Hero of the crossing: how Anwar Sadat and the 1973 War changed the world

Abstract

Its various names—the Yom Kippur War, the October War, the Ramadan War and the 1973 War—reveal that the Arab–Israeli war of October 1973 had and continues to have different meaning and symbolism for the belligerent sides. For the Israelis, the war represents a national trauma that will be forever ingrained in the collective psyche, but for the Arabs, and particularly the Egyptians, the war represented a victory. The myth of total Israeli military superiority, largely reinforced by the Six-Day War, was smashed and the Arab forces managed to penetrate Israel's territory, both in the north and south of the country. For the Egyptians, the war would also lead to both a return of the Sinai and a certain restoration of Arab military, political and national pride. Thomas W. Lippman very ably reveals the contours of President Anwar Sadat, a central character to this period of Middle Eastern statecraft, who took on the Arab world in his quest for peace with Israel and challenged the superpowers' assumptions about policy-making, both domestically and on the world stage. Lippman asserts that by 1975 Sadat's aims were becoming clear: restore Egyptian national pride, sign a peace deal with Israel and forge an alliance with the United States after the failure of former President Gamal Abdel Nasser's Soviet alignment. With these three aims, Sadat was to carve himself a political niche surpassing regional boundaries, which would, in due course, release the extremist forces that killed him.