. New York:
Harper & Row, 1978. (The story of his life and of his
country after 1918.)
  • Anwar el-Sadat, the Daring Arab Pioneer of Peace
  • Anwar Al-Sadat – Nobel Lecture
  • Biography
Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat
                                          President of Egypt / b. 1918=d. 1981
                                      1978 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Anwar Al-Sadat – Nobel Lecture
December 10, 1978


Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Mr. Prime Minister of Israel, Madame Chairman and Members of The Nobel
Peace Prize Committee, Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Peace be upon you. This is the traditional way in which, everyday, we greet one another. It reflects our deepest feelings
and hopes. We always say it and we mean it.

Your Majesty, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The decision of the Nobel Prize Committee to bestow upon me the Peace Award has been received by the people of
Egypt not only as an honor, but also as a confirmation of the universal recognition of our relentless efforts to achieve
peace in an area in which God has chosen to bring to mankind, through Moses, Jesus and
Mohamed, His message of wisdom and light.

Your Majesty, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Recognition is due to a man of the highest integrity: President Jimmy Carter whose signal efforts to overcome obstacles
in the way of peace deserves our keenest appreciation.

The road to peace is one which, throughout its history which coincides with the dawn of human civilization, the people
of Egypt have considered as befitting their genius, and their vocation. No people on earth have been more steadfastly
faithful to the cause of peace, and none more attached to the principles of justice which constitute the cornerstone of
any real and lasting peace.

Do I need to remind such an august and distinguished gathering, that the first recorded peace treaty in history was
concluded more than three thousand years ago between Ramses the Great and Hattusilis, Prince of the Hittites, who
resolved to establish "good peace and good brotherhood?"1

And since then, through the ages, even when wars appeared as a necessary evil the real genius of Egypt has been one
of peace... and its ambition has been to build not to destroy, to create not to annihilate, to coexist not to eliminate.
Thus, the land of Egypt has always been cherished by God Almighty: Moses lived there, Jesus
fled to it from injustice and foreign domination, and the Holy Koran has blessed it. And Islam, which is the religion of
justice, equality and moral values, has added new dimensions to the eternal spirit of Egypt.

We have always realized that the qualities of chivalry, courage, faith and discipline that were characteristic of a romantic
concept of war, should, in an era where war has become only synonymous with devastation to all, be a means of
enriching life, not generating death.

It is in this spirit that Alfred Nobel created the prize which bears his name d which is aimed at encouraging mankind to
follow the path of peace, development, progress and prosperity.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is in the light of all this, that I embarked a year ago upon my initiative aimed at restoring peace in an area where man
received the words of God.

Through me it was the eternal Egypt that was expressing itself: Let us put an end to wars, let us reshape life on the solid
basis of equity and truth. And it is this call, which reflected the will of the Egyptian people, of the great majority of the
Arab and Israeli peoples, and indeed of millions of men, women, and children around the world that you are today
honoring. And these hundreds of millions will judge to what extent every responsible leader in the Middle East has
responded to the hopes of mankind.

We have now come, in the peace process, to a moment of truth which requires each one of us to take a new look at
the situation. I trust that you all know that when I made my historic trip to Jerusalem my aim was not to strike a deal as
some politicians do.

I made my trip because I am convinced that we owe it to this generation and the generations to come, not to leave a
stone unturned in our pursuit of peace. The ideal is the greatest one in the history of man, and we have accepted the
challenge to translate it from a cherished hope into a living reality, and to win through vision and imagination, the hearts
and minds of our peoples and enable them to look beyond the unhappy past.

Let me remind you of what I said in the Knesset, more than one year ago; I said: "Let me tell you truthfully: Today we
have a good chance for peace, an opportunity that cannot be repeated, if we are really serious in the quest for peace. If
we throw or fritter away this chance, the curse of mankind and the curse of history will befall the one who plots against
it".

I would like now, on this most solemn and moving occasion, to pledge again that we in Egypt - with the future rather
than the past in mind - are determined to pursue in good faith, as we have always done, the road to peace, and to leave
no avenue unexplored to reach this cherished goal, and to reconcile the sons of Ismail and the sons of Isaac. In
renewing this pledge, which I hope that the other parties will also adhere to, I again repeat what I said in the Knesset
more than a year ago:

"Any life lost in war is the life of a human being, irrespective of whether it is an Arab or an Israeli.

The wife who becomes widowed is a human being, entitled to live in a happy family, Arab or Israeli.

Innocent children, deprived of paternal care and sympathy are all our children, whether they live on Arab or Israeli soil
and, we owe them the biggest responsibility of providing them with a happy present and bright future.

For the sake of all this, for the sake of protecting the lives of all our sons and brothers;

For our societies to produce in security and confidence;
For the development of man, his well-being and his right to share in an honorable life;

For our responsibility toward the coming generations; For the smile of every child born on our land".

This is our conception of peace which I repeat today... The Day of Human Rights.

In the light of this let me share with you our conception of peace:

First, the true essence of peace which ensures its stability and durability, is justice. Any peace not built on justice and on
the recognition of the rights of the peoples, would be a structure of sand which would crumble under the first blow.

The peace process comprises a beginning and steps towards an end. In reaching this end the process must achieve its
projected goal. That goal is to bring security to the peoples of the area, and the Palestinians in particular, restoring to
them all their right to a life of liberty and dignity. We are moving steadily towards this goal for all the peoples of the
region. This is what I stand for. This is the letter and the spirit of Camp David.

Second, peace is indivisible. To endure, it should be comprehensive and involve all the parties in the conflict.

Third, peace and prosperity in our area are closely linked and interrelated. Our efforts should aim at achieving both,
because it is as important to save man from death by destructive weapons, as it is not to abandon him to the evils of
want and misery. And war is no cure for the problems of our area. And last, but not least, peace is a dynamic
construction to which all should contribute, each adding a new brick. It goes far beyond a formal agreement or treaty, it
transcends a word here or there. That is why it requires politicians who enjoy vision and imagination and who, beyond
the present, look towards the future.

It is with this conviction, deeply rooted in our history and our faith, that the people of Egypt have embarked upon a
major effort to achieve peace in the Middle East, an area of paramount importance to the whole world. We will spare
no effort, we will not tire or despair, we will not lose faith, and we are confident that, in the end,
our aim will be achieved.

I will ask you all to join me in a prayer that the day may soon come when peace will prevail, on the basis of justice and
the recognition of the rights of all the peoples to shape their own life, to determine their own future, and to contribute to
building a world of prosperity for all mankind.
October 7, 1981
OBITUARY
Anwar el-Sadat, the Daring Arab Pioneer of Peace  with Israel
Sadat's Innovations Sprang From His Courage and Flexibility
By ERIC PACE
The New York Times Company

Sadat! Sadat!" tens of thousands of Cairenes chanted at the grinning figure in the open limousine. ''Sadat! The man of
peace!'' It was the night of Nov. 21, 1977.
President Anwar el-Sadat had just returned from his epochal journey to Jerusalem. Egypt's people were giving their
frenzied approval to what his trip had achieved - an Egyptian-Israeli thaw that set the stage for the peace treaty of
1979.

What made Mr. Sadat into such a catalytic force in Middle Eastern history was a display of courage and flexibility
that transformed what had seemed to be an  average Arab officer-turned-potentate.

Unlike so many of his brother Arab leaders, he was willing to ignore past Arab-Israeli hatreds. Unlike them all, he
was daring enough to do what had been unthinkable in the anguished world of Arab politics - to extend the hand of
peace to the Israeli foe. Reversing Egypt's longstanding policy, he proclaimed his willingness to accept Israel's
existence as a sovereign state.

Admiration and Hatred

Then, where so many Middle East negotiators had failed, he succeeded, along with Presidents Carter and Reagan
and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel, in keeping the improbable rapprochement alive.

In the process he earned himself, in addition to the Nobel Peace Prize, the admiration of Americans, Israelis and
other supporters of a Middle East settlement. But he also drew outpourings of hatred from Palestinians and other
Arabs who felt he was a traitor to their struggles against Israel. And he was unable to quash dissidence in his
impoverished, seething homeland.

He often said he wanted to bequeath democratic institutions to his people, but in recent weeks he staged a dictatorial
crackdown on militant Moslems and Coptic Christians as well as secular political opponents. And he claimed
imperially - but hollowly, as it turned out - to have put an end to ''lack of discipline in any way or
form.''

The Treaty

Eleven days before Mr. Sadat made his trip to Jerusalem, he said in Cairo that he was willing to go to ''the ends of
the earth,'' and even to the Israeli Parliament, in the cause of peace. The Israeli Government made known that he
was welcome in Jerusalem, and after complex negotiations he flew there, although a state of war
still existed between the two nations.

His eyes were moist and his lips taut with suppressed emotion as he arrived, but his Arabic was firm and resonant
when, hours later, he told the hushed Israeli Parliament, ''If you want to live with us in this part of the world, in
sincerity I tell you that we welcome you among us with all security and safety.''

Praising Mr. Sadat's initiative, Prime Minister Begin said, ''We, the Jews, know how to appreciate such courage.''
Mr. Sadat's flexibility, he said later, stemmed from his solitary confinement as a political prisoner in cell 54 of Cairo
Central Prison in 1947 and 1948. ''My contemplation of life and human nature in that secluded place taught me that
he who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality and will never, therefore,
make any progress,'' he wrote in his memoirs, ''In Search of Identity,'' which appeared in 1978, eight years after he
assumed the Presidency.

Pact Signed at White House

His willingness to make such a change led to the treaty that, after many snags, he and Prime Minister Begin signed at
the White House on March 26, 1979. Before reaching agreement Mr. Sadat and Mr. Begin had drawn-out and
sometimes acrimonious negotiations, for which they were the joint winners of the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1978.

The treaty provided that Israel return to Egypt in phases the entire Sinai Peninsula, which the Israelis seized in the
1967 war. It also envisioned internal autonomy for the Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank of the Jordan River under
continued Israeli control. The Egyptian and Israeli Governments were helped and prodded by the Nixon and Carter
Administrations, and Henry A. Kissinger, after many meetings with Mr. Sadat, wrote that the Egyptian leader
''possessed that combinat ion of insight and courage which marks a great statesman.'' The former Secretary of State
continued in his book, ''White House Years'': ''He had the boldness to go to a war no one thought he could sustain;
the moderation to move to peace immediately afterward; and the wisdom to reverse attitudes hardened by decades.''

Used Harmony as a Technique

In dealings with Israel and the United States, Mr. Sadat strove to create a harmonious mood that would make it
difficult for others to disagree with him. His most audacious use of that technique was the Jerusalem visit.

That gesture and the treaty with Israel brought him hatred and vituperation from many Arab leaders. There was
particular outrage because the treaty did not provide a timetable for full self-determination for the West Bank
Palestinians that would lead eventually to an independent Palestinian state.

Self-determination was originally Mr. Sadat's minimum demand; when he settled for less, he found himself virtually
isolated in the Arab world. Saudi Arabia's leaders, with whom he had achieved warm relations, cut back their aid to
the Egyptian armed forces and the economy, which Mr. Sadat had tried to strengthen by encouraging business.

The Saudi action made Egypt more dependent than ever on support from the United States, with which Mr. Sadat
had also been careful to cultivate bonds of  friendship. Under his predecessor, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Cairo's
relations with the Americans, as with the Saudis, were hostile much of the time. Mr. Sadat won
moral and political support from Washington as well as large-scale economic and military aid, and in 1975 he
became the first Egyptian President to make a state visit to the United States. He returned again during the treaty
negotiations, and President Carter went to Egypt, where throngs hailed him and his host.

Treaty Welcomed by Egyptians

Many of the 40 million Egyptians, having gone through four painful and expensive wars with Israel, were enthusiastic
about the peace treaty. Throngs of well-wishers danced, waved signs and threw rose petals in celebration.

Under the treaty Israel's withdrawal of its civilian and military forces from Sinai was to be carried out in stages over
three years. Two-thirds of the area was to be handed back within nine months after the exchange of formal
ratification documents. In return for the Israeli pullback, Mr. Sadat agreed to establish peace. After the
nine-month withdrawal was finished, the two Governments were to take up ''normal and friendly relations'' in the
diplomatic, economic and cultural spheres, among others. The early withdrawals were completed, and the final phase
is scheduled for next April.

''This is certainly one of the happiest moments of my life,'' Mr. Sadat, deeply moved, said at the signing ceremony.
''In all the steps I took I was merely expressing the will of a nation. I am proud of my people and of belonging to
them.''

Expels Soviet Advisers

Another of Mr. Sadat's major shifts in policy was his departure from Nasser's longstanding pro-Soviet stance. In July
1972 he abruptly ordered the withdrawal of
the 25,000 Soviet military specialists and advisers in Egypt. By so doing, he later wrote, ''I wanted to tell the whole
world that we are always our own masters.''

The changes in the relationship with Washington and Moscow were made after Mr. Sadat had concluded that the
Arabs could not achieve a satisfactory end to their confrontation with Israel as long as they were allied closely with
the Soviet Union while Israel had the all out support of the United States.

He was able to make such sharp policy shifts in part because for much of his later tenure as President, his power did
not seem to be seriously challenged at home. A career officer and longtime confidant of Nasser, he was named Vice
President in 1969, came out ahead in a brief power struggle after Nasser's death in 1970 and
was formally made President by a rubber-stamp vote of members of the Arab Socialist Union, the only legal political
organization. He consolidated and enlarged his power in the spring of 1971 when, with the aid of the army, he
forestalled what he said was a coup and arrested his opponents.

Called Himself a Peasant

Mr. Sadat was widely though not universally popular with the Egyptian people, with whom, in his highly emotional
way, he felt a warm and almost mystic bond. In ''In Search of Identity,'' he proudly called himself ''a peasant born
and brought up on the banks of the Nile.''

Early in his presidency, Mr. Sadat enhanced his popularity by eliminating many of the police-state controls that
Nasser had relied on to keep himself in power in the years after the officers' revolt that brought down the monarchy
in 1952.

In 1973 Mr. Sadat did much to build national self-respect when he ordered Egyptian troops to cross the Suez Canal;
they managed to overrun the heavily fortified Israeli positions on the east bank within a few hours. That confidence
lingered although the Israelis counterattacked, putting a large tank force on the west bank.

As an administrator, he concerned himself with broad lines of policy and for the most part left it to his subordinates to
carry it out. Though an emotional man, he could conceal his feelings and be devious. He repeatedly lied his way out
of trouble when he was a young officer plotting a military revolt, and as President he pulled
off a master stroke of deception when he concealed his preparations for the 1973 war, which began with a surprise
attack on Israel.

Mr. Sadat had many quirks. He disliked offices and rarely appeared at Abdin Palace, Cairo's equivalent of the
White House, preferring to work in his modest villa and in Government-owned rest houses around the country. He
wore elegantly cut British-style suits, though even as President he liked to stroll around his native village in a long
Arab shirt. He never learned to dance. He could be the high-toned statesman one minute, relishing his associations
with other world leaders, and the humdrum homebody the next, always beginning the day with a dose of Eno's Fruit
Salts, a British-made aid to digestion.

First Steps

Mohammed Anwar el-Sadat was born Dec. 25, 1918, in Mit Abul Kom, a cluster of mud-brick buildings in
Minufiya Province between Cairo and Alexandria. He was one of the 13 children of Mohammed el-Sadat, a
Government clerk, and his part-Sudanese wife, a heritage manifest in the boy's skin, darker than the average
Egyptian's.

Minufiya lies in the fertile Nile Delta, its irrigated fields producing rich crops of flax and cotton. In those lush
surroundings young Anwar's early years passed happily.
He wrote later that he had especially relished the sunrise hour ''when I went out with scores of boys and men, young
and old, taking our cattle and beasts of burden to the fields.''

His first schooling was at the hands of a kindly Islamic cleric, Sheik Abdul-Hamid, who instilled in him a deep and
lasting faith in Islam; as an adult Mr. Sadat bore a dark mark on his forehead, the result of repeatedly touching his
head to the floor in prayer.

Too Poor to Buy Store Bread

In 1925 the father was transferred to Cairo, and the family moved into a small house on the outskirts of the capital,
not far from Kubba Palace, one of the residences of Egyptian kings. Anwar gave early evidence of the audacity he
repeatedly showed in later life, stealing apricots from the royal orchard.

Though the elder Mr. Sadat rose to be a senior clerk, the family was poor, so poor that it could not afford to buy
bakery bread. In his memoirs President Sadat said that his early experience of village life, with its ''fraternity,
cooperation and love,'' gave him the self-confidence to make his way in the big city, ''It deepened my
feeling of inner superiority, a feeling which has never left me and which, I came to realize, is an inner power
independent of all material resources.''

In time the proud schoolboy, like other idealistic Egyptians of his generation, came to have a burning political desire:
he wanted his country freed of the control of Britain, which had maintained troops there and exercised sway in other
ways since the decline of Ottoman Turkish power late in the 19th century.

Wanting to play a role in Egypt's future, Mr. Sadat decided to become an officer. Despite his family's lack of
influence, he managed to gain admission to the Royal
Military Academy, which was once a preserve of the aristocracy but had begun taking cadets from the middle and
lower classes. Graduating in 1938, he was
assigned to a signal corps installation near the capital. From that central location, as he later told it, he became active
in the formation of an organization of officers
who wanted to mount an armed revolt against the British presence.

Britain as the Main Foe

When World War II broke out, Captain Sadat continued to regard Britain as the main enemy and took part in a
clandestine attempt to fly a former Chief of Staff, Gen. Aziz el-Masri, out of the country after the Germans had sent a
message asking him to proceed to Iraq to work against British interests there. The plane crashed, the attempt failed
and Captain Sadat was arrested and interrogated but later was released for lack of evidence.

Undeterred, Captain Sadat made contact with two Nazi agents who passed the evenings watching the dancers at the
Kit Kat, a leading Cairo nightclub. Their heavy spending brought them under surveillance, they were arrested and
interrogated, and they implicated their contact. As a result a swarm of British and Egyptian
detectives and intelligence officers searched Captain Sadat's home. His hidden cache of homemade explosives went
undetected, b ut he was arrested and sent to a succession of jails. While in jail, he profited from the time by polishing
his English and learning German.

In 1944 Captain Sadat went on a hunger strike and was transferred to a prison hospital, where he dodged his guard,
jumped into a friend's car and escaped. He then grew a beard and lived as a fugitive for a year, helping for a time
with work on a resthouse being built for King Farouk, who later was to be ousted by the junta
of which Captain Sadat was a part.

Free to Plot Once Again

With the end of the war came the lifting of the martial-law regulations under which Captain Sadat had been detained,
enabling him to resume his real identity in freedom. He also resumed plotting against the British and their Egyptian
supporters. After a fellow conspirator assassinated Amin Osman Pasha, an aristocrat who
favored the British presence, Captain Sadat was tried as a conspirator and acquitted in 1948.

He worked for a while in a Cairo publishing house and in 1950 got himself reinstated in the army. He was soon
promoted, thanks to help from the dissident officers' clandestine network, the Free Officers Organization, which had
been growing in size and power under the leadership of an old friend, Lieutenant Colonel Nasser.
The colonel summoned Major Sadat to a rendezvous in Cairo on July 22, 1952, saying the long-awaited uprising,
now focused on King Farouk, was to take place soon. When Nasser did not appear, the major took his wife to the
movies. Arriving home late in the evening, they found a note from Nasser saying operations were beginning that night
and directing Major Sadat to join the revolutionaries.

''My heart leapt,'' Mr. Sadat recalled in one of his books, ''Revolt on the Nile.'' ''I tore off my civilian clothes and
threw on my uniform. In five minutes I was at the wheel of my car.''

At army headquarters, where the rebels had taken control, Nasser told him to take over the Cairo radio at dawn and
to broadcast a proclamation announcing the coup. Major Sadat carried out that historic task after waiting for the
daily reading from the Koran to be completed.

The revolution led to the exile of Farouk, the withdrawal of British troops from Egypt and, before long, the
emergence of Nasser as strongman and President.

Was Underestimated

Although Mr. Sadat filled high posts during the Nasser era, his abilities were underestimated by many influential men
in the Nasser entourage. For more than a decade he was given a succession of jobs that were highly visible but of
secondary importance. He served as a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, secretary general of an
Islamic congress, editor of two newspapers, minister of state in the Cabinet; deputy chairman, chairman and speaker
of the National Assembly and chairman of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Council.

When Nasser named Mr. Sadat Vice President, it was widely thought that he got the job because it was largely
ceremonial and had no real power, but supporters of Mr. Sadat have contended that Nasser chose him to be his
successor. Nasser, at odds with many other longtime associates, retained warm relations with Mr. Sadat.

Upon Nasser's death of a heart attack, Mr. Sadat, as the only Vice President, automatically became Acting
President under the Constitution. In that office and in his first months as President he had to share power in a
collective leadership with others; some colleagues supported him for the presidency because they thought he
could be manipulated.

In those first weeks many Egyptians, especially students and young intellectuals, found it difficult to take him
seriously. With his grin, his fancy suits and his frequent
hollow-sounding vows to wage war on Israel, he did not seem to be a strong and purposeful leader.

Power

He showed his strength of will when, after a few months, he moved to consolidate his power by dismissing and
imprisoning two of the most powerful figures in the regime, Vice President Ali Sabry, who had close ties with Soviet
officials, and Sharawy Gomaa, the Interior Minister, who controlled the secret police.

Mr. Sadat enhanced his popularity by displaying an intuitive sense of what the people wanted. He was doing what
they wanted when he cut back the powers of the hated secret police, when he ousted the Soviet military experts and
when he prepared for war with Israel. Nevertheless, Golda Meir, Israel's Prime Minister when he
took office, correctly appraised him, she later wrote, as a ''reasonable man who might soberly consider the benefits''
of ending the confronta tion with Israel.

Early in 1973 Mr. Sadat decided to go to war against Israel. He was being criticized by students and others as an
ineffective leader, and he concluded that it was necessary to break the Egyptian-Israeli deadlock. ''If we don't take
our case into our own hands, there will be no movement,'' he said in an interview. ''The time has
come for a shock. The resumption of the battle is now inevitable.''

'Landmark' for Egyptians

After Moscow approved a limited Egyptian invasion of Sinai and after more Soviet arms arrived, Mr. Sadat ordered
the attack on Oct. 6. Egyptian troops surged across the canal and Syrian troops struck Israel from their side. In the
fighting that followed, the Syrians were thrown back and the Israelis counterattacked fiercely,
encircling Suez and carving out a broad bridgehead west of the canal. Despite Israel's strong showing, Mr. Sadat, in
his memoirs, maintained that ''the Egyptian military performance was a landmark in world military history'' and that ''if
the United States hadn't intervened in the war and fully supported Israel, the situation
could have been far different.''

The war spurred Washington to work to ease tensions in the Middle East; Mr. Sadat was soon visited by Mr.
Kissinger. The two hit it off from the first and, Mr. Sadat wrote, began ''a relationship of mutual understanding
culminating and crystallizing in what we came to describe as a 'peace process.' '' Before long Mr.
Kissinger was able to work out a disengagement agreement between Egypt and Israel that allowed the Egyptians to
take back a strip of Sinai. Mr. Sadat welcomed American participation and said later, ''No one else except the
United States can play this role of mediator between two sides that harbor intense hate for one
another - a gulf of bad blood, violence and massacres.''

The agreement, signed in January 1974, was followed by months of ''shuttle diplomacy'' by Mr. Kissinger and by a
second limited Egyptian-Israeli accord in September 1975. Efforts toward a more comprehensive peace agreement
bore no fruit in the next months, however, although the United States and the Soviet Union
agreed on Oct. 1, 1977, on principles to govern a Geneva conference on the Middle East. Syria continued to resist
such a conference.

Need for a New Approach

At that point Mr. Sadat, not wanting to let Moscow and Damascus determine the pace of events, decided that a new
approach was needed. Disregarding objections
from his advi sers, he made the trip to Jerusalem. He told the Israeli Parliment that Egypt's willingness to ''welcome
you among us'' amounted to ''a decisive historical
change,'' but he continued to insist that the Israelis withdraw from occupied Arab land and recognize what he call ed
the rights of the Palestinians. He claimed a
new-found friendship with Mr. Begin and set in motion the first high-level Egyptian-Israeli peace talks.

When Mr. Sadat returned to Cairo, he told his people that ''all barriers of doubt, mistrust and fear were shattered.''
But the negotiations bogged down over differences on the Palestinians and other issues; by January 1978 they were
deadlocked, with Mr. Sadat denouncing the Israelis as stiff-necked. That deadlock
prevailed until Mr. Sadat met with Mr. Begin and President Carter in September 1978 at the Camp David
conference called by Mr. Carter. Two weeks of talks produced signed agreements on what was called ''a
framework for peace.''

After further efforts Mr. Carter flew to Jerusalem and then to Cairo on March 13, 1979, with compromise proposals
to break yet another deadlock, and Mr. Sadat
approved them quickly in a meeting at a Cairo airport. Later that month Mr. Sadat and Mr. Begin signed the treaty,
ending 30 years of Egyptian-Israeli
confrontation. ''Let us work together,'' Mr. Sadat said, paraphrasing the Prophet Isaiah, ''until the day comes when
they beat their swords into plowshares and their
spears into pruning hooks.''

In the hard-line Arab protest against the treaty, 17 Arab nations adopted political and economic sanctions against his
Government. Yet his isolation in the Arab
world did not undercut his domestic support; he deftly reaped political profit from the isolation by underscoring the
idea, widespread in Egypt, that other Arabs had
grown wealthy while the Egyptians had borne the burden of the four wars.

Economy Displayed Strength

His popularity benefited also from the fairly strong condition of the economy, which had seemed on the brink of
disaster after Egypt's catastrophic defeat in the 1967 war. By late 1979 the economic growth rate had reached 9
percent a year and was one of the highest in the developing world, thanks largely to more than $1 billion a year in
American aid.

President Sadat's relations with the Americans and the Israelis, despite some intense friction, remained relatively
harmonious in the months after the signing of the treaty. That good will paid off when, as a gesture of friendship, Mr.
Begin fulfilled one provision of the treaty ahead of time, returning a 580-square-mile tract of Sinai
to Egypt on Nov. 15, 1979, instead of on Jan. 25, as scheduled. Yet no real progress was made in months of
Egyptian-Israeli negotiations on home rule for the
Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Early in 1980 Mr. Sadat held inconclusive talks with Mr. Begin at Aswan, in upper Egypt. Israeli forces withdrew
from more of Sinai, leaving two-thirds of the area
evacuated. The Israeli-Egyptian border was declared open, and the two countries exchanged ambassadors. In
March 1980 Mr. Sadat drew new criticism at home
and in unfriendly Arab capitals when the deposed Shah of Iran, who was ill, moved to Cairo, accepting a
longstanding invitation.

As the new decade got under way, President Sadat seemed confident of his policies, but events seemed to have
taken a somewhat unfavorable turn. Cairo's isolation
in the Arab world and elsewhere in the third world was galling, and the almost total reliance on Washington for food,
aid and weapons was a source of
concern.Inflation was running at a rate of 30 percent a year, there were signs of increasing repression, and Israel's
policy of multiplying settlements on the occupied West Bank intensified pessimism.

In April 1980 President Sadat visited Washington to discuss the Israeli settlements with President Carter. From there
he denounced the Israeli policy as ''unfounded, ill-conceived and illegal.''

Dissent

In the final months of Mr. Sadat's life, as his intricate and sometimes stormy dialogue with Israel continued, there
were repeated expressions of internal opposition to his rule. They continued, and mounted, despite his general
popularity and his continued use of such means as government food-subsidies to dampen disconent.

Early this year Egypt's leftist National Unionist Progressive Party publicly denounced Mr. Sadat's policies toward
Israel. ''This so-called normalization with the Israeli enemy was done at the expense of the Arabs and was opposed
by a growing number of Egyptians,'' a party statement said.

In June a Government prosecutor said a former Egyptian Chief of Staff, Lieut. Gen. Saad Eddin el-Shazli, and 18
other Egyptian dissidents living abroad had plotted to overthrow Mr. Sadat. They were said to have been given $2.8
million by Libya at Syria's urging. And the head of the Egyptian Bar Association complained that Mr. Sadat's regime
was trying to dismember the as sociation's leadership because it had opposed the peace treaty with Israel.

Yet Mr. Sadat continued to give much of his attention to foreign affairs. In June he met inconclusively with Mr. Begin,
for the first time in 17 months. In the meeting in an abandoned restaurant at Sharm el Sheik in Sinai, the Israeli leader
rejected Mr. Sadat's appeal to halt Israeli attacks on Palestinian guerrilla bases in Lebanon.

Denounced Bombing of Iraq

A few days later Mr. Sadat was denouncing Israel for its bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor, which he called an
''unlawful, provocative'' act. It was embarrassing to him because Mr. Begin had told him nothing about it.

On Aug. 3 Egypt and Israel signed an agremeent establishing a 2,500-member international peacekeeping force in
Sinai to police their peace treaty. On Aug. 5 and 6 Mr. Sadat held friendly but inconclusive talks with President
Reagan in Washington. And on Aug. 25 and 26 he and Mr. Begin met yet again, this time in the Egyptian port of
Alexandria, to try to resolve problems that had delayed normalization of relations.

But then Mr. Sadat turned his full attention to internal affairs, evidently acting in response to information about the
extent of dissidence in his perennially unstable land. Citing Moslem and other opposition to his regime, he departed
markedly from the largely velvet-glove treatment of opponents that had characterized his 11 years of
rule.

He cracked down hard, detaining 1,600 opponents, mostly Moslem militants, partly in response to bloody rioting in
June between Moslems and members of Egypt's Coptic Christian minority. After a hastily called referendum, his
Government reported that 99.45 percent of the voters endorsed its measures to curb secular as well as religious
dissidence. Moslem dissidents resented the rapprochement with Israel and wanted a more Islamic cast to Egypt's
government.

'Suffering' From Democracy

At a news conference Sept. 9, Mr. Sadat made a wry reference to his country's heritage of violence and to the
opposition to his rule. To a foreign reporter who asked an impertinent question, he said, ''In other times I would have
shot you, but it is democracy I am really suffering from as much as I am suffering from the
opposition.''

Also last month Mr. Sadat accused a dozen former Egyptian officials of ''conniving'' with the Soviet Union to
destabilize his Government. He ordered the expulsion of more than 1,000 Soviet citizens, including the Soviet
Ambassador, Vladimir P. Polyakov.

The Government-supervised Egyptian press reported that Egyptian intelligence had uncovered anti-Government
plotting by Soviet agents in league with Egyptian religious extremists, leftists, Nasserites, educators, journalists and
others.

Later in the month - even as officials of Egypt, Israel and the United States held talks in Cairo seeking a plan for
self-rule for Palestinians - Mr. Sadat's Government took further action to quell dissidence. Among other measures,
uniformed guards in university campuses were reinforced. A sweeping investigation of the bureaucracy was decreed.

Said Indiscipline Had Ended

In a widely quoted speech, Mr. Sadat asserted, in what proved to be a display of overconfidence, that all of Egypt's
internal indiscipline had come to a halt.

''Lack of discipline in any way or form,'' he said, in a two-hour televised address, ''in the streets, in the Government,
in the university, in the secondary schools, in the factory, in the public sector, in the private sector, this all has ended,
it has ended.''

In Israel, however, a long-time observer of Mr. Sadat was already speaking of the possibility that his work might be
snuffed out. The Israeli Chief of Staff, Lieut. Gen. Raphael Eitan, said bleakly, ''There are troubles in Egypt, and it is
possible that President Sadat will go and everything will come to an end.''

Mr. Sadat was divorced from his first wife, who was from his native village; they had three daughters. His second
wife, Jihan, has played a strong role in public affairs, particularly concerning the condition of women and children.
The four children of his second marriage are a son, Gamal, named for Nasser, and three
daughters, Lubna, Noha and Jihan.

''In Egypt, personalities have always been more important than political programs.'' - ''Revolt on the Nile,'' 1957.

''Don't ask me to make diplomatic relations with them. Never. Never. Leave it to the coming generations to decide
that, not me.'' - On Israel in 1970, a few months before he became President.
''The situation here - mark my words - will be worse than Vietnam.'' - In a magazine interview, July 1973.

''We have always felt the sympathy of the world, but we would prefer the respect of the world to sympathy without
respect.'' - In a speech to the People's Assembly after the first attack of the Yom Kippur war, Oct. 6, 1973.

''Let every girl, let every woman, let every mother here - and there in my country - know we shall solve all our
problems through negotiations around the table rather than starting war.'' - During his visit to Israel, November 1977.

''I have a great ally in Israel that I depend upon. Do you know who? The Israeli mother.'' - Commenting on the vote
of approval by Israel's Parliament of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, March 22, 1979.

''In all the steps I took I was not performing a personal mission. I was merely expressing the will of a nation. I am
proud of my people and of belonging to them.

''Today a new dawn is emerging out of the darkness of the past. ''Let us work together until the day comes when
they beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.'' - At the peace treaty signing between
Egypt and Israel at the White House, March 26, 1979. ''There will be no barriers between our peoples, no more
anxiety or insecurity, not more suffering or suspicion.'' - Meeting with Menachem Begin at Beersheba, May 27, 1979.

''It is democracy I am really suffering from as much as I am suffering from the opposition.'' -Speaking to foreign
journalists of unrest in Egypt, Sept. 9, 1981.