Anwar Sadat

Anwar Sadat in 1980

Anwar Sadat (December 25, 1918 – October 6, 1981) was an Egyptian politician who was President of Egypt from 1970 until his death in 1981. He led Egypt in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and then negotiated the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.

Quotes

• Any life lost in war is the life of a human being, irrespective of whether it is an Arab or an Israeli. The wife who becomes widowed is a human being, entitled to live in a happy family, Arab or Israeli. Innocent children, deprived of paternal care and sympathy, are all our children, whether they live on Arab or Israeli soil.
  • Sadat, Anwar (November 20, 1977). Address by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to the Knesset. Jerusalem. Retrieved on October 9, 2018. 

• Today I tell you, and I declare it to the whole world, that we accept to live with you in permanent peace based on justice. We do not want to encircle you or be encircled ourselves by destructive missiles ready for launching, nor by the shells of grudges and hatreds.
  • Sadat, Anwar (November 20, 1977). Address by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to the Knesset. Jerusalem. Retrieved on October 9, 2018. 

• Conceive with me a peace agreement… based on the following points: First: ending the Israeli occupation of the Arab territories occupied in 1967. Second: achievement of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination, including their right to establish their own state. Third: the right of all states in the area to live in peace within their boundaries, which will be secure and guaranteed through procedures to be agreed upon... Fourth: commitment of all states in the region to administer the relations among them in accordance with the objectives and principles of the United Nations Charter... Fifth: ending the state of belligerency in the region.
  • Sadat, Anwar (November 20, 1977). Address by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to the Knesset. Jerusalem. Retrieved on October 9, 2018. 

• I am convinced that we owe it to this generation and the generations to come, not to leave a stone unturned in our pursuit of peace.
  • Sadat, Anwar (December 10, 1978). Nobel Peace Prize Lecture. Stockholm. Retrieved on October 9, 2018. 

• The goal is to bring security to the peoples of the area, and the Palestinians in particular, restoring to them all their right to a life of liberty and dignity… This is what I stand for.
  • Sadat, Anwar (December 10, 1978). Nobel Peace Prize Lecture. Stockholm. Retrieved on October 9, 2018. 

• I do not deny the State of Israel’s right to be recognized by all countries of the region, provided that the whole situation is normalized. A peace agreement should provide for the establishment of a Palestinian State in the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza Strip, and Israel should withdraw from the territories it occupied in 1967.
  • Sadat, Anwar (1978). In Search of Identity: An Autobiography. Sydney: Collins. p. 297. 

• Russians can give you arms, but only the United States can give you a solution.
  • Fradkin, Hillel; Libby, Lewis (September/October 2012). "Learning from Sadat: The Dividends of American Resolve". World Affairs (Washington, D.C.: World Affairs Institute). Retrieved on October 9, 2018. 

Quotes about

• Two of the leaders discussed in these pages experienced the Second World War as colonial subjects. Anwar Sadat (born 1918), as an Egyptian army officer, was imprisoned for two years for attempting in 1942 to collaborate with German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in expelling the British from Egypt and then for three years, much of it in solitary confinement, after the assassination of the pro-British former Finance Minister Amin Osman. Long animated by revolutionary and pan-Arab convictions, Sadat was projected, in 1970, by the sudden death of Gamal Abdel Nasser into the presidency of an Egypt that had been shocked and demoralized by defeat in the 1967 war with Israel. Through an astute combination of military strategy and diplomacy, he then endeavored to restore Egypt’s lost territories and self-confidence while securing long-elusive peace with Israel with a transcendent philosophy.
  • Henry Kissinger, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy (2022), pp. 20-21