WHEN he succeeded the late Gamal Abdel Nasser last October, he was greeted with a cascade of tasteless jokes. “We’re suffering two plagues at one time. First Nasser dies. Then we get Sadat.” Haughty survivors of the ancient régime ridiculed him for his dusky skin (from his Sudanese mother) and because he had come from an impoverished delta village that is so remote, the nearest bus route is a mile away. Politicians dismissed him as a light-weight whose chief talent was sheer survival. When he delivered his first May Day speech in the steelmaking city of Helwan, workers shouted “Sadat! Sadat! Sadat!”, but the photographs they waved portrayed Nasser, Nasser, Nasser.
Yet Egypt’s President, Anwar Sadat, 52, after seven months in power, is no longer the butt of scornful jokes. He is no longer referred to as a “caretaker,” soon to be supplanted by a more powerful leader. Dispossessed aristocrats no longer mock him, and politicians are discovering unexpected talents. Like some Nileside Harry Truman, Sadat is running the most populous and most important Arab nation with far greater authority and efficiency than anyone had anticipated.
Through deft diplomatic maneuvering, he has also managed to make himself something of a key to the solution —if any—of the Middle East riddle. In the weeks and months ahead, he will be one of the major figures with whom the U.S. must deal in the attempts to contain the dangerous Arab-Israeli conflict and to keep it from becoming a Soviet-U.S. confrontation. Last week Secretary of State, William Rogers flew into Cairo to make a first-hand assessment of Nasser’s successor. Rogers was also interested in exploring one of Sadat’s latest initiatives: a proposal for an agreement between Egypt and Israel on reopening the Suez Canal.
Unfinished Business
Sadat, among other things, is attempting to come to grips with the kinds of domestic problems that Nasser shunted aside as he pursued his costly war with Israel and his grandiose visions of Pan-Arab unity. Egypt last week reached a population of 34 million (early this year, Israel proudly welcomed its three-millionth citizen). At present, Egyptian babies are being born at the rate of one every 40 seconds. Sadat is trying to meet some of the inevitable problems that this overbreeding creates, particularly in a nation where much of the population is crowded into a narrow ribbon of verdant land astride the life-giving Nile. In both Cairo and Alexandria, the country’s two dominant cities, emergency repairs are under way to keep haphazard water, sewage and electricity systems functioning. Last week Sadat promised old age pensions for all Egyptians within a year, and forecast constitutional reform “which will shape our society.”
Telephones are still tapped frequently, and mail and cables censored in Egypt. But there have been some notable relaxations. The secret police are far less in evidence now. Following record crops last year, consumer goods are more readily available and some food prices have been forced down. The cruel sequestration laws that Nasser invoked to punish the middle class for opposing him have been eased, and many Egyptians are reclaiming seized property. Faced by a shortage of efficient managers, Sadat is seeking to create a class of executives and to give them a sense of belonging.
Open criticism is being allowed again, and there have been some pointed attacks on the Pan-Arabism that flourished under Nasser and all but obliterated millenniums of Egyptian history. Wrote Literary Editor Louis Awad of Cairo’s Al Ahram: “If you search in the six reading books taught from Grade 1 to Grade 6 in Egyptian schools, you do not come across the name Egypt even once. You only discover stupid poems that begin, I am an Arab. My father is Arab. My brother is Arab. Long live the Arabs.’ ” So pronounced is the “Egypt first” mood, that the Cairo correspondent of Beirut’s Al Moharrer recently fretted in print: “I cannot but be concerned about Egypt’s Arab character.”*
Bold Stroke
If there were any doubts that Sadat was running the country, they were dissipated last week when the President in a bold stroke purged Ali Sabry, 50, one of his two Vice Presidents and his closest competitor for power. Sabry has been resentful from the first that it was Sadat, not he, who won the presidency after Nasser succumbed to a massive coronary thrombosis. After some months of sniping, he decided to challenge Sadat head-on over the proposed federation of Egypt, Syria and Libya. The union has been coolly received by Egyptians, who recall how a similar federation with Syria dissolved rancorously a decade ago. Sadat is not believed to be much more enthusiastic; but he agreed to join in order to put pressure on Israel and to mute criticism of his diplomatic initiatives toward the Israelis.
Direct Affront
At a bitter, five-hour meeting of the 150-man central committee of the Arab Socialist Union last month, Sabry launched a showdown attack on the federation. Like the pro-Communist Sudanese, the left-leaning Sabry objected to any alliance with Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, a fundamentalist Moslem who vigorously opposes Communism. Sabry’s real target, however, was Sadat. Sabry bluntly demanded: “Where did you get the authority to agree to this federation?”
It was an affront that Sadat could not ignore. Five days later, during his May Day speech at Helwan, he pointedly ignored Sabry among 40 notables gathered on the dais. Then, his back, ram rod stiff, and his brown eyes flashing, he declared: “I am responsible to the Almighty, the people, and myself.” Next day he stripped Sabry of the vice presidency.
In no area, however, has Sadat left his imprint more clearly than in the tortured Arab-Israeli confrontation. This is the problem that Richard Nixon has described as “the most dangerous” facing the U.S. and, indeed, the rest of the world, because of its “potential for drawing Soviet policy and our own into a collision.”
After the humiliation of the Six-Day War of 1967, Nasser mixed bluster and bullets in his efforts to regain Sinai and the Gaza Strip from Israel. He succeeded only in accumulating 20,000 casualties in his fruitless “war of attrition,” and was more than glad to negotiate a ceasefire. Sadat, with a calm and moderate approach and the subtlety of a bazaar merchant, has managed in four months to put Israel on the diplomatic defensive. First, in a major shift in Arab policy, he announced his willingness to recognize Israel’s right to exist in return for the restoration of captured territory. Next, he offered a kind of mini-peace on the issue of the Suez Canal as a way of getting that waterway into operation again and, more important, of getting Israeli troops off its east bank.
Sadat’s proposals were well timed. In New York, the Big Four meetings on the Middle East involving the U.S., Soviet Union, France, and Britain, were getting nowhere. The indirect talks among Egypt, Jordan and Israel under the aegis of Swedish Diplomat Gunnar Jarring were similarly stalemated. Sadat’s proposal seemed a way out of the impasse. Though the Israelis publicly voiced reservations, one high official described the plan as “the only remaining exit.” Secretary of State Rogers, who apparently felt the same way about it, scheduled a seven-day Middle Eastern tour to explore the possibility of carrying out the Sadat plan.
Accompanied by nine official delegation members, an administrative and security staff of 36, and 20 Washington newsmen, Rogers visited Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt, winding up at the end of last week in Israel. There were certain dangers implicit in the tour. Simply by winging about the area in a great blue and white presidential 707, Rogers raised hopes that he would break the diplomatic logjam. If there is no progress—either on the Suez plan or the broader issue of an overall Arab-Israeli settlement—the U.S. can expect some harsh criticism. Rogers only fueled that feeling when he said last week: “There has never been, and may not again be for a long time to come, a better opportunity than exists today to move toward a just and lasting peace.” Said Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Sisco, traveling with Rogers: “One thing is sure. The situation will not stand still. It will either improve or deteriorate.”
Two Plans
Sadat’s Suez plan calls for the Israelis to withdraw from their fortified Bar-Lev Line to new positions farther back in the desert along a line from just east of the Mediterranean coastal town of El Arish to Ras Mohammed, at the extreme southern tip of the Sinai peninsula just west of Sharm el Sheikh (see map). Once the withdrawal had been accomplished, Egyptians would occupy the area and begin the laborious business of clearing the waterway (see box, page 28).
Israel, which has never been allowed to send a ship through the canal, was wary. For one thing, the Israelis consider the waterway an ideal tank ditch against any Egyptian cross-canal movements. The farthest that Israeli troops would probably withdraw from the Bar-Lev Line would be to an area from which they could see or hear Egyptian or Russian troops crossing the canal in strength. Israel indicated last week that it would also oppose the rebuilding of bridges over the canal. Moreover, Israel insisted that it would consider a Suez settlement as a separate agreement, and not the beginning of any wholesale Israeli withdrawal from other occupied territories—the rest of Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank of the Jordan River, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. More than that, Israel demanded ironbound guarantees from the U.S. that if there were any cross-canal troop movements, Washington would 1) veto any Security Council resolution censuring Israeli retaliation and 2) provide direct support if Israel proved unable to cope with the situation.
With such conflicting points of view, another stand-off seemed to be in the making when Rogers hove into view last week, the first Secretary of State to pay calls in the area since John Foster Dulles in 1953. In visiting Egypt, he also became the first Secretary of State to call on a nation with which the U.S. has no formal diplomatic relations; Nasser severed them in 1967. In Cairo, Rogers spent nearly seven hours talking with Foreign Minister Mahmoud Riad and Premier Mahmoud Fawzi. Afterward, he spent an hour re laxing at the palm-fringed pool of the Nile Hilton Hotel. Refreshed by a night time visit to the Sphinx and the Pyramids, Rogers next morning met with Sadat for two hours and 45 minutes. Flying on to Israel, Rogers held two meetings with Premier Golda Meir and her advisers. Said one Israeli who happened to be outside Mrs. Meir’s Jerusalem of fice while the first meeting was still going on: “It sounded like a family fight. I thought they were going to come to blows.”
September Deadline
In his exchanges with both sides, Rogers noted barely perceptible signs of give. The Egyptians indicated that the military force on the east bank need not be terribly large. In a second, two-hour-and-50-minute discussion with Mrs. Meir, Rogers was told that Israel might not object if nonmilitary Egyptians crossed the canal; there were hints that policemen might be considered nonmilitary. The question, of course, was whether Cairo would accept such a limitation on its sovereignty. By week’s end, when he headed for Rome and then home, Rogers was sufficiently encouraged to announce that he was sending Sisco back to Cairo this week to discuss still more details.
There is real concern in Egypt and Israel alike that unless some progress is made on the Suez plan, fighting may break out again by September. That is when the summer heat begins to abate. It is also when the three-nation Arab federation is scheduled to come into existence, and at least one of the founders, Libya’s mercurial Gaddafi, will be putting pressure on Sadat to take some action against Israel. Sadat told Rogers that if there are no results by September, he anticipates tremendous domestic pressure to resume fighting.
That could be mere talk. But one of the genuine unknowns in the situation is the Egyptian army. The army now totals 300,000 combat troops plus some 1,600 tanks and 640 mostly late-model Soviet jets to support them. Against this force the Israelis have a regular army of 75,000, plus 300,000 combat-ready reservists, at least 1,080 tanks and 368 warplanes. Most Egyptian military men concede that in a fourth round of fighting, the Israelis would clobber them once again but probably at a great cost to Israel.
The most troublesome question, of course, is what role the Russian servicemen in Egypt would play. Most observers figure that Russian advisers and technicians would pull back to avoid incidents if Egypt decided to mount any kind of cross-canal raid. Less certain, however, is the status of the Russian pilots who are flying the most advanced jets that Moscow has shipped to Egypt. If the Israelis began sending their planes over the Egyptian interior, the Soviet pilots would almost certainly challenge them. But what if the Israelis avoided “deep penetration” raids, yet were giving the Egyptians such a beating that Cairo began pressuring Moscow to send its pilots into battle? Beyond that, there is another peril-fraught contingency. The Israelis claim that they can neutralize or destroy the Soviet-built missile network if a new round of fighting erupts. Could they do so without either killing many Russian technicians or provoking a response from Russian jets — or both?
That leaves the Egyptians. As a Western diplomat in Cairo said recently: “No one really knows what the Egyptian army is thinking. They were fueled with the rhetoric of Nasser, and doubtless, feel a longing for that kind of sustenance. They were eternally frustrated by a policy of ‘no war, no peace,’ and the war of attrition hardly seemed like an answer. Sadat’s diplomacy for peace is therefore appealing, provided it produces results. But there surely is a point down the road when an intolerable moment will arrive. It could then be that the pressure would bear down hard on Sadat and he would have to order a go-ahead.” That would probably mean another defeat and an end to Sadat’s reign.
Cadet Nasser
It would be ironic if the army brought about the downfall of Sadat, a one-time career officer who managed to come far from the little village of Mit Abu al Kom. Sadat’s father was a humble civilian clerk with the army; young Sadat dreamed of wearing the pips of an officer on his shoulders. Despite a passion for movies, he got acceptable grades in secondary school after the family moved to Cairo’s Kubri al Quba section. Finally he secured an appointment to the military academy at Abbasiyah, which had just begun to accept sons of the lower classes as well as the aristocratic boys it traditionally favored. Sadat quickly became friends with Cadet Gamal Abdel Nasser, his classmate. “We were young men full of hope,” wrote Sadat later in his Revolt on the Nile. “We were brothers-in-arms, united in friendship and common detestation of the existing order of things. Egypt was a sick country.”
Sadat’s revolutionary course was interrupted by World War II. Fanatically anti-British, the young officer plotted with the Germans. When he was caught, he was cashiered from the army and spent more than two years in prison for spying. While there he learned to read and speak English and German and read French and Persian. After the war, Nasser helped him get his commission back.
Sadat was the firebrand of the young officers’ group that gathered around Nasser. His most spectacular idea was a plot to blow up the British embassy. Nasser talked him out of that. “I was always eager to step up the pace. But Gamal, a man of deliberation, acted as a restraining influence,” Sadat once wrote. On the night of July 23, 1952, when the planners decided to move against King Farouk’s corrupt regime, Sadat was nowhere to be found; he had gone to a movie in Cairo with his wife, Gehan. Eventually he received a message from Nasser, threw on his uniform and arrived in time to make the radio announcement of the successful coup. Later, Sadat was assigned the task of supervising King Farouk’s departure into exile aboard his royal yacht, Mahroussa. Watching the scene from the bridge of an Egyptian navy destroyer, Sadat was so overcome with emotion that he had to be carried ashore by sailors. Years later, in a similar surge of emotion, he collapsed in tears over Nasser’s coffin.
In spite of his key role in the revolution, Sadat was never trusted with a really sensitive job. At one point he was named editor of the party newspaper Al Gomhouria, and he filled it with tirades against U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and the “felonious and stupid horde” of British and French government figures. A devout Moslem who prays so often and so intensely that he has developed a mark on his forehead where it touches the prayer mat, Sadat was later made secretary-general of the Islamic Congress, an organization of Islamic nations. Because he was an avid Ping Pong player, he was named chairman of the African Union for Table Tennis.
In 1966, as president of Egypt’s National Assembly, Sadat made his only trip to the U.S. He studied the operations of Congress, marveled over the extensive staffs that served its committees, and met Lyndon Johnson. He toured California and visited Disneyland. In New York, Sadat poked through second-hand bookshops until he had a copy of every book written by his favorite author, Lloyd C. Douglas (The Robe). Sadat had discovered Douglas’ books while he was in prison, he explained, and he liked them because “he has tremendous power and he gives faith and confidence.”
Sadat’s loyalty to Nasser was unquestionable, and it finally paid off. One gray December morning in 1969, Nasser summoned Sadat to his home in the Cairo suburb of Manshiet al Bakri. He was preparing to go to an Arab summit in Rabat, and he had spent all night reading intelligence estimates about a supposed assassination plot against him. Nasser figured that he ought to have a Vice President and swore Sadat in on the spot. Less than ten months later, the man who had announced the success of Nasser’s 1952 revolution was called upon to tell the Egyptian people that their beloved El Rais (The Boss) was dead. Shortly afterward, Sadat was sworn in as the third President in Egypt’s history.
Pictures of Nasser continue to hang in Egypt’s public buildings. Sadat soon began to develop his own style, however. Nasser had worked only in the Kubbeh Republican Palace on the outskirts of Cairo; Sadat also opened up the older, ornate Abdine Palace down town, which had belonged to Farouk. He also holds occasional meetings in a suite of the new Cairo-Sheraton Hotel, a 23-story building that is now the tallest in Cairo. Nasser was a restless ball of energy who could work a 20-hour day. Sadat works at a less frenetic pace. He prefers to spend as much time as possible with his half Egyptian, half British second wife, Gehan, their three daughters and their son Gamal, 14, as well as with Sadat’s two collies, Lassie and Whip. There are also three other daughters, all in their 20s and married to army officers. They are Sadat’s children by his first wife; he is still legally married to her, as is permitted in Islam; she still lives in the delta.
Sadat is rarely without a pipe, and enjoys an occasional glass of wine, preferably an Egyptian red called Omar Khayyam. He is a snappy dresser who favors tasseled loafers, elegant blazers and expensive British-styled suits. When he goes back to Mit Abu al Kom, though, Sadat on occasion likes to change from city clothes into the comfortable flowing galabia, the cotton peasant garment that looks like a nightshirt.
Goodies on a Tray
For all his elegance and sophistication, Sadat often uses peasant imagery. Recently he compared the actions of Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin during Nasser’s funeral to the behavior of the people of his native village. “We are farmers,” he said, “and when one of us goes to express condolences, he takes along a tray of food for the house of the deceased out of courtesy. So the Soviet Union came with their tray to the funeral of Gamal.” The Russian tray, however, was scarcely filled with food. After post-funeral discussions with Sadat, the Russians accelerated their shipments of military supplies to Egypt. This year, up to 150 MIG-21s have been delivered by sea along with added missiles, radar systems and tanks.
The Russians have also brought in some of their newest equipment: Mach 2.5 twin-jet interceptors called the SU-11, which are not believed to be operational even in the Soviet air force, and the lethal Mach 3 MIG-23 “Fox-bat,” which can easily outclimb the Phantoms of the Israeli air force.
These Soviet planes, seven of which are believed to be at the vast, Soviet-controlled military complex at Cairo West, have not been seen in operation yet by the Warsaw Pact nations. “The only conclusion you can come to,” says a Western military expert, “is that the aircraft is here for test purposes.”
With at least 15,000 Soviet military personnel now in Egypt and most of the country’s cotton crop earmarked for Russia in payment for aid, Sadat could have a difficult time escaping the bear’s hug. Nonetheless, he considers the newly arrived planes, tanks, guns and missiles to be essential elements in a defensive line, established with Russian advice, that runs all the way along the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal and up the Nile Valley.
As far as Sadat is concerned, this formidable line allows him to negotiate with Israel on an even basis, but does not put him in bondage to Moscow. “To the extent that the Soviets are nervous about his dialogue with the U.S.,” said an American official last week, “he is telling them to go to hell, that he is running his own government. But he has put himself out on a limb by expressing faith in American advice that the only way to recover the lost territories is to negotiate. If that doesn’t work, his enemies will hold him to his words.”
Sadat is not the only one out on a limb. It is possible that the middleman in the current diplomatic exercise—the U.S.—and the two antagonists could all emerge feeling ill-used. The U.S. appears increasingly convinced that the Israelis have grown too rigid, as indeed they have. The Israelis feel that the Americans, particularly Rogers and his State Department, are so anxious to restore U.S. influence in the Arab world that they are willing to impose unacceptable risks on Israel. Golda Meir’s government maintains that its policy of tenacity will compel the Arabs to come around eventually if only the U.S. and other major powers would quit meddling. “For God’s sake,” pleads a top Israeli diplomat, “let us bargain with the Egyptians. Don’t force us into things.”
The Egyptians, meanwhile, believe that unless the U.S. forces certain terms upon the Israelis, nobody will. They argue that Washington could accomplish this simply by cutting off its arms aid to the Israelis. “The power to give,” says one Egyptian official, “is the power to withhold.” The U.S. has sought, albeit unsuccessfully, to persuade Cairo that its influence over Israel falls far short of outright control. Moreover, Washington fears that to cut off Israel’s last external source of weaponry would only reduce Egypt’s incentive to negotiate seriously with Israel, directly or otherwise. There is also the internal U.S. situation to consider; last year no fewer than 81 of the 100 members of the Senate demanded that Washington ship the Israelis all of the Phantom jets they had requested.
On the homeward leg of Rogers’ hectic tour, TIME Correspondent, Herman Nickel, who accompanied the Secretary of State, concluded that the trip had accomplished much. U.S. spokesmen felt that they had persuaded both sides that it was essential to keep talking peace to achieve peace. Cabled Nickel: “Rogers succeeded in putting official U.S.-Israeli relations on a more businesslike, less sentimental and chummy basis. This required considerable firmness. Certainly Rogers had his priorities right. Given the solid state of the U.S.-Israeli relationship and the tender young reed of a new American relationship with the Arabs, Arab sensibilities were more important than Israeli sensibilities.”
Absolute Insecurity
To a great extent, Egypt’s Sadat has made diplomatic profit out of an Israeli attitude that appears unreasonable. The Israelis seem to believe that they can have both peace and substantial changes in the pre-1967 map. Yet this may well prove a delusion. White House National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger once noted that absolute security for one power means absolute insecurity for its neighbors. Thus even if Israel were to get the geographically secure boundaries on which it insists, it might merely succeed in increasing instability.
It is not difficult to understand why a people who have had to struggle for sheer survival throughout their existence should be loath to take even the most minimal risks with their security. During his Jordan-sponsored tour of the Golan Heights, Rogers turned to his lieutenant, Joe Sisco, and remarked that it was easy to see how the Israelis could be so concerned about security in such terrain. But Rogers also took pains to note that he could understand, too, how the Arabs felt when looking at land that once was theirs.
Drowning Men
That is the very heart of the problem. Israeli-born Journalist Amos Elon, in his just-published book, The Israelis: Founders and Sons, writes that repeated pogroms in Europe, climaxed by the Nazi holocaust, “imbued the Zionist settlers with the relentless drive of drowning men who force their way on to a life raft large enough to hold both them and those who were already on it.” Yet the life raft did not prove quite roomy enough. “By a brutal twist of fate, unexpected, undesired, unconsidered by the early pioneers,” adds Elon, the price of establishing a Jewish homeland “was partly paid by the Arab inhabitants of Palestine. The Arabs bore no responsibility for the centuries-long suffering of Jews in Europe; yet in the end, the Arabs were punished because of it. Whatever [the Arabs’] subsequent follies and outrages might be, [their] punishment for the sins of Europe must burden the conscience of Israelis for a long time to come.”
Such feelings have affected not only Israelis, but also their sympathizers else where. This, in turn, has made it considerably easier for Sadat to make headway with his diplomatic initiatives. But what is the real goal of those initiatives? Genuine peace — or merely the restoration of Egyptian territory and later on, an attempt to destroy Israel?
The Israelis themselves are extremely uncertain, and accordingly uneasy about the answers to those riddles. In Washington, a U.S. official wonders whether Sa dat is not being more shrewd than moderate. Recalling Sadat’s youthful reputation as a firebrand, the official mused: “You can’t shed all your ideas, beliefs, and habits of thinking overnight.” British Arabist Desmond Stewart, author of the recently published, The Middle East: Temple of Janus, says, “Where Nasser was a pacifist who spoke in bellicose terms, Sadat is a bellicose man who talks in pacific terms.” Sadat’s performance up to now as President, however, has persuaded even some Israelis to give him the benefit of the doubt. Said Defense Minister Moshe Dayan last month: “Sadat has spoken with sincerity and without guile.”
In the Middle East, political prospects are always hazardous to predict. Nonetheless, cabled TIME Correspondent Gavin Scott from Cairo: “As long as diplomacy remains credible to Egyptians, Sadat’s authority will remain unchallenged. His turn to the West, balanced by effusive May Day thanks to the Kremlin and motions toward Arab federation, is highly popular. Educated Egyptians have no taste for falling under the political influence of Moscow. Tentative as they are, the signs of rapprochement with Washington are gratifying.” Now it remains to be seen whether Sadat will give Washington comparable cause for gratification by sincerely pressing the pursuit of peace.
* Egypt’s Arab character actually is limited, even though the country’s official language is Arabic and its formal religion Islam. Bedouin Arabs constitute a sizable minority, but so do Copts and Nubians. Ethnically the predominant Egyptian is a Mediterranean rather than Arabian man, and he has changed surprisingly little since pharaonic times.
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