OPINION:
We recognize March 26 as the anniversary of peace between Egypt and Israel, for which Anwar el-Sadat and Menachem Begin won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. Concurrently, we applaud Jimmy Carter’s 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts.
Nevertheless, we should remember the truly worthy recipient of the three was Sadat. Through three wars, Arab leaders had used Egyptian blood and treasure for vicarious satisfaction of Israeli-Jew hatred, which had invigorated their despotic regimes. By conclusion of the 1973 war, Sadat was certain Egypt’s price for Arab victory would not only include countless military deaths, but also destruction of the Aswan Dam, leading to hundreds of thousands of Egyptian flood victims and catastrophic infrastructure damage.
Sadat brought an end to this warring cycle and looming national catastrophe with his historic trip to Jerusalem on Nov. 7, 1977. He thereby began a process he formalized by signing the Camp David Accords the following September and the peace treaty of 1979. For his extraordinary statesmanship, the Arab League suspended Egyptian membership. Two years later, Sadat was assassinated by an amalgam of Islamic radicals, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, who came from the Muslim Brotherhood and became a leader of al Qaeda.
NOLAN NELSON
Eugene, Ore.
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