ABSTRACT
When Anwar Sadat offered to go to the Knesset he remarked that ‘Israel will be astonished’ to hear his words. The astonishment was mixed with puzzlement. The Israelis still did not understand fully his complex personality. When later Sadat, as well as Begin, received the Nobel Prize for Peace, Golda Meir remarked that she did not know whether they deserved this prize but they certainly deserved Oscars. This puzzlement was well expressed by Yigal Allon, the former Foreign Minister and one of the most brilliant generals in Israel’s War of Independence. Allon asked what had happened to Sadat between May Day 1972 and November 1977. Five years previously Sadat had told his audience that he would crush the intolerable arrogance of the Israelis. He was prepared to sacrifice one million Egyptian soldiers in the next war. Now he was prepared to go to Jerusalem to ‘prevent a soldier or an officer of my sons from being wounded – not killed but wounded’.
