sadat and the egyptian-israeli peace revisited

8/11/2019 Sadat and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Revisited

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Sadat and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace RevisitedAuthor(s): Ibrahim A. KarawanSource: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (May, 1994), pp. 249-266Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/164735 .Accessed: 09/07/2014 18:36

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Int. J. Middle East Stud. 26 (1994), 249-266. Printed in the United States of America

Ibrahim A. Karawan

SADAT AND THE EGYPTIAN-ISRAELI PEACE

REVISITED

With the resumption of the search for an Arab-Israeli settlement, analysts havebeen

debatingthe 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 de-cade 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 conflicthas been voluminous, as many policy makers and analysts in Egypt, Israel, therest of the Arab world, and the United States published their accounts of this de-velopment. Despite many ideological and political differences among these writ-ers, they all concluded that this foreign-policy shift represented a radical alterationof Arab policies toward Israel and that with Egypt out of the war equation, the re-gional 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 conflictwith Israel. One or another of Sadat's personal characteristics has been singled outby his admirers and critics alike as being the main factor behind the Egyptian for-eign-policy shift. It is not that they considered other factors such as socioeco-nomic variables and regional or global structures irrelevant. They simply assessedthem as not decisive in terms of their relative explanatory power.

For former American secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who negotiated withSadat repeatedly between 1973 and 1976, the decisive factor was Sadat's strategicthinking, an asset that enabled Sadat to identify the essentials of the situation andto rise above insignificant details. Sadat the statesman was, according to Kiss-

inger, capable of demonstrating "to all those obsessed with the tangible, the tran-scendence of the visionary."' For former president Carter, Sadat's moves towardpeace were attributable to a character that was "extraordinarily inclined towardboldness." For Ismail Fahmy, who was Sadat's foreign minister between 1973 and1977, the way Egypt had disengaged from the conflict with Israel reflected Sadat'simpulsive style of split-second decision making and his quest for personal aggran-dizement and fame. Sadat's Jerusalem trip illustrated best, according to Fahmy, aman "consumed by his desire to become an international hero."2 MohammedHeikal, the former editor of al-Ahram newspaper, saw it as the move of a presi-dent who misread the facts of Egypt's history and geography, suffered from

Ibrahim A. Karawan eaches at the Department of Political Science, University of Utah, 252 Orson SpencerHall, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112, U.S.A.

? 1994 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/94 $5.00 + .00

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250 Ibrahim A. Karawan

chronic low self-esteem, and had become obsessed with Western media in generaland American television in particular.3

This article has three main objectives. The first is to examine Egypt's foreign-policy shift, and not just the Jerusalem trip, in light of the literature on the primacyof the role of leaders in foreign-policy making in less-developed countries (LDCs).The second is to construct an explanation of this shift that links it to aspects of Sa-dat's operational code and the nature of the Egyptian political system. The third isto demonstrate the inconsistencies and shortcomings in the explanations for Egypt'sforeign-policy shift that focus on Sadat's belief system.

THE LEADER-CENTERED ARGUMENT

At the root of the aforementioned arguments about Sadat's role is the assumptionthat the personal characteristics of the principal decision maker are the most impor-tant factors in determining foreign-policy outcomes. Accordingly, the best guide tounderstand why certain decisions were made is to look into the biographies, auto-biographies, and psychobiographies of individual leaders.4 For the analyst whoadopts this approach, the point of departure s that a state does not act, but that cer-tain individuals in official positions who are responsible for formulating foreignpolicy do. More important s that they act according to their perceptions of reality,not in response to reality itself: hence, the crucial distinction between the psycho-logical and the operational environments. In this leadership-centered iterature, thepsychological environment of the decision maker(s) is much more important n ex-plaining foreign-policy outcomes than the operational environment or the distribu-tion of power among various international actors.

According to the basic assumptions of this perspective, the efforts of the analystsshould be directed toward reconstructing the leader's "definition of the situation,"or set of perceptions and misperceptions. In Michael Brecher's words, "the opera-tional environment influences the choice among policy options-that is, the deci-sions themselves-only as it is filtered through the images of decision-makers."Thus, he concluded that the "decision maker's image is the most crucial input offoreign policy making."5 Robert Jervis stressed that foreign-policy decisions areinfluenced by the way leaders simplify as well as organize a complex environment,which then determines what information they deem important, their images ofother actors, and how they respond to new developments. This explains why deci-sion makers can and do act differently when confronted with similar situations.6

To avoid a total dichotomy between the characteristics of the decision maker(s)and those of the situational setting, attempts have been made to identify certainconditions that maximize the impact of the decision maker's characteristics onforeign-policy outcomes. Foremost among these are situations characterized by ahigh degree of ambiguity, either due to a lack of information or to contradictoryand swiftly shifting data. In such a setting, decision makers are forced to interpretthese types of data through reliance on their belief systems and attitudinal prisms.A second type of situation emerges when core interests of the state are threatenedin a way that requires the direct and intensive involvement of the political leaderin the decision-making process (as in a crisis). A third type occurs when the politi-



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Sadat and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Revisited 251

cal leader enjoys wide decisional latitude and functions under minimal domesticconstraints.'

In fact, a major trend in the literature on LDC foreign-policy making identifiesits specifics in terms of the psychological characteristics of leaders, their opera-tional codes, and even their personal idiosyncrasies. Most studies that focus on theprincipal decision maker argue that he "is far more important in the analysis ofdeveloping political systems than in developed western democracies. This cate-gory refers to the hegemony over the decision making structure .. of one personwho in some cases can exercise profound normative influence on the population asa whole." They also single out foreign policy where leaders insist on sheer mo-nopoly. For instance, Heikal argues that in developing countries, which are mostlyat either the traditional or the transitional stages of development, decision-makingpowers, particularly in the foreign-policy arena, are usually held by one individ-ual. "This may be a hereditary monarch, a prince or a sheikh, who rules with theauthority of tradition behind him. It may be a charismatic leader who enjoys popu-lar support for freeing his people from colonial bondage, or for placing the coun-try on the path of development. Or he could simply be a dictator."8

Leaders of LDCs often formulate foreign policy under minimal domestic politi-cal and organizational constraints. Most of these countries do not have a viableconstitutional legitimacy that can impose significant constraints on foreign-policymaking. Even though the institutional machinery for consultation may exist informs such as cabinets and national security councils, its actual role is secondary,because generally it is not given important information. Such a role is usuallyconfined to discussions, after the fact, of how to sell the decision to one constitu-ency or another or how to mobilize support behind what has already been decidedby the leader and perhaps a few hand-picked aides. The weakness of cabinets andparliaments and the role of single political parties maximize the importance of theleader's role in formulating foreign policy in most of the LDCs.

The lack of a well-developed bureaucracy in the area of foreign policy furtherenhances the centrality of the leader's role. The bureaucratic politics paradigm asarticulated by Allison and Halperin emphasizes the multiplicity of organizationalactors in foreign-policy making, the diversity of interests among those actors "de-pending on where each sits," and the processes of pulling and hauling, compro-mise, and consensus building that ultimately produces a political result, rather thana purposive action in foreign policy. Most of the LDCs have not developed large-scale, complex, and differentiated bureaucratic institutions that play an effectiverole in foreign-policy formulation. Maurice East, Franklin Weinstein, Joel Migdal,and Bahgat Korany all come to similar conclusions: studying bureaucratic politicsmay be useful in explaining certain cases in American foreign policy, but it is notapplicable to most LDCs.9

Applying the Argument to Egypt's Foreign Policy ShiftEgypt's foreign policy has been treated not as an exception but rather as a confir-mation of the proposition that the leader's operational code is the most salient fac-tor in explaining foreign-policy formulation and change. In his 1962 study of



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Egypt's foreign policy, P. J. Vatikiotis concluded that a "charismatic leader ismore important in Egyptian politics than the mechanisms, checks and balances

that loom large in Western political practice, because the type of leadership hasalways been more important n Arab Islamic societies than the type of political in-stitutions.... The tradition of centralized authority in Egypt facilitates the emer-gence of charismatic leaders." Adeed Dawisha's 1976 study of Egypt's foreignpolicy in the Arab world emphasized the authoritarian nature of the Egyptian po-litical system in which the study of the leader's personality and idiosyncrasies be-comes essential for constructing a more accurate explanation of Egypt's foreignpolicy. A number of studies done during the 1980s presented similar arguments.'0

Sadat's Political Beliefs. If one starts with Sadat's belief system, or what Alex-ander George called philosophical beliefs (fundamental assumptions and orienta-tions), a case could be made that two aspects of that belief system played asignificant role in shaping Egypt's regional and international behavior. The first wasthe primacy of Egyptian, as opposed to Arab, nationalism. In that respect Sadat wasdifferent from, if not the opposite of, his predecessor. Nasser believed that Egyptwas destined, by the logic of history, demography, and geography, to lead the"Arab circle." He decided that the role of Arab leadership had been "wanderingaimlessly in search of a hero ... [and that] this role exhausted by its wandering hasat last settled down . . . near the borders of our country."11

Sadat had no Pan-Arabist designs. In his formative period, he had been greatlyinfluenced by political movements that emphasized Islam or Egyptian nationalism.After he assumed the presidency, Sadat encouraged the trend of "Egypt first." In asymbolic move, he again changed the name of the country from the United ArabRepublic, which he inherited from Nasser, to the Arab Republic of Egypt. AsFouad Ajami put it, "Sadat could hope to compete with his predecessor in Egyptproper, but in the Arab world his predecessor was larger than life. There wasperhaps in Sadat's Egyptianness a desire to move from Nasser's shadow, into asmaller area in which his predecessor seems more real and less glamorized, moresubject to errors and to a normal, more tangible assessment."'12

The emphasis on Egyptian as distinct from Arab identity became obvious partic-ularly in Sadat's public statements after the 1973 war. It was then that Sadat wasable to deviate from the Nasserite doctrine because, through the war, he had finallymanaged to establish his own legitimacy. He had emancipated himself from Nas-ser's shadow and thus did not have to abide by the doctrine that he had inheritedand to which he had previously paid homage. In his first major postwar politicaldocument, called "the October Paper," Sadat identified Egyptian nationalism as themost decisive influence behind the "accomplishment of October." He elaborated onthemes that had not been talked about much in Egypt since the late 1950s such asEgyptian national identity and its 7,000 years of civilization.13 Although he contin-ued for a while to talk about Arab solidarity, he did so on the basis of broadlydefined common interests, not on the ideological basis of his predecessor.

It can be argued that this belief explains important components of Egypt's pol-icy shift toward the Arab-Israeli conflict between 1973 and 1978. For example,when Sadat concluded that Egypt's interests would be best served by seeking an



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immediate cease-fire in the third week of October 1973, he did not consult withother Arab leaders, or even coordinate with his Syrian war ally. On 16 October1973, he simply announced his terms for accepting a cease-fire. Assad heard them,like many others, on the radio. When Sadat decided to accept a cease-fire on 22October 1973, he merely informed Assad of his decision. The same pattern heldtrue regarding Egypt's acceptance of the First and Second Disengagement Agree-ments with Israel (1974-75). Both moves, particularly the latter, were bitterlycriticized in the Arab world. Syria and the Palestinian organizations accusedEgypt of defecting from the Arab coalition in a way that left the other Arab frontsextremely vulnerable. However, Sadat did not reconsider his chosen course of ac-tion. He was firmly convinced that the alternative-linking the settlement processon all three fronts-would have given Syria and radical Palestinian groups a vetopower over Egypt's policy regarding its own territory, and it would have promisedno settlement at all. This was simply unacceptable from Sadat's perspective. Afterall, as one writer put it: "He {had) never excited a pan-Arab audience, he hadnever been an [Arab] hero."'4 Sadat himself repeated that he could not accept anArab tutelage over Egypt's policy; "It is not conceivable that the fate of my coun-try should be dependent on the consent of other Arabs."'5

Even when Sadat decided on Egypt's most dramatic policy shift and announced,on 9 November 1977, his readiness to address the Knesset in Jerusalem, he delib-erately avoided any consultations with other Arab leaders. Although he exchangedviews with the Syrian president three days before the trip, he did so after he hadpublicly committed himself to go to Israel and while preparations for the visitwere already under way. In effect, Sadat decided on this move after he concludedthat there was no reason to abide by the lowest common Arab denominator if itmeant continued Israeli occupation of the Sinai and an indefinite extension of thestate of "no war no peace" with all its negative repercussions on Egypt. If Nasserhad still been in power, the argument goes, he could not have ignored his doctrineof Arab nationalism or his wide constituency in the Arab world. Because Sadatdid not believe in this doctrine or have such a constituency, he was both willingand able to take this dramatic step.

The second component of Sadat's belief system that could be identified as anexplanatory factor of Egypt's policy shift was his anti-Sovietism.16 The evidenceof his deep hostility toward the Soviet Union can be found both in Sadat's articu-lation of his thoughts, and in a number of major foreign-policy decisions that puthim on a collision course with the Soviet Union. He emphasized his strong oppo-sition to Soviet ideology because of its irreconcilability with Islam; as a "devoutMuslim" he was vehemently anti-Communist.'7 Less than two months after sign-ing the Egyptian-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in May 1971, Sa-dat played a major role in crushing a Communist-supported coup in Sudan indefiance of a Soviet request to recognize the new regime. In the aftermath of theEgyptian-backed countercoup, a number of the Soviet Union's best friends inSudan were summarily executed. Among them were Abdel Khaleq Mahgoub, thesecretary general of the Communist party of Sudan, and al-Shafih Ahmed al-Sheikh, a prominent labor leader and a recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize.18 Notunexpectedly, the Soviets were furious at this so-called Egyptian friend who used



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their weapons to crush their ideological comrades and political allies. When theSoviet ambassador in Cairo asked for an explanation, Sadat answered: "I cannotallow a communist regime to be established in a country sharing my borders....No communist regime will ever be established in this part of the world, becausewe are religious by nature."'9

Sadat was also convinced that the Soviets had favored his rivals in the domesticpower struggle of May 1971. "The Soviets are not happy about anything whichhappened in Egypt after [Nasser]," he said, "I'm not their man. Moreover, I haveeliminated their men."20 According to former foreign minister Ismail Fahmy,while Nasser was in Moscow for medical treatment in 1970, the Soviet premierKosygin rather tactlessly asked him about his succession. When Nasser mentionedSadat's name, Premier Kosygin pressed further, "Who comes after Sadat?" andwas clearly satisfied to hear Nasser mention the name of Ali Sabri. "Sadat got themessage and never forgot it," said Fahmy. This psychological factor later influ-enced Sadat's dealings with the Soviets. According to Fahmy, "With the Soviets,Sadat's attitude was one of great suspicion, and of readiness to interpret everystatement [they made] as an attack against Egypt, and an insult to himself."21

An equally strong conviction confirmed by many statements made by Sadat wasthat the Soviets had a vested interest in the perpetuation of an Arab-Israeli stale-mate in order to secure Arab dependence on them as arms suppliers. Soviet lead-ers refrained from providing Egypt with certain military items that Sadat deemednecessary for a limited battle in 1971, and thus helped make his much publicized"year of decision" anything but what he promised it to be.22 Even a cursory read-ing of Sadat's statements and writings reveals how Egypt and Sadat were oftenused interchangeably (hence the appropriateness of the title, "I, Egypt"). In justi-fying his decision to expel about 20,000 Soviet advisers from Egypt in July 1972,Sadat stated that "the main reason was the deliberate Soviet attempt to let medown through the withholding of the military equipment which I had requested, asif they were in Moscow saying to me: you could not decide upon anything withoutSoviet permission" (emphasis added).23 His perception of a Soviet attempt to hu-miliate him was emphasized by one of his top aides who revealed that in his pri-vate remarks Sadat was embittered because of the difference between the way theSoviets treated him and the way they treated his predecessor. "I waited throughJune, July, August, and most of September for what Podgorny himself had prom-ised, but to no avail. I often summoned the Soviet ambassador.... I wrote to theSoviet leaders frequently, but all I could receive in answer to my messages wasthat they were away in their Crimean summer resort "24

It is hardly surprising hat Sadat launched a call for a Pax Americana while the bar-rels of Egypt's Soviet-made weapons were still warm n the aftermath of the 1973 war.It was a matter of faith for Sadat that the Soviets had an interest in the continuationof the state of "no war no peace," because as he repeatedly put it, "according to theircalculation as soon as the war is over we would no longer need them." If that was thecase, why should they be expected to help in reaching a settlement that promised torender heir influence in the area negligible? Thus, Sadat had his own reasons to agreewith Henry Kissinger on the desirability, even necessity, of excluding the Sovietsfrom the settlement process after 1973.25



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Sadat was aware that the Soviets would not take this foreign-policy realignmentlightly or without making an effort to frustrate it. In his view, they reacted to hisshift toward collaboration with the United States in three ways: first, they backedSyrian, Palestinian, and Libyan opposition to the Second Disengagement Agree-ment known as Sinai II; second, they exerted economic and military pressures onhis regime by refusing to reschedule Egypt's debts or to provide the Egyptian armywith much needed spare parts, as they had done with Syria; third, they werethought by Sadat to have instigated the domestic unrest that escalated between Jan-uary 1975 and July 1977 as part of a Soviet grand design to bring down his regime.

The most dramatic manifestations of unrest took place in the third week of Janu-ary 1977. The government's decisions to increase the prices of some basic com-modities and services were met by violent demonstrations and riots in major cities.The main targets of these attacks by the enraged masses were symbols of affluenceand state institutions. The call for Sadat's overthrow was heard frequently and sup-ported enthusiastically during the demonstrations, which lasted two days. Accord-ing to the official account, seventy-nine persons lost their lives, and hundreds wereinjured in clashes with security forces. The intensity of these violent demonstra-tions forced Sadat to retreat and cancel the price increases, order a fourteen-hourcurfew, and use the army to regain control of this sociopolitical upheaval.

I shall limit my focus regarding the January riots to the realm of Sadat's percep-tion of this popular uprising and its impact on Egypt's foreign-policy shift. Theclearest expression of that relationship was provided in a personal interview withDeputy Prime Minister Hassan al-Tuhami. Tuhami was also Sadat's representativein the secret talks with Israel's Moshe Dayan in Morocco during the third week ofSeptember 1977. In Tuhami's words:

The January iots had shown us the deliberate ntentions of the Soviet Union to bring theregime down. The local communistsmoved all over the country, epeating he same slogansand using the same tactics. But we know that local communists annot do anything bythemselves, and without he orders, or at least approval, f the Soviet Union. The responseof the President was a decision [the trip to Jerusalem] o kick the Soviet Union and itsagents out of the area.26

Sadat himself described the January riots as engineered by "communists who re-ceived their instructions from Moscow."27

A common explanation of Sadat's decisions to go to Jerusalem and before thatto conclude the Sinai II agreement depicts them as outcomes of Sadat's deeplyrooted suspicions of Soviet motives. Such a link can be established along the linesof the aforementioned Tuhami argument, through the management of the socio-economic crisis in a way that could reduce the regime's political vulnerability toits Moscow-supported enemies. The intensification of the socioeconomic crisiswas paralleled by large-scale demonstrations, strikes, political violence, and asharp decline in the regime's legitimacy, which Sadat had believed firmly wouldaid the Soviet design to bring him down. Other analysts point out that because ofhis anti-Sovietism, Sadat decided sometime in late October or early November1977 to subvert the diplomacy of his major ally, the United States, when theCarter administration showed an interest in bringing the Soviet Union back into



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the peace process as a cosponsor of the Geneva Conference. Because of Sadat'sprofound suspicions of the Soviets, he saw such a development as a guarantee that

no settlement would be reached and concluded that the stalemate should bebrought to an end by other means, including direct and public negotiations withIsrael.

Sadat's Decisional Style. What about Sadat's instrumental beliefs or preferredstyle in foreign-policy making? Sadat's style in decision making included a fre-quent resort to surprises. He often described this preferred style as "the electricshock strategy," whereas others labeled it "Sadat's shock therapy."28 The decisionto expel the Soviet advisers in July 1972, to launch war against Israel in October1973, to reopen the Suez Canal in June 1975, and to go to Jerusalem in November

1977 are all examples. In most of these cases, a very small number of individualswere consulted or told in advance of the president's decision (or at an earlierstage, his inclination).

As Michael Handel pointed out, the effective pursuit of surprise diplomacy hasto combine two interrelated elements-secrecy and shock: "Secrecy provides asafe atmosphere in which the two sides . .. can negotiate, and make the necessarypreparations for fundamental policy change.... Shock is intended to throw theadversary off balance and force him to facilitate a breakthrough n stagnant situa-tions."29 The secrecy element can be found in the talks held in Morocco betweenSadat's envoy, Hassan al-Tuhami, and the foreign minister of Israel, Moshe

Dayan. In his report to Sadat, Tuhami indicated that Israel's position in the talkswas more positive than what could be derived from Begin's public statements. Inreturn for peace, Israel was basically ready to withdraw its forces from Sinai. Asto the element of shock, one can understand it by examining the immediate con-text of Sadat's announcement of his readiness to address the Israeli parliament.

Ironically enough at the time, the guest of honor in the People's Assembly meet-ing, where Sadat dropped his bombshell on 9 November 1977, was Palestine Liber-ation Organization (PLO) chairman Yasser Arafat. Sadat devoted part of his speechto heaping praise on Arafat and the PLO. More intriguing, according to former for-eign minister Fahmy, Sadat had insisted on Arafat's presence as a guest of honor. Onthe face of it, this gesture looked like a reward to the PLO chairman for his effort inmediating between Egypt and Libya, an effort encouraged by Sadat himself. Afterhis return from the Libyan capital, Arafat informed Egyptian officials that Qaddafiwas looking seriously for a reconciliation with Egypt. As signs of his good inten-tions, the Libyan leader reportedly expressed readiness to finance Egypt's purchaseof five hundred tanks and five squadrons of fighter airplanes, and to provide an un-disclosed amount of financial assistance. In return, he anticipated that Egypt's policywould, among other things, refrain from pursuing any partial or bilateral diplomaticsettlement with Israel.30

Another reason why Sadat's Jerusalem decision came as a total surprise, whichshocked even his closest aides, was the fact that its announcement came only twodays before the Arab foreign ministers were to start their deliberations in Tunisiaabout the next stage of Arab political strategy. Any provocative or controversial stepof that nature reasonably could have been expected after, not before, the conference.



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Accordingly, when asked in Tunisia about Sadat's announcement of his readiness togo to Israel, Egyptian foreign minister Fahmy insisted that it was basically a public-relations statement.31

Sadat's decisional style also included announcing deadlines by which the resultsof major policies were to materialize. According to him, 1971 was "the year of de-cision," during which an end had to be put, peacefully or otherwise, to the Israelioccupation of Sinai. When the year ended without a decision, his well-publicizedcommitment was mocked, and large-scale demonstrations erupted in Cairo andAlexandria, reflecting a general sense of frustration. Sadat made a similarly publi-cized commitment after the food riots in January 1977, by designating 1977 as"the year of the settlement" and the turning point toward prosperity. By late Octo-ber and early November, it became clear that the American attempt to reconvenethe Geneva Conference had reached a deadlock. Hence, Sadat felt the necessity oflaunching his own "peace initiative." In doing so, he was pressured by that verycomponent of his decisional style that proved to be problematic.32

Furthermore, an argument about the significance of Sadat's belief system in ex-plaining the policy outcome under discussion can be based on the existence of theaforementioned conditions that usually enhance the effects of the leader's personalcharacteristics in foreign-policy making. First among these is the ambiguity of thesituation itself, characterized in conflicting statements and rapidly shifting posi-tions. In 1977, for example, the United States had a new administration, whichadopted a "comprehensive approach" n place of Kissinger's step-by-step strategy.At first, the Carter administration reached an agreement with the Soviets about thebasic principles that were to guide the settlement process. Only a few days later,however, it reformulated ts position in the face of strong Israeli opposition. Israelhad a new and hawkish government under Prime Minister Menachem Begin, but itwas sending signals, particularly to Egypt, of its readiness to make important con-cessions. Syria accepted and then rejected the idea of sending a unified Arab dele-gation to the opening session of the peace conference. Arafat accepted and thenturned down the proposal that two American professors of Palestinian origin (re-portedly the suggested names included Edward Said and Ibrahim Abu Lughod) rep-resent the Palestinians in the Geneva negotiations. In such a fluid and ambiguoussituation, Sadat was forced to interpret developments using his operational code.

A second pertinent factor was Sadat's direct and intensive involvement in foreign-policy making; obviously he was the principal decision maker. By virtue of his po-sition and its traditional dominance over foreign policy, he exercised what amountedto a monopoly over the formulation of Egypt's policies toward the Arab-Israeliconflict, the Arab world, and the superpowers.33 The published memoirs of the for-eign ministers who worked with Sadat lend credence to the conclusion that "thepresidential center" played the predominant role in deciding major foreign-policy is-sues. "When faced with an important ssue, he retired to one of the presidential res-idences to be alone for a few days. He did not like reading recommendations andreports, and liked to surprise his aides. Sadat's advisors referred to the president pri-vately as a latter day pharaoh."34

A third and related factor is the wide decisional latitude that Sadat enjoyed,given the authoritarian nature of the political system. Sadat attempted to legitimize



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such latitude in sociocultural terms when he spoke of Egypt as one extended familywith himself as the eldest, which Ajami aptly characterized as "a curious avoidance

of politics."35 Another image favored by Sadat, that of a village headman or Cumda,is equally telling of what he expected and tried to achieve in major policy-makingdecisions. On the occasion of drafting a new constitution in 1971, Sadat made itclear that he wanted the new document to reflect the values of unity and respect forthe head of the family and of the village: "I want it to be worded in such a way asto turn the whole of Egypt into one big village." By implication Sadat became thepersonification of the society's honor, or "a sort of super cumda."36

A Critique of the Leader-Centered Argument

The operational-code approach relies on an analysis of speeches, statements, andwritings of political leaders. In many cases, however, the researchers actually an-alyze material that was ghost-written to convey certain impressions that may ormay not correspond accurately to the leader's beliefs. This problem has led somescholars to suggest dealing mainly with statements in press conferences when theleader has little time to plan answers. The statements are thought, then, to becloser to what Margaret Hermann has called "spontaneous material" than to"planned material."37 However, this suggestion can be criticized on the groundthat press conferences and interviews are often used by political leaders to sendsignals to other states through statements that reflect political expediency morethan they do beliefs. Individual leaders may use particular language in foreignpolicy, not to convey political values and attitudes, but to influence or even ma-nipulate a particular domestic or international audience.38 Particular circumstancesthat surround the statements, as well as temporal inconsistency, can also be quitesignificant, but in a way it is not shown adequately if one relies merely on ananalysis of a leader's answers in a press conference.

The problem with the belief-system approach is not confined to data reliability.It has been subjected to a number of conceptual criticisms that have identifiedthree basic problems. First, the term "belief system" has not been used in a consis-tent manner nor has it been clearly defined: it has been used to refer to variablesranging from attitudes and values to orientations. Second, studies based on thisapproach have often neglected changes in the importance or the meaning of thebeliefs themselves as the particular situation changes. The third problem has beenthe weakness of the causal link between the beliefs of leaders and the behavior ofstates.39

These problems weaken the argument that Sadat's "belief system" offers the bestexplanation for Egypt's foreign-policy shift in the Arab-Israeli conflict, an argu-ment that has many shortcomings. First, Sadat adopted diametrically opposed poli-cies and positions in a way that could not be attributed to the same belief system.We are told that he was an Egyptian, rather than a Pan-Arabist, first. For years hehad refused to negotiate with Israel, however, as long as it occupied Arab andEgyptian lands; he had characterized negotiating under these conditions as sheersurrender. In many statements before the Jerusalem trip he emphasized that "any-one who engages in negotiations while his territories are occupied is thereby capit-



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ulating." When talking to an American or Western audience, his favorite rhetoricalquestion was, "When Japan occupied the entire Pacific . . . why did the U.S. not sitat the table with Japan in order to find a peaceful solution?"40

Second, it is not clear how to identify those particular components of Sadat's be-lief system that are most significant in shaping the Egyptian foreign-policy shift. Itmay be convenient to argue that Sadat shifted policy because of the marginality ofhis Arab identification or the intensity of his "paranoia" oward the Soviet Union.However, the tabulation and analysis of Sadat's statements between 1970 and 1977leave no doubt that he considered Israel to be Egypt's primary enemy and that heattributed to it expansionist and aggressive designs. His anti-Israeli and even anti-Jewish attitudes (at least until November 1977) were certainly not a very well-keptsecret, and they fit Robert Jervis's "inherent bad faith model." Speaking about Jeru-salem he vowed, "We shall take it with the help of Allah out of the hands of whomthe Quran has said 'it was written of them that they shall be demeaned and madewretched'. We shall not conduct direct negotiations with them. They are a nation ofliars and traitors, contrivers of plots, a people born for deeds of treachery."41

Not surprisingly, studies that analyzed the content of Sadat's speeches and inter-views have found it difficult to explain Egypt's disengagement from the conflict inlight of his core beliefs concerning Israel, which should have precluded major pol-icy shifts. The author of a study that tested the utility of Margaret Hermann's ana-lytic categories in explaining Middle Eastern cases has concluded that Sadat "incontrast to [King] Hussein and Assad . . . had personal traits which resembledthose of aggressive leaders" and that "it was [King] Hussein or even Assad, ratherthan Sadat, who should have initiated conciliatory moves."42

Third, this argument ignores the existence of a similar mindset regarding thedisengagement from the conflict with Israel at the highest level of the Egyptianruling elite. It is true that Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy resigned after it becamecertain that the president was determined to go to Jerusalem. But it is equally truethat he had cooperated with Sadat in disengaging Egypt from the conflict with Is-rael and shared to a great extent Sadat's belief in the central role of the UnitedStates in bringing about a settlement. In addition, he was not against direct nego-tiations, at some stage, with Israel. The main point in his disagreement with Sadathad to do with political tactics.

Fahmy acquired wide public recognition first when he participated n an al-Ahram-sponsored symposium in May 1972, about the state of "no war no peace." In analyz-ing the best policy that Egypt should adopt to end the stalemate, he advocatedimproving relations with the United States, distancing Egypt from the Soviet Union,and resorting to "a military initiative to revitalize the crisis." Fahmy claimed later that"Sadat's foreign policy certainly started changing in the direction I have suggested."The similarity between his and Sadat's policy is quite evident. After the 1973 war, heshared Sadat's willingness to adopt a policy of de facto nonbelligerency toward Israel(as evidenced by the reconstruction of the Suez Canal area). He supported ending dejure the state of belligerence with Israel in the context of the Sinai II agreement asmanifested in its stipulation that the conflict between the parties and in the MiddleEast "would not be solved by military means," and the Egyptian commitment to allownonmilitary cargoes destined for or coming from Israel to pass through the canal.



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Fahmy also shared Sadat's opposition to the Syrian proposal n 1977 of pursuing strictlinkage between all issues on all fronts or collective bargaining and mutual vetoes in

the settlement of the conflict with Israel. It would require only one party, accordingto Fahmy, to "take too uncompromising a position, thus totally defeating the possi-bility of success at Geneva."43

Moreover, Fahmy's memoirs are quite revealing concerning his readiness for di-rect negotiations with Israel. In the course of a discussion with Sadat, he reportedlysaid, "I was instrumental, and from the very beginning responsible for the successof the first and second disengagements on the Egyptian-Israeli front.... It shouldby now be evident that both you and I work for peace. But the point is what kind ofpeace.... I'm not against your meeting with Begin. I am ready to arrange for ameeting in Washington or Geneva, or even to bring Begin to Cairo, but going toJerusalem is a different matter. By going to Jerusalem you will play all your cardsfor nothing."44

Fourth, both Sadat and Nasser before him acted on the basis of the primacy ofEgypt's national interest regarding the conflict with Israel, despite the repeatedlyemphasized differences between their belief systems. Nasser's behavior was farfrom that of a Pan-Arabist ideological warrior against Israel. During the first fewyears after seizing power, he explored possibilities of a political settlement withIsrael through intermediaries who opened channels of communication betweenhim and Moshe Sharett. Between the Suez War in 1956 and the June War in 1967,he was primarily interested in bringing about domestic changes to develop Egypt,and regional political transformations to secure its leadership of the Arab world.Thus, it is important to distinguish between the rhetoric of Egypt's declaratoryposture toward Israel and its actual moderate policies. This distinction may ex-plain why the Egyptian-Israeli borders were the quietest in the area between the1956 and 1967 wars, the very period that witnessed the consolidation of the Nas-serist regime in Egypt. When Israel was on the verge of completing its diversionof the Jordan River water, Nasser made it abundantly clear that he did not wantEgypt to be dragged into a confrontation with Israel "through the precipitous ac-tion of another state," trying to outbid everyone else in terms of its commitment tothe Palestinians. As one astute observer put it, "for Nasser a sense of commitmentto the cause of Arab Palestine was always tempered by a pragmatic concern forEgypt's own national interest. For the Palestinians, these limitations-not fullyrecognized until after 1967-were a source of. . . disappointment and increasingfrustration."45

Despite Palestinian objections, Nasser accepted U.N. Security Council Resolu-tion 242 in November 1967, which recognized Israel's right to exist and treatedthe Palestinian issue as a mere refugee problem. In August 1970, when he per-ceived it to be in Egypt's national interest, he accepted the second Rogers plan,which called for a cease-fire, and the conduct of indirect negotiations with Israelthrough a U.N. representative on the basis of Security Council Resolution 242.Iraqi, Syrian, and Palestinian denunciations of the Egyptian acceptance mounted,but Nasser was not about to allow other Arab states and organizations to exercisea veto power over Egypt's policy, even in the name of Pan-Arabism. When a PLO-operated radio station in Cairo criticized Egypt's acceptance of the Rogers plan as



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a sellout, Nasser ordered it closed and its operators as well as other Palestinian ac-tivists evicted.46

A fifth and last problem with the belief-system argument is that it does not ex-plain adequately the timing of certain decisions along the path of disengagement.For instance, if Sadat had held his belief system for years, why did he not opt toaccept a separate deal with Israel at some earlier point?47 f he had consistently re-jected direct political talks with Israel and emphasized that "if both the ProphetMohammad and Jesus were to come back and try to convince Moslems and Chris-tians among the Arabs to open borders . . with Israel they would refuse,"48 andthen decided to disengage Egypt from the conflict further after facing intense do-mestic unrest and a clear-cut regional stalemate in a way that created a muchgreater threat to the survival of his regime, how then can we conclude that it was

not the latter factors that accounted for the policy shift or established the settingfor such a shift?

The main point in such criticisms of the leader-centered explanations for Egypt'sdisengagement from the Arab-Israeli conflict is not (and should not be understoodto imply) that personality factors are irrelevant. The personal characteristics of theleader coupled with the features of the political system as a whole are better suitedto shed light on a specific decision (the choice of going to Jerusalem) or the "how"dimension of the foreign-policy alteration (i.e., policy-making style, preference forrisk maximization vs. risk avoidance, scope of interelite deliberation, and the deci-sional latitude of the principal policy maker). A more adequate analysis of the"why" dimension49 has to go beyond the political beliefs of "the latter-day pha-raoh" to examine state-society interactions and the political economy of foreign-policy restructuring.

NOTES

Author's note: I am indebted to Ali Dessouki, Bahgat Korany, Arthur Stein, Louis Cantori, AfafMarsot, Peter Diamond, and especially Richard Sklar for helpful comments on earlier versions. How-ever, I do absolve all of them from responsibility for any errors. Personal interviews proved to be in-valuable, 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 Su-hayla Karawan for their constant support.

'Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (New York: Little Brown, 1982), 647.2For Carter's views, see Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith (Toronto: Bantam House, 1982), 282-83. For

Fahmy's assessment, see Ismail Fahmy, Negotiating for Peace (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univer-sity Press, 1983), 283-90.

3See Mohamed Heikal, Autumn of Fury: The Assassination of Sadat (London: Routledge and KeganPaul, 1983), chap. 1; idem, "Egyptian Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs 56, 4 (July 1978): 714-27;idem, Hadith al-Mubaidara (The Talk of the Initiative) (Beirut: Sharikat al-Matbi'at, 1978); SalwaShacrawi Jum'a, al-Dibliimasiyya al-Misriyya fi 'Aqd al-Sab'indt (Egyptian Diplomacy in the Decadeof the Seventies) (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahda al-'Arabiyya, 1988); Jamal Zahran, al-Siyaissa al-Khdrijiyya li-Misr (The Foreign Policy of Egypt) (Cairo: Madbuli, 1988); Muhammed 'Abd al-Salam

al-Zayyat, al-Sadat: al-Qiniic wa-al-Haqiqa (Sadat: The Mask and the Reality) (Cairo: Kitab al-Ahali,1989); 'Abd al-Alim Muhammed, al-Khitaib al-Sddati (The Sadatist Discourse) (Cairo: Kitab al-Ahali,1990), 244-71; Lutfi al-Khiili, "Madrasat al-Sadat al-Siyasiyya" (Sadat's Political School), a series ofarticles published in al-Ahrdm between 13 June and 20 August 1975; Raphael Israeli with Carol Bar-denstein, Man of Defiance (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1985), 216-47; Shaheen Ayubi, Sadat and



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Nasser (Wakefield, N.H.: Longwood Academic, 1992); David Hirst and Irene Beeson, Sadat (London:Faber and Faber, 1981); Mattityahu Peled, "The Year of Sadat's Initiative," in Great Power Interven-tion in the Middle East, ed. Milton Leitenberg and Gabriel Sheffer (New York: Pergamon Press, 1979),301-12. Relatively fewer studies presented alternative conceptualizations of Egypt's disengagementfrom the Arab-Israeli conflict. These include Bahgat Korany, "Egypt's Dependent Development: Pat-tern of Inter-Arab Politics and the Making of the Camp David Agreements" (Paper presented to theMiddle East Studies Association Meeting in San Francisco, 28 November-i December 1984); Ali Des-souki, "The Primacy of Economics: The Foreign Policy of Egypt," in The Foreign Policies of ArabStates, ed. Bahgat Korany and Ali Hillal Dessouki (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1984); ShibleyTelhami, Power and Leadership in International Bargaining, the Path to the Camp David Accords(New York: Columbia University Press, 1990).

4See G. H. Stassen, "Individual Preferences versus Role-Constraint in Policy Making," World Poli-tics 25, 1 (October 1972): 96-119; M. J. Shapiro and G. M. Bonham, "Cognitive Processes and ForeignPolicy Decision Making," International Studies Quarterly 17, 2 (June 1973): 147-74; Margaret Her-mann, "Leader Personality and Foreign Policy Behavior," in Comparing Foreign Policies: Theories,Findings and Methods, ed. James Rosenau (New York: Halsted, 1974), 201-34; idem, "Effects of Per-sonal Characteristics of Political Leaders on Foreign Policy," in Why Nations Act, ed. Maurice East,Stephen Salmore, and Charles Hermann (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1978); idem, "Ex-plaining Foreign Policy Behavior Using the Personal Characteristics of Political Leaders," Interna-tional Studies Quarterly 24, 1 (March 1980): 7-46.

5Michael Brecher, The Foreign Policy System of Israel (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,1972), 11; see also Ole Holsti, "Individual Differences in 'Definition of the Situation'," Journal ofConflict Resolution 14, 3 (September 1970): 303-10; Alexander George, "The Operational Code: ANeglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision Making," International StudiesQuarterly 13, 2 (June 1969): 190-222; Robert Jervis, Perceptions and Misperceptions in InternationalPolitics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976).

6Brecher, Foreign Policy System, 28-29; see also by Robert Jervis, "Political Decision Making: Re-cent Contributions," Political Psychology 2 (1980): 86-101. A useful overview of this approach can befound in Alexander George, Presidential Decision Making in Foreign Policy (Boulder, Colo.: West-view Press, 1980). In this study, George defined the leader's belief system as a "prism or filter that in-fluences the actor's perception and diagnosis of political situations, and that provides norms andstandards to guide and channel his choices of action in specific situations" (ibid., 45). For a criticalevaluation of this literature, see Martha Cottam, Foreign Policy Decision Making: The Influence ofCognition (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1986), 5-31.

7Margaret Hermann, "Effects of Personal Characteristics," 51. For another typology that identifiedseven situations under which the personal characteristics of political leaders play a decisive role in for-eign policy, see Ole Holsti, "Foreign Policy Formation Viewed Cognitively," in Structure of Decision,ed. Robert Axelrod (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton

UniversityPress, 1976), 30. For studies that adopted this

perspective to explain the specificity of LDC foreign policy, see James Rosenau, "Pre-Theories andTheories of Foreign Policy," in Approaches to Comparative and International Politics, ed. R. BarryFarrell (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1966); W. Scott Thompson, The Foreign Policyof Ghana 1957-1966 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969); I. William Zartman, Interna-tional Relations in the New Africa (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1966); P. J. Vatikiotis,Nasser and His Generation (New York: St. Martin, 1978); Raphael Israeli, "I, Egypt": Aspects of Pres-ident Anwar Al-Sadat's Political Thought (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1981); Adeed Dawisha, Syria andthe Lebanese Crisis (New York: St. Martin, 1980); Christopher Clapham, "Sub-Saharan Africa," inForeign Policy Making in Developing States, ed. Christopher Clapham (Westmead, Eng.: Saxon House,1977), 76-109; Michael Leifer, "South East Asia," ibid., 18-41.

8On the general characteristics of personal regimes, see Robert Jackson and Carl Roseberg, "Per-

sonal Rule: Theory andPractices in

Africa," ComparativePolitics

16,4

(July 1984):421-42. For Mid-

dle Eastern cases, see A. Dawisha, "The Middle East," in Foreign Policy Making, 62-63; MohamadHassanein Heikal, "Egyptian Foreign Policy," ibid., 714-15; P. J. Vatikiotis, "The Foreign Policy ofEgypt," in Foreign Policy in World Politics, ed. Roy Macridis (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall,1962), 304.



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9Although the Egyptian Foreign Ministry has its specialized structures and highly competent diplo-mats, its role concerning important matters has been limited. For the general argument on bureaucraticpolitics, see Graham Allison, "Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis," American PoliticalScience Review 63, 3 (September 1969): 689-718; Graham Allison and Morton Halperin, "Bureau-cratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications," World Politics 24 (Spring 1972): 40-80;Stephen D. Krasner, "Allison's Wonderland: Are Bureaucrats Important?" Foreign Policy 7 (Summer1972): 159-79. For discussions of Third World cases, see Maurice East, "Size and Foreign Policy Be-havior," World Politics 25, 4 (July 1973): 556-76; idem, "Foreign Policy Making in Small States,"Policy Sciences 4, 4 (December 1973): 491-508; Franklin B. Weinstein, "The Uses of Foreign Policyin Indonesia: An Approach to the Analysis of Foreign Policy in the Less-Developed Countries," WorldPolitics 24, 3 (April 1972): 356-81; idem, Indonesian Foreign Policy and the Dilemmas of Dependence(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1976). For studies that aimed at formulating general proposi-tions to explain LDC foreign policy, see Joel Migdal, "International Structures and External Behavior:Explaining Foreign Policy of the Third World States," International Relations 4, 5 (May 1974): 510-25; Bahgat Korany, "Foreign Policy in the Third World," International Political Science Review 5, 1(1984): 7-20; idem, "Foreign Policy Models and Their Empirical Relevance to Third World Coun-tries," International Social Science Journal 26, 1 (March 1976): 70-94.

10P. J. Vatikiotis, "Foreign Policy of Egypt," in Foreign Policy in World Politics, 340; A. I. Daw-isha, Egypt in the Arab World: The Elements of Foreign Policy (London: Macmillan, 1976), 107. Seealso Muhammad el-Sayyid Salim, al-Tahlll al-Siyasi al-Nisiri (Nasserist Political Analysis) (Beirut:Markaz Diriasait l-Wahda al-'Arabiyya, 1983); Salwa Sharawi Gomaa, "Egyptian Diplomacy in theSeventies: A Case Study in Leadership" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1986).

11Gamal Abdul Nasser, Egypt's Liberation: The Philosophy of the Revolution (Washington D.C.:Public Affairs Press, 1955), 87-88. See also Marlyn Nasr, al-Tasawwur al-Qawmi al-'Arabifi Fikr Ja-mil 'Abd al-Nasir (The Arab Nationalist Conception in the Thought of Jamal 'Abd al-Nasir) (Beirut:Markaz Dirasait al-Wahda al-'Arabiyya, 1981).

2Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 94.13Ibid., 99; Amatzia Baram, "Territorial Nationalism in the Middle East," Middle Eastern Studies 26,

4 (October 1990): 431-32; Raphael Israeli, "Sadat between Arabism and Africanism," Middle East Re-view 11, 3 (Spring 1979): 39-48. See Shlomo Aronson, Sadat's Initiative and Israel's Response: TheStrategy of Peace and the Strategy of Strategy, n. 14 (Los Angeles, Calif.: Center for Arms Control andInternational Security, UCLA, 1978), 1-5; R. Michael Burrell and Abbas Kelidar, Egypt: The Dilemmasof a Nation (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1977), 58. Salwa Gomaa argued that Sadat's self-image played a predominant role in influencing his objectives and actions. According to her, in studyinghis foreign policy, one of the main questions has to be: "Did Sadat see himself as an Arab or an Egyp-tian? ... 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 aspira-

tions, acceptance,and

support.But if he saw himself as an

Egyptianfirst of

all,then his definition of the

situation would be more flexible." Gomaa, Egyptian Diplomacy in the Seventies, 12-13, 53-56. Anotherstudy 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 it-self." Muhammad Hussein Mustafa, "The Role of Cognitive Perceptions: Nasser and Sadat" (Ph.D. diss.,Boston University, 1985), 377. For the detailed comparison, see ibid., 348-425.

14Ajami, Arab Predicament, 94.15Daniel Dishon, "Sadat's Arab Adversaries," Jerusalem Quarterly 8 (Summer 1978): 13-15. Ac-

cording to Quandt, Sadat had "informed Secretary [of State Cyrus] Vance in August 1977 that a singleArab delegation [to the suggested Geneva conference would] lead to an 'explosion', because of attemptsby each Arab party to impose its will on the others. Egypt in particular . .. could not accept Arab dic-tation of what it can and cannot accept." William Quandt, Camp David: Peacemaking and Politics

(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1986), 88, 135. During the summer and early fall of 1977,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 bar-gaining and mutual vetoes. On 22 October 1977, Assad's envoy, General Naji al-Jamil, discussed theSyrian position with Sadat and reportedly lectured him "on his duty as an Arab nationalist, which



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greatly irritated the Egyptian leader." (ibid., 142). See also al-Ahram, 27 November 1977; IbrahimKarawan, "Sadat on the Road to Jerusalem: Four Levels of Analysis" (Paper presented at the MiddleEast Studies Association Annual meeting in Seattle, November 1981), 23-24.

'6Many studies focused on Sadat's anti-Sovietism as an explanation of his pursuit of a separate peacewith Israel, particularly after the Soviet-American communique of 1 October 1977. For examples, seeRobert Tucker, "The Middle East: For a Separate Peace," Commentary 65, 3 (March 1978): 25-31;Shlomo Avineri, "Peacemaking: The Arab-Israeli Conflict," Foreign Affairs 57, 1 (Fall 1978): 51-69;Gabriel Ben-Dor, interview with Point International, 19 December 1977, 16. However, in assessing thisargument it is important first to recall that the communique mentioned earlier did not last more than afew days due to opposition by Israel and the pro-Israeli lobby in the United States; see Raymond Cohen,"Israel and the Soviet-American Statement of October 1, 1977: The Limits of Patron-Client Influence,"Orbis 22, 3 (Fall 1978): 613-33. Second, Sadat's assessment of the communique was rather mixed. Onthe one hand, in his public statements (which aimed primarily at ridiculing the Soviet Union's leftistfriends in

Egyptand the Arab world), he characterized he communique as one more proof of the simi-

larity of the basic positions of the superpowers, regardless of any allegations to the contrary. As Sadatpointed out, the communique had shown that the Soviet position has taken a step backward by support-ing normalization of relations between the parties, dropping the PLO's name as far as Palestinian repre-sentation 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 issueof the conflict and recognizing the "national rights of the Palestinian people." See al-Ahram, 7 October1977 and Akhbar al-Yawm, 16 October 1977. On the other hand, in his dealings with American officialshe described the communique as "a brilliant maneuver" to pressure Syria to adopt a more flexible posi-tion in the Geneva conference; see Ambassador Hermann Eilts, "The Syrians Have Been Their OwnWorst Enemies," New York Times, 12 January 1982; Quandt, Camp David, 123.

17Raphael Israeli, "The Role of Islam in President Sadat's Thought," Jerusalem Journal of Interna-tional Relations 4, 4

(1980),1.

1Mohamed Heikal, The Sphinx and the Commissar (London: Collins, 1978), 231-32.19Anwar l-Sadat, In Search of Identity (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), 284.20Anwar al-Sadat, Wasiyyati (My Will) (Cairo: al-Maktab al-Misri al-Hadith, 1982), 151-52.21Fahmy, Negotiating for Peace, 135-37.22See quotations from Sadat's speeches in Zahran, al-Siyasa al-Khdrijiyya li-Misr, 259-79. For

more, see Alvin Rubinstein, Red Star on the Nile (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977);Petro Ramet, Sadat and the Kremlin (Los Angeles: California Seminar on Arms Control and ForeignPolicy, 1980).

23Zahran, al-Siyasa al-Khdrijiyya li-Misr, 260. See also the statement by Sadat: "Since I becamePresident, 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 August 1972.24Interview with a former high-ranking official, Cairo, September 1979; also see Sadat, In Search ofIdentity, 225-26.

25Al-Ahrdm, 7 November 1977. On the foreign-policy and security implications of Egypt's globalrealignment in the mid-1970s, see Ibrahim Karawan, "Egypt and the Western Alliance: The Politics ofWestomania?" in The Middle East and the Western Alliance, ed. Steven Spiegel (London: Allen andUnwin, 1982), 163-81; idem, "Egypt's Defense Policy," in Defense Planning in Less-IndustrializedStates, ed. Stephanie Neuman (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1984), 147-65.

26Personal nterview with Hassan al-Tuhami, deputy prime minister in the presidential palace, Cairo,23 September 1979. See Tuhami's interview in Ruizal-Yusif, no. 2695, 4 February 1980, 12-13, and inal-Musawwar, no. 3007, 28 May 1982.

27Quoted n Martin Indyk, To the Ends of the Earth: Sadat's Jerusalem Initiative (Cambridge: Cen-

ter for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, 1984), 20. See also Husayn 'Abdal-Raziq, Misrfi18 wa-19 Yandyir Egypt on the 18th and 19th of January) (Beirut: Dar al-Kalima, 1984), 13-86; HasanAbui Baishai,Mudhakkirdt i al-Amn wa-al-Siydsa (Memoirs in Security and Politics) (Cairo: Dar al-Hillal, 1990), 50-55.

28Anan Safadi, "Sadat's Second Surprise," Jerusalem Post Magazine, 18 November 1977, 4-5.



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29Michael Handel, "Surprise and Change in International Politics," International Security 4, 4(Spring 1980): 61; see also Michael Handel, The Diplomacy of Surprise: Hitler, Nixon, and Sadat(Cambridge: Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 1981).

30See Ismail Fahmy's statement in al-Mustaqbal (Paris), 12 December 1977; and the statement byHani al-Hassan, Arafat's political adviser, in al-Sdfir (Beirut), 21 November 1977.

31New York Times, 13 November 1977; and Fahmy's statements in Mahmuid Fawzi, Kamb Dayfid fi'Aql Wuzard' Khdrijiyyat Misr (Camp David in the Mind of Egypt's Foreign Ministers) (Cairo: Mad-buli, 1990), 85.

32See quotations from Sadat's speeches examined in Zahran, al-Siyasa al-Kharijiyya li-Misr, 329,371; Derek Hopwood, Egypt, Politics and Society, 1945-1981 (London: George Allen and Unwin,1982), 107; Ahmad Bahia al-DIn, Muhawarati Maca al-Sddit (My Conversations with Sadat) (Cairo:Dar al-Hillal, 1987), 123-33.

33Dawisha, Egypt in the Arab World, 97. For an opposing viewpoint, see Melvin Friedlander, Sadatand Begin: The Domestic Politics of Peacemaking (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983), 239-40. Inthe doctoral dissertation upon which this book is based, Friedlander argued that "Sadat had neither thelatitude nor opportunity to simply will a decision.... He had to bargain, cajole, often gently and per-suasively, sometimes officiously. In short Egypt's leader succeeded [in disengaging his country from theArab-Israeli conflict], because he was an expert at implementing strategies not too dissimilar fromadroit managers of parliamentary or coalition governing bodies"; see Melvin A. Friedlander, "The Man-agement of Peacemaking in Egypt and Israel: 1977-1979" (Ph.D. diss., The American University,Washington D.C., 1982), xi-xii, 586-87. For critical assessments of the implications of the decisionalunit on bargaining positions see Tariq al-Mahdawi, "'Amaliyyat SunC al-Qarar i al-Siyasa al-Kharijiyyaal-Misriyya" (The Process of Decision Making in the Egyptian Foreign Policy), al-Mawqifal-'Arabi 12,94 (February-March 1988): 132-40; Shibley Telhami, "Evaluating Bargaining Performance," PoliticalScience Quarterly 107, 4 (Winter 1992-93): 643-45.

34Ehud Yaari et al., The Year of the Dove (New York: Bantam, 1979), 22; see also idem, "Sadat's Pyr-amid of Power," Jerusalem Quarterly 14 (Winter 1980): 110-21. On the general characteristics of thepredominant eader as a type of "ultimate decision units," see Margaret Hermann and Charles Hermann,"Who Makes Foreign Policy Decisions and How," International Studies Quarterly 33 (1989): 363-66.

35Fouad Ajami, "The Struggle for Egypt's Soul," Foreign Policy 35 (Summer 1979): 29. Salwa Go-maa concluded that "Sadat's conception of the Egyptian political system as one big family where thepresident plays the role of the father who must be obeyed . . . approached to a large degree the Webe-rian patriarchal system" (see her study, Egyptian Diplomacy in the Seventies, 58-59).

36Raphael Israeli, Peace is in the Eye of the Beholder (Berlin: Mouton Publishers, 1985), 114-17,183-89; John Waterbury, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,1981), 383.

37Margaret Hermann, "Explaining Foreign Policy Behavior," 15. For a critique of Hermann's pro-posal, see Karen Rasler, William Thompson, and Kathleen Chester, "Foreign

PolicyMakers, Personal-

ity Attributes, and Interviews," International Studies Quarterly 24, 1 (March 1980): 47-66.38Rasler et al., "Foreign Policy Makers," 52-53. On the reliability of representational versus instru-

mental modes of communication in operational code research, see Deborah Welch Larson, "Problemsof Content Analysis in Foreign-Policy Research," International Studies Quarterly 32 (1988): 247-50.

39Martha Cottam, "Cognitive Limitations and Foreign Policy Decision Making" (Ph.D. diss., Uni-versity of California at Los Angeles, 1983), 15, 28.

40Raphael Israeli, The Public Diary of President Sadat (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978), 1: 250.41Quoted in Israeli, "The Role of Islam in President Sadat's Thought," 7-8. See also, idem, "I,

Egypt," 117-43; Hirst and Beeson, Sadat, 277-78. On Sadat's perceptions of Israel and Zionism as ag-gressive, destructive, and expansionist, see Zahran, al-Siydisa al-Kharijiyya li-Misr, 78-81.

42Ibid., 73-99, and in particular, 379; Saliba George Sarsar, "The Effects of Defense and War Costs andPersonal Traits on

Changein

Foreign PolicyOrientations: A Case

Studyof Sadat's

Egypt" (Ph.D. diss.,Rutgers University, 1984), 84-115, particularly 107-108. Less than six weeks before his assassination,Sadat described to Saad Ibrahim he ordeal he went through while visiting Israel and meeting most of itsleaders; see Sa'd al-Din Ibrahim, Icadat al-ltibar lil-Ra'is al-Sddadt The Rehabilitation of PresidentSadat) (Cairo: Dar al-Shuriiq, 1992), 25-26.



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43Fahmy, Negotiatingffor Peace, 7-8, 15-16, 80, 159-60, 192; FawzI, Kamb Dayfidfi cAql Wuzara'

Kharijiyyat Misr, 31-33; William Quandt, Decade of Decisions (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1977), 265-75.44Fahmy, Negotiating for Peace, 256-58.45Raymond Baker, Egypt's Uncertain Revolution under Nasser and Sadat (Cambridge: Harvard Uni-

versity Press, 1978), 37; idem, Sadat and After: Struggles for Egypt's Political Soul (Cambridge: Har-vard University Press, 1990), 94; Dawisha, Egypt in the Arab World, 43; Malcolm Kerr, The Arab ColdWar (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 126; Nadav Safran, "Dimensions of the Middle EastProblem," in Foreign Policy in World Politics, ed. Roy Macridis (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1985), 353; Usama al-Ghazali Harb, "al-Muwajaha al-CArabiyya-al-Isra'iliyya wa-DaynamiyyatCal-Dawla' wa Cal-Sharciyya' i al-calam al-CArabi" The Arab-Israeli Confrontation and the Dynamicsof the State and Legitimacy in the Arab World), Shuaun Filastiniyya, 160-61 (July-August 1986): 17-36, particularly 23. For more on Egyptian-Israeli contacts during the first few years after Nasser's as-

cendence to power, see Ahmad Hamriish, Kharif 'Abd al-Nasir (The Autumn of 'Abd al-Nasir) (Cairo:Madbuli, 1984), 18-25; Michael Oren, "From Revolution to Crisis: Egypt-Israel Relations" (Ph.D.diss., Princeton University, 1986); idem, "The First Egyptian to Visit Israel," Middle East Review(Spring 1989): 39-46; and his more recent article, "Secret Egypt-Israel Peace Initiatives Prior to theSuez Campaign," Middle Eastern Studies 26, 3 (July 1990): 351-70.

46See the statement by Egypt's official spokesman in al-Ahram, 29 July 1970, 1, and 17 August 1970,1. A first-page comment in al-Ahram referred to slogans by Palestinian organizations according towhich they refused any sponsorship over their decision making. In response, the Egyptian leadershipstated that "it categorically rejects any wisaya (sponsorship) on it and on the Egyptian people, and theEgyptian revolution by any of those who repeat these slogans without understanding what they mean,"al-Ahrdm, 1 August 1970, 1. In these comments the word "Egypt," and not the "United Arab Republic,"was used more frequently than before. A meeting chaired by Nasser stressed that "Egypt's acceptance of

a ceasefire... falls within Egypt's responsibility, because it was Egypt and not other Arab states thatcancelled the unlimited ceasefire which the other Arab fronts continue to abide by" (al-Ahrdm, 2 August1970, 1). See the text of Nasser's sharp letter to the Iraqi president in al-Ahram, 3 August 1970, whichmade clear that he did not consult Arab leaders before accepting Rogers's proposals, although he metwith six of them in the Libyan capital two weeks earlier. According to Heikal, if Egypt had asked for anArab vote on its move, "it could not have moved. Egypt had to assume its responsibility and to act." SeeMuhammad Haykal, "Qadaya Asasiyya lil-Munaiqasha" Basic Questions for Discussion), al-Ahram, 7August 1970, 3; idem, "Misr: al-Iltizaim wa-al-Qadar" (Egypt: The Commitment and the Destiny), al-Ahram, 4 September 1970. Moreover, Heikal, who had earlier characterized opposition to Egypt's for-eign policy by other Pan-Arabist forces as "childish," posed this challenge to them: "If you do not likethe way we fight, let us see how the fighting ought to be" (al-Ahram, 13 August 1970, 9).

47According to Arnold de Borschgrave, Newsweek's political correspondent n the Middle East in the

1970s, President Sadat told him as early as February 1972 that "it was necessary to open a direct dia-logue with Israel as a way of bypassing the two superpowers and liberating Egypt's policy from theirinfluence. However, he asked him not to publish that part then" (al-Nahar al-'Arabt wa-al Dawli, 10December 1977). See, along similar lines, the memoirs of former deputy prime minister Muhammad'Abdal-Salaim al-Zayyat in al-Ahali (Cairo), 25 November 1987, 10.

48As quoted in the New York Times, 19 January 1977.49For a discussion of Third World and specifically Arab cases, see Bahgat Korany, "The Take-Off of

Third World Studies? The Case of Foreign Policy," World Politics 35, 3 (April 1983): 456-87; idem,"When and How Do Personality Factors Influence Foreign Policy?" Journal of South Asian and MiddleEastern Studies 9, 3 (Spring 1986): 35-59; idem, "Dirasat al-Siyaisat al-'Arabiyya al-Kharijiyya: Taqyimwa-Naqd" (The Study of Arab Foreign Policies: An Evaluation and Critique), al-Majalla al-CArabiyyalil-Dirdsdt al-Dawliyya 1, 1 (Winter 1978-88): 5-28. For more on the political economy of the Egyptian

case, see Ibrahim Karawan, "Foreign Policy Restructuring: Egypt's Disengagement from the Arab-Israeli Conflict Reconsidered" (Unpublished manuscript, Political Science Department, University ofUtah, August 1993).

sadat and the egyptian-israeli peace revisited

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