Egypt's struggle for peace: continuity and change, 1967-1977

Abstract

Yoram Meital's study is the first to trace systematically the processes that led from the 1967 war to the beginning of Egyptian-Israeli reconciliation marked by President Anwar Sadat's visit to Israel in late 1977. He provides a detailed, chronologically structured account of the steps leading from 1967 to the Jerusalem visit, and he demonstrates how Sadat's visit, while personally and politically courageous, was nevertheless completely in keeping with Egypt's course of national interest set out nearly a decade earlier. Making extensive use of hitherto untapped Arabic and Hebrew sources, Meital convincingly demonstrates that the history of the peace process did not begin with the 1973 war but had its origin in the period of 1967-70. Further, he argues that the transformation was less a matter of individual personality than part of a redefinition of the Egyptian national interest occasioned by the new military, political and socioeconomic circumstances created by the 1967 war. These circumstances forced Egypt to narrow the conflict from an existential battle to a territorial dispute and disagreement over the terms of peace.