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The per capita income of Egypt's 43 million people has remained stable at around $420 a year. With the peace treaty, Egypt lost economic aid from 16 Arab countries, including $2 billion a year from Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, it earned $2.5 billion on oil sales last year, much of it from fields in the Sinai returned by Israel; Egyptian workers in other Arab countries bring home about $2.7 billion a year; and foreign investments since 1979 have totaled $550 million. On the balance sheet alone, the Egyptian Establishment is likely to support Mubarak in his continuation of Sadat's economic policies.
A key element in the equation is Israel —and the varied reaction of Israelis to Sadat's death underscored their confusion.
The country's leaders, men like Begin, President Yitzhak Navon, former Defense Minister Ezer Weizman and Labor Party Leader Shimon Peres, who knew Sadat and worked with him, were genuinely moved and saddened. Right-wing extremists were overjoyed, anticipating that Sadat's death might mean Israel would retain its hold on part of the Sinai.
Residents of Yamit, the big Israeli settlement on the northern Sinai coast, began to wonder if they would be able to cling to their homes after all. The answer was no. As President Navon put it, "We did not make peace with one man, great as he was, but with the people of Egypt. We are duty-bound to continue."
Yet, deep down, there was also fear, particularly among Israel's leaders, old and new. Observed Interior Minister Yosef Burg, who is also the chief negotiator with the Egyptians in the autonomy talks: "Now we shall find out if a man or an idea was killed." Moshe Dayan, the former Foreign Minister, suggested that Israel must continue to take part in the negotiations but must "check seven times over with seven eyes who is running the new Egypt and how strong is his commitment to peace." Ariel Sharon, Begin's Defense Minister, warned that Israel must keep itself strong, "for we are a lonely country, and small, in an area where shocks are a daily occurrence."
There was very little public awareness inside Israel that the country's refusal to budge significantly on the Palestinian issue had contributed to Sadat's recent problems: as long as a wider Palestinian settlement (going beyond the Camp David autonomy provisions) was not in sight, Arab moderates like Sadat would steadily lose ground to the rejectionists. But there also was impatience in Israel with the views of the right wing. As a Jerusalem lawyer put it, "When I hear those people talking about stopping the Sinai withdrawal because of Sadat's assassination, it hurts me to say that perhaps we as a nation did not deserve Sadat, were not mature enough for his vision."