Man Of The Year: Anwar Sadat: Architect of a New Mideast

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seven years earlier. In mid-January, Cairo and Alexandria erupted in the worst rioting since the days of King Farouk—protests against Sadat's increased food prices and his government's general failure to raise living standards or improve the country's tumbledown public services. In the end, 80 Egyptians were killed and nearly 1,000 arrested. Sadat had to cancel his price increases and call out the army to restore order. Although Saudi Arabia, other Arab oil states, and the U.S. put together a $5.4 billion emergency-aid package, the riots made it clearer than ever that Egypt needed to turn its priorities from war machinery to economic development.

For Sadat it was a difficult time. He began to woo Jimmy Carter, and heard heartening words in return. Carter referred to the need for a "Palestinian homeland," the first time an American President had used that meaning-laden code phrase. Carter mentioned Israeli withdrawal from all occupied territories—except for minor frontier changes—and went even further than current Arab demands in proposing compensation for Palestine Arab refugees.

The Arabs drew some encouragement when then Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin had a chilly meeting with Carter, another sign that the U.S. no longer was giving blank-check backing to Israel. Sadat became even more optimistic when he traveled to Washington in early April. A vital part of the Egyptian's strategy had been to establish personal contact with Carter. As Arabist William Polk puts it, "Sadat is a great actor. He loves and warms to an audience."

The surprise election of Menachem Begin in May brought down a cloud of pessimism again, but Sadat insisted: "It does not matter who governs Israel. There are no doves in Israel, only hawks." Sadat was more troubled for the moment by Russia. He detected a Soviet hand in the Cairo riots and feared that Moscow was out to overthrow moderate Arab regimes, including his own. It bothered him particularly that the Russians were installing sophisticated electronic surveillance devices at Libyan airfields. Sadat dispatched Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy to Moscow to ask the Soviets to desist. When they did not, Sadat made one of his trip-hammer decisions: he sent the Egyptian air force to pulverize the bases. An Egyptian official admits: "We broke the rule: we attacked a brother Arab country." But Sadat felt he could not worry about all his borders simultaneously. He removed the threat from Libya.

AsSadat pushed for a Geneva settlement, U.S. domestic politics became a powerful factor. In October the U.S. and the Soviet Union issued a joint declaration on Middle Eastern peace, restating the basic points of Security Council Resolution 242 (which clearly implies that Israel has the right to exist in peace and security after withdrawing from occupied Arab territories). But the declaration went further than 242 in mentioning "the legitimate rights" of the Palestinians, a code phrase roughly equivalent to calling for a Palestinian entity of some kind. That declaration brought a furious reaction from some American Jewish organizations and other pro-Israeli groups. In a bitter bargaining session with Israel's Moshe Dayan, Carter backed down and announced that the U.S.-Soviet agreement would not be the basis of a Geneva conference. After this display of power by the