EGYPT'S PRESIDENT ANWAR SADAT WAS ASSASSINATED ON OCTOBER 6,1981, BY MEMBER OF EGYPTIAN ISLAMIC JIHAD DURING THE ANNUAL PARADE IN CAIRO.PRESIDENT ANWAR SADAT AND ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER MENACHEM BEGIN HAVE GOT NOBEL PRICE IN 1978 AS PEACEMAKERS FOLLOWING THE 1978 CAMP DAVID ACCORDS.

In October 1981, President Sadat of Egypt was murdered by persons who were opposed to his policy of reconciliation with Israel and his close links with the United States. Sadat shared the Peace Prize with Israel's Prime Minister Begin after having taken the initiative in negotiating a peace treaty between the two countries. The so-called Camp David Accords came about thanks to the mediation efforts of US President Jimmy Carter.Anwar el-Sadat had military training. In World War II he fought against the British dominance of Egypt and was imprisoned for several years. After the war he joined the officers who under Nasser's leadership deposed the pro-English King Farouk in 1952.Nasser died a few years after Egypt's defeat by Israel in 1967, and Sadat took over as President. He broke Egypt's links with the Soviet Union, and sought US support in recovering territories lost to Israel. In the autumn of 1977 Sadat undertook a bold journey to Jerusalem, where he offered Begin a peace treaty in return for recovery of the occupied Sinai peninsula.Anwar Sadat (1918-1981) was Egypt's president from 1970 until his assassination. He launched a surprise attack on Israel in 1973, then became the first Arab leader to sign a peace treaty with Israel. He shifted from Soviet to American patronage and relaxed Egypt's internal economic and political system.Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat was born in 1918. His village, Mit Abul Kom, is about 40 miles north of Cairo in the Nile delta. Sadat lived with his grandmother while his father, a minor civil service clerk, was away in the Sudan with his Sudanese wife. The boy attended a village Quran (Moslem) school, then went briefly to a Coptic (Christian) school.His parents returned to Egypt in 1925, and Sadat went to live with them in Cairo. In later years he relished visits to his village and spoke nostalgically of his humble rural origins. Sadat's father struggled to support 13 children on his modest salary. Poor grades led Sadat to shift from government to private secondary schools on two occasions, but in 1936 he earned the coveted secondary school certificate.As a schoolboy, Sadat frequently demonstrated against the British, who occupied Egypt at that time. His heroes were all nationalists: Mahatma Gandhi, Adolf Hitler, Ataturk, and Egyptians Saad Zaghlul, Mustafa Kamil, and Mustafa Nahhas. He also admired a peasant martyr from Dinshaway (near Mit Abul Kom) whom the British had executed in 1906.One result of the 1936 treaty which Prime Minister Nahhas signed with the British was the opening of the military academy to lower middle class youths like Sadat and Gamal Abdel Nasser. Sadat graduated from the academy in 1938 and was posted to Manqabad in Upper Egypt. There he first met Nasser, a natural leader, serious and somewhat aloof. The idealistic young officers talked politics, debating the best way to rid their country of the British.In 1939 Sadat entered the Signal Corps. While Nasser was off in the Sudan, Sadat plotted direct action against the British. Occasionally he met with Hassan Al-Banna, the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group of religious zealots who wanted to root out Western and secular influences and turn Egypt into a theocracy.Axis forces based in Libya pushed into Egypt in 1941, hoping to seize the vital Suez Canal. In the following year the British arrested Sadat for plotting with two German spies who were living in a Nile houseboat and trying to send information to Rommel's army. Escaping from jail in October 1944, Sadat hid out until the end of the war made it safe for him to resurface. He then participated in an unsuccessful attempt on the life of former prime minister Nahhas, who had cooperated with the British during the war. Sadat's role in the killing of Amin Osman, an Anglophile politician, landed him back in jail in January 1946. Sadat's friendship with King Farouk's private doctor linked him to the Iron Guard, a secret palace organization which struck at the king's enemies.The trial of Sadat and others in the Amin Osman case was overshadowed by the outbreak of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The principal defendant escaped; Sadat and the others were acquitted and released. After dabbling in business schemes for a year or two Sadat won reinstatement in the army. He reestablished contact with Nasser's circle, who were now calling themselves "Free Officers" and planning to overthrow the corrupt and inept government. The riots of January 1952 destroyed foreign-owned businesses throughout Cairo and completed the public's disillusionment with the playboy king and the old politicians.Nasser summoned Sadat to Cairo from his post in Sinai on the evening of July 22, 1952. But finding no further message from his chief, Sadat took his family to the movies and nearly missed the coup. However, it was Sadat who broadcast the news of the coup to the public on the morning of July 23. King Farouk was sent into exile and Brigadier Mohamed Naguib served as the Free Officers' front man until Nasser broke with him and put him under house arrest in 1954.The posts Sadat held during the Nasser years were not quite at the center of power. He edited the regime's newspaper, al-Gumhuriya. He served as secretary-general of the Islamic Congress and of the National Union, the forerunner of the Arab Socialist Union and Egypt's only political party. During the 1960s he was speaker of the National Assembly. Sadat, along with Field Marshall Abdel Hakim Amer, bears much of the responsibility for Egypt's disastrous involvement in the Yemeni civil war (1962-1967). Then Egypt's defeat by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War nearly destroyed Nasser's regime. Aware of his ill-health and of plots against him, Nasser named Sadat vice president at the end of 1969. Nicknamed "Major Yes-Yes" for his acquiescence to Nasser's wishes, Sadat had outlasted most of the other Free Officers who might have inherited the presidency.Nasser died of a heart attack on September 28, 1970. A plebiscite quickly confirmed Sadat as his successor. Ali Sabri and others in the Arab Socialist Union, the army, and the intelligence organizations assumed Sadat could soon be shouldered aside. ButSadat's "Corrective Revolution" of May 1971 sent the plotters to jail and consolidated his grip on power. A treaty of friendship reassured the nervous Soviets a few days later.Sadat liked to govern by surprises. In February 1971 he unexpectedly extended a ceasefire with the Israelis on the Suez front and announced plans to reopen the canal even though the enemy was entrenched on the opposite bank. Unable to obtain enough Soviet support for a military showdown and under increasing domestic pressure to act, Sadat pulled off another surprise in the summer of 1972. He expelled the numerous Soviet military advisers from Egypt.Failing to win American attention as he had hoped, Sadat now openly declared his intention to fight Israel. No one took him seriously, so the Syrian-Egyptian attack on October 6, 1973, came as a surprise. Egypt's successful crossing of the Suez Canal contrasted with the 1967 fiasco, but the Israeli counter crossing under General Sharon left Egyptian forces in a critical position by the time U.S. and Soviet intervention produced a ceasefire. Sadat always portrayed the Yom Kippur War as an unqualified victory, calling himself "The Hero of the Crossing."President Nixon and Henry Kissinger were paying attention at last. Sadat abandoned his Soviet option and risked all on Egyptian alignment with the United States. Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy produced limited Israeli pullbacks in Sinai in 1974 and 1975. Thereafter progress toward a settlement bogged down until Sadat's astonishing visit to Jerusalem in November 1977 to meet Prime Minister Menachem Begin and address the Knesset. President Jimmy Carter's personal diplomacy brought Begin and Sadat together at Camp David in September 1978. They signed two "framework" agreements, one providing for an Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty within three months, the other for a five-year transition toward autonomy and Palestinian self-government in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Begin and Sadat signed the final treaty in March 1979, and they shared the Nobel Peace Prize for 1978. The Palestinian part of the agreement remained a dead letter, however, with Begin pursuing hardline policies toward the Palestinians and the other Arab states.

From there, the assassins dismounted and Islambouli approached Sadat with three hand grenades concealed under his helmet. Sadat stood to receive his salute. Anwar’s nephew Talaat El Sadat later said: “The president thought the killers were part of the show when they approached the stands firing, so he stood saluting them”. Islambouli threw all his grenades at Sadat, only one of which exploded (but fell short), and additional assassins rose from the truck, indiscriminately firing AK-47 assault rifles into the stands until they had exhausted their ammunition and then attempted to flee. After Sadat was hit and fell to the ground, people threw chairs around him to shield him from the hail of bullets.Egyptian soldiers tend to wounded after an attack on the reviewing platform which killed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.The attack lasted about two minutes. Sadat and ten others were killed outright or suffered fatal wounds. Security forces were momentarily stunned but reacted within 45 seconds. One of the attackers was killed, and the three others injured and arrested. Sadat was airlifted to a military hospital, where eleven doctors operated on him. He died nearly two hours after he was taken to the hospital. Sadat’s death was attributed to “violent nervous shock and internal bleeding in the chest cavity, where the left lung and major blood vessels below it were torn”.In addition to Sadat, eleven others were killed, including the Cuban ambassador, an Omani general, a Coptic Orthodox bishop and Samir Helmy, the head of Egypt’s Central Auditing Agency (CAA). Twenty-eight were wounded, including Vice President Hosni Mubarak, Irish Defence Minister James Tully, and four US military liaison officers.The assassination was undertaken by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. A fatwā approving the assassination had been obtained from Omar Abdel-Rahman, a cleric later convicted in the US for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Islambouli and the other assassins were tried, found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed by firing squad in April 1982.Sadat also planned his political liberalization with American audiences in mind. Abandoning Nasser's singleparty system, he encouraged "left" and "right" splinters to break off from the Arab Socialist Union's "center" in 1976. He made sure, however, that his own center party (called the National Democratic Party since 1978) kept over-whelming control in the People's Assembly. Manipulation of the laws and government harassment kept the Progressive Unionist left, the New Wafd right, and the religious purists from mounting all-out public challenges to the regime.Even before the signing of the treaty with Israel, the early hopes for the Sadat era were fading inside Egypt. The "open door" had brought in foreign banks, tourism, and luxury imports, and it had encouraged many Egyptians to earn quick fortunes in Egypt's oil-rich Arab neighboring countries. But there was little investment in productive industries. A contractor named Osman Ahmad Osman, whose son had married one of Sadat's daughters, came to symbolize the nepotism and opportunism of the new rich whom the public labeled "fat cats." Student and worker opposition flared into full-scale riots in January 1977 when the government, acting under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, cut back the food subsidies which cushioned poverty for the average Egyptian.The lifestyle of Sadat and his wife Jihan also aroused concern. Sadat divorced his rustic first wife on emerging from prison in 1948. His new wife, Jihan, was half-British, good looking, and considerably younger than himself. The couple developed a taste for the good life, ordering clothes from Paris designers. Sadat's first wife had followed Middle Eastern custom by remaining in the background, but Jihan enjoyed the limelight. She spoke up for women's rights, visited hospitals, and presided at official ceremonies. Reporters abroad were delighted with the couple's Western manner and their ready accessibility for interviews. Many Egyptians were not.In his last years the Islamic religious groups which he had at first encouraged to balance off other opponents came back to haunt Sadat. The Muslim Brotherhood and its more radical offshoots deplored the Westernization and corruption of Egyptian public life. They opposed the treaty with Israel. The example of the Iranian revolution of 1979 and their own dismal career prospects also turned educated urban youths to fundamentalist Islamic groups in large numbers. The fears of the Coptic minority mounted simultaneously, and violence between Christians and Muslims broke out on several occasions.In September 1981 Sadat struck out wildly at his diverse opponents. He arrested hundreds of politicians of all stripes, banned journals, stripped the Coptic Pope of his temporal power over his community, and expelled the Soviet ambassador.Sadat had lost his political touch. On October 6, 1981, Muslim religious radicals shot him down as he reviewed a military parade commemorating the 1973 war. The shocked West paid tribute to Sadat by dispatching three former U.S. presidents and other prominent statesmen to his funeral. Prime Minister Begin also attended. Egyptians and Arabs reacted differently. The streets of Cairo, which millions of mourners had jammed when Nasser died, remained eerily silent. Anyway, to get back to the main theme. Sadat was getting increasingly authoritarian and, some people would say, rather erratic, and over-reacting to some reports of criticism he heard, the gossip that they kept bringing to him. He was getting out of touch with the people he should have been listening to.When he came back (from Washington), one day he simply rounded up all the people who had ever been critical of him  from extremists on the Muslim Brotherhood side to people like Heikal. Heikal was not a threat to him. He had them all rounded up and put in jail for awhile to give them a lesson.He also at the same time moved against the Coptic pope, the head of the Coptic Church. In any case, Sadat, in effect, exiled the pope, put the pope in a monastery in the desert and appointed a group of bishops to run the affairs of the church.Working with Nasser Sadat learned the dangerous game of nationbuilding in a world of superpower rivalries. Egypt eventually became the leading "non-aligned" country in the world, giving a voice, through Nasser, to the desires of the undeveloped and post-colonial societies. Their most important trial came over the Suez Canal, which Nasser nationalized in 1956. In a coordinated effort, the British, French, and the new nation of Israel launched an attack on Egypt hoping to reestablish colonial control over the Canal and its profits. The 1956 war ended only after the United States pressured its allies to withdraw. Egypt emerged from the war a hero of the non-alligned countries, having successfully resisted colonial powers and maintained its control of the Suez.Nasser's prominence suffered greatly from the debacle of the Six Day War. In it, the Israeli military completely destroyed the Egyptian air forces (mostly caught unawares on the ground) and swept through the Sinai to the Suez Canal routing the Egyptian army, killing at least 3,000 soldiers. The devastation also threatened to bankrupt the government. Internal squabbling among Arab nations and the growing Palestinian movement eventually strained Nasser's abilities to the limit. Under the strain, Nasser collapsed and died on 29 September 1970.When he succeeded Nasser, Sadat was completely unknown and untested. Over the next 11 years, however, Sadat proved his leadership abilities. His first trial on the international scene involved the aftermath of the Six Days War. Sadat openly offered the Israelis a peace treaty in exchange for the return of the Siani lands taken in the attack.Domestic crisis and international intrique presented Sadat with seemingly insurmountable problems. The Egyptian economy continued to real from war with Israel and the Egyptian's continuing relationship with the Soviet Union deteriorated as the Soviet's proved unreliable allies. When pressed for more military support to replace the devastation of the Six Days War, the Soviets simply ignored Sadat's requests. In a bold move, which soon became his trademark, Sadat expelled the Soviets. This grand gesture solidified Egyptian internal support at a time when the average Egyptian suffered greatly.Behind the scenes, however, Sadat plotted to retake the Egyptian Siani if the Israelis continued to refuse the Egyptian peace initiative. On 6 October 1973, Sadat struck. With exceptional military precision, the Egyptian army crossed the Suez back into the Sinai and began driving the Israeli army into the desert. Though short-lived, the attack created a new momentum for peace both in Egypt and in Israel. These pressures coincided with continued domestic problems in Egypt.The deteriorating economy in Egypt, accomplanied by a growing distance between rich and poor, led to internal strife, riots, strikes, attacks on the rich. These internal pressures raised the attention of the international community, particularly the United States, concerned that internal strife would weaken Sadat's moderate policies.Convinced that peace with Israel would reap an enormous "peace dividend," Sadat initiated his most important diplomatic ploy. In a speach to the Egyptian parliament in 1977, Sadat affirmed his desire to go anywhere to negotiate a peace with the Israelis. Even, he affirmed, he would go to the Israeli parliament to speak for peace. The Israeli's responded with an invitation to do just that and Sadat's speech to the Israeli Knesset initiated a new momentum for peace that would eventually culminate in the 1978 Camp David Accords and a final peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin are jointly awarded the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in bringing about peace between Israel and Egypt. The award would be presented in a ceremony on December 10, 1978.The announcement of the award came a little over a month after the conclusion of the Camp David talks, which had laid a foundation for the March 1979 Peace Treaty between the two countries. Some observers believe that the awarding of the prize to Begin and Sadat, before a peace treaty was formally signed, was insurance to make sure that the two leaders did in fact go forward with the talks and conclude them with a treaty.

Calling on Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to make new efforts to "secure a future without war to the war-exhausted people of the Middle East," the Norwegian Nobel Committee yesterday awarded its 1978 Peace Prize jointly to the two leaders for the progress they have already made in ending 30 years of Arab-Israeli warfare.In a citation that openly declared its political intention of spurring the Egyptian-Israeli negotiations along by extending the honor to both men now, the committee also warmly praised President Carter's "great role" in bringing Sadat and Begin together at the Camp David summit last month.Carter was also nominated for the prize, but well after the February deadline for formal nominations had passed, Aase Lionaess, head of the Nobel committee, told reporters in announcing the award in Oslo.The announcement triggered mixed reaction around the globe. It brought elation in Israel. But in a more subdued Egyptian response, Cairo Radio failed to mention that Sadat would have to share his long-coveted award with Begin. Eygptian editors voiced disappointment over the split prize.Sadat's Arab critics and right-wing extremists in Israel predictably condemned the granting of the Nobel prize in recognition of the two agreements worked out at Camp David in September as a framework for peace. The Palestine Liberation Organization declared that the Middle East "will remain explosive" despite the award to "two fascists with a black history."Ironies abounded in the decision to grant the prize for a peace agreement that is still tentative. The announcement came as the Carter Administration and Begin remained locked in an angry public dispute that has temporarily stalled progress on the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty that Begin and Sadat agreed at Camp David to sign before Dec. 17.In a brief message to Begin and Sadat, Carter coupled his congratulations "for his honor you so fully deserve" with the exhortation that "the work you have done so far must not be left uncompleted."Both Sadat and Begin arrived at the peace table by way of careers strongly marked by violence. Begin was a leader of an anti-British terrorist organization during Israel's war for independence, and Sadat, a career army officer who helped plot the 1952 coup against King Farouk, started the October 1973 war against Israel. Ironically, it was this war that ultimately led to the peace drive that wound up in Camp David.The declared political intention of the award brought the Nobel committee directly into an active conflict for the second time in five years. In 1973, the committee split the prize between then secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger and North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho for their negotiations to end "a gruesome war" in Vietnam.The citation that accompanies this year's joint prize specifically congratulates Sadat for his "historic visit" to Jerusalem in November 1977, which "forced a breach in the psychological wall which for a whole generation had blocked understanding and human contact between Egypt and Israel."It also offers specific praise of Carter's "positive initiative" in getting the Camp David agreements, which it says "represent in themselves a victory for the idea of peace in this part of the world."Begin's contributions, however, are not specified, and his inclusion appears to be related more to the committee's hopes for the future than its evaluation of the Israeli prime minister's role up until now.Essential negotiations still remain before the idea of peace is anchored in political binding agreements, which can secure a future without war to the war-exhausted people of the Middle East," the citation declared."By the award of the peace prize for 1978 to Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, the Nobel Committee wishes not only to honor actions already performed in the service of peace, but also to encourage further efforts to work out practical solutions which can give reality to those hopes of a lasting peace, as they have been kindled by the framework agreements."The choice was made by a committee of five Norwegians chosen by Norway's Parliament, which does not oversee the committee after it is chosen. Lionaess, the politican who heads the panel, is widely known in Norway as an ardent advocate for Israel who reportedly has blocked prizes in the past of statesmen she judged to be too friendly to the Arab cause.Sadat is the first Arab and Begin the first Israeli to be chosen for the prize, which carries a cash award of about $165,000 that the two leaders will divide. A spokesman for Sadat announced last night that the Egyptian leader will donate his share of the prize to his home village of Met Abul Komim the Nile Delta.Established in 1901 by Alfred Nobel from the fortunes he made in the manufacture of dynamite and in producing oil in the Soviet Union, the prizes are formally awarded each year on Dec. 10 in Oslo University's Festival Hall.The recipients are invited to receive the gold medals, checks and citations and to deliver lectures at the ceremony.If the peace treaty has still not been signed by Dec. 10, the requested appearances of Sadat and Begin could take on major significance for the peace process that the award is intended to crown.Moreover, some initial reactions suggested that the poltical impact the prize committee openly sought may not be as clear-cut as it had hoped.From Jerusalem, Washington Post correspondent William Claiborne reported that an aide who answered Begin's telephone said the prime minister was "extremely excited" by the news but would not break the Jewish Sabbath by coming to the phone to comment.Another Begin aide put the award in the context of the disputes that have broken out between the White House and Begin over differing interpretations of what was agreed at Camp David about the future of Israeli settlements on the West Bank."Jimmy Carter is going to have to talk to Begin with a little more respect now," said the aide, who declined to be identified.Egyptians were openly angered that Sadat, whose trip opened the way for the peace drive, had to share the prize.West Bank Arabs voiced skepticism. "Where is the peace?" asked Elias Freij, Christian mayor of Bethlehem. "What kind of peace is it? Is there peace between Sadat and Begin?"Geula Cohen, a former Begin ally who has split with him because of the Camp David agreements, echoed this sentiment in Israel by saying, "Receiving the prize doesn't mean real peace, as we have seen already with Kissinger's Nobel Prize for the Vietnam peace."Such doubts were overshadowed, however, by the outpouring of congratulations and praise for the two leaders, and for Carter, whose contributions at Camp David were described by many commentators as easily equal to those of Begin and Sadat.However, instead of building better relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, it ended up alienating the Arab world and many of Sadat’s own people. His commitment to peace created deep schisms and increased tensions within Egypt. Just three years after the signing, Sadat was assassinated, on October 6th, 1981, at Egypt’s annual parade, ironically celebrating the October 1973 Yom Kippur War with Israel.At home, Sadat's new relationship with the west and his peace treaty generated considerable domestic opposition, especially among fundamentalist Muslim groups. In 1980 and in 1981, Sadat took desperate gambles to respond to these new internal problems. He negotiated a number of loans to support improvements in everyday life. And he simultaneously enacted laws outlawing protest and declared that the Shari'a would be the basis of all new Egyptian law. October 6, 1981, Sadat died at the hands of fundamentalists assassins during a military review celebrating the 1973 Suez crossing.