ABSTRACT
At a very early stage of his presidency, Anwar al Sadat realized that the longer Israel remained in Sinai and along the banks of the Suez Canal, the more the world became accustomed to this situation. He came to the conclusion that Egypt's only chance of compelling Israel to soften its position on its territorial gains in the 1967 war was to take the struggle to the diplomatic arena where Israel was in a position of inferiority. He realized, however, that an all-out military confrontation was essential to prepare the background for his diplomatic offensive and that any diplomatic move would, necessarily, have to pass through the battlefield. Indeed, Sadat went to war in order to make peace! He initiated the; 1973 war not because he believed that Egypt could prevail militarily over Israel, but because he wanted to provoke a major upheaval that would defrost the status quo and bring about the active involvement of the great powers. No one in Israel (or elsewhere) took seriously Sadat's repeated threats and indeed he caught Israel with its pants down when his armies crossed the Suez Canal on 10 October 1973 on Yom Kippur. The war, which as expected ended militarily in Israel's favor, broke the ice and focused world attention on the need to work out a compromise solution to the protracted Arab-Israeli conflict. The end result of the war — which had started with all the advantages of surprise on the Arab side - convinced Sadat (if he still needed convincing) that the Arabs could not vanquish Israel on the battlefield - at least, not in the foreseeable future. The diplomatic arena became more crucial than ever and, now that the October War had set the stage, he stepped up the political struggle.
