Nobody knows the Mideast better than Bernard Lewis. Today’s Jerusalem Post has a long interview, which I found fascinating. For example:
If you go back to the Egyptian peace process, Sadat didn’t decide to make peace because he was suddenly convinced of the merits of the Zionist case. Sadat decided to make peace because he realized that Egypt was becoming a Soviet colony.
The process was very visible. There were whole areas of Soviet bases and no Egyptian was admitted. Sadat, I think, realized that on the best estimate of Israel’s power and the worst estimate of Israel’s intentions, Israel was not a threat to Egypt in the way that the Soviet Union was.
So he took the very courageous step of ordering the Soviet specialists out of Egypt, facing the danger they might do what they did in Czechoslovakia or Hungary. They didn’t, fortunately. Then he hoped that Washington would help him, instead of which Washington produced the Vance-Gromyko Agreement, a sort of diplomatic carve up, in effect giving Egypt back to the Soviets. That was [former president Jimmy] Carter’s real contribution to the peace process. All the rest of it is imaginary; imaginary is the polite word. [My emphasis — ed.]
That persuaded Sadat that he had to go to the Israelis.