Camp David Accords.
72 Fahmy's account CNegotiating for Peace in the Middle East, London, Croom Helm, 1983) often has a self-justificatory tone, whilst Mohamed Heikal's Autumn of Fury:
The Assassination of Sadat (London: Andr6 Deutsch, 1983) is marked by personal
bitterness. Ghali Shoukri, a left-wing critic, objects to most aspects of the Sadat period; see Egypt: Portrait of a President, 1970-81 (London: Zed Press, 1981). Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, another leftist, is highly critical of the peace process in Egypt
after the Treaty (Beirut: Dar al Kalima li'l-Nashr, 1980; in Arabic). Sadat’s western
critics include David Hirst and Irene Beeson who, like Egyptian critics, found his personal manner and his style of politics distasteful; see Sadat (London: Faber & Faber, 1981).
th e A rab world when they addressed a m em orandum to S a d a t in October 1978: in the Camp David Accords, they claim ed, S ad at h ad achieved a sep arate peace a t the expense of the P alestin ian s. Israel h ad m anaged to n eu tra lise th e principal confrontation state, w hilst Egypt h ad regained only a circum scribed sovereignty over the Sinai, and isolated itself from the A rabs.73 The E gyptian sociologist, A nouar Abdel-M alek, expressed the views of the Arab Left w hen he lam en ted th a t the peace w ith Israel am ounted to a negation of the whole course of the m odern and contem porary history of th e Arab n atio n '.74 It needs to be rem em bered, th en , th a t A m erican p a rticip a n ts in th e peace process recall th a t S ad at was originally opposed to a p a rtial, let alone a sep arate agreem ent, and th a t he w as conscious of th e need to obtain assu ran ces on b eh alf of the P a lestin ian s.75
T h e P o litic a l E co n o m y o f P e a c e
If it is possible to ta lk of a 'S ad atian vision', as S aadeddin Ibrahim h as done76, th is would in some ways seem to be m ore the product of h in d sig h t th a n contem porary evidence of a fully-articulated program m e. C ertainly S a d a t restru c tu red th e economy, drew close to th e U nited S ta te s (and aw ay from the Soviet Union), in stitu te d lim ited political reform s and p u rsu ed a settlem en t w ith Israel, all w ithin the space of a few years. B u t these policy re-orientations m ig h t equally be seen as a cum ulative an d m u tu ally reinforcing series of steps, as m uch the product of opportunism and S ad at's
73 The four were 'Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, Zakaria Mohieddin, Hussein al-Shafi'i and Kamaleddin Hussein. See Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol.VII, No.2 (Winter 1978), pp.l60ff.
74 A Abdel-Malek, 'The Occultation of Egypt', Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol.l, No.3 (Summer 1979), p.177.
75 See J. Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (Toronto, etc.: Bantam, 1982), p.344, and Quandt, Camp David, pp.261-2.
76 See Saadeddin Ibrahim, 'Qui va capter l'äme de Husni Mubarak?’, Maghreb-
flair for the d ram atic gesture as of a coherent vision.77 Thus, S adat's well- docum ented discontent w ith the Soviet Union on economic, political and m ilitary grounds, could be tra n s la te d into active m easures ag ain st Moscow, because the U nited S tates w as only too willing to see the reduction of Soviet influence in th e Middle E a s t.78 Moreover, the U nited S tates appeared to be able not only to un d erw rite a sorely-needed restru c tu rin g of the Egyptian economy, b u t also to apply p ressu re on Israel. Progress m ight therefore be achieved on two fronts a t once.
Insofar as S ad at had a vision, it was of an econom ically-revitalised Egypt. T here can be no doubt th a t economics lay a t th e h e a rt of Sadat's reo rien tatio n a fte r th e October w ar. He seem ed eager to tell the E gyptian public of the parlous sta te of Egypt's finances on the eve of the w ar, to ju stify his su b seq u en t actions.79 S a d a t set out some of his ideas for Egypt's economic reg en eratio n in th e October P a p e r’ of April 1974. A lthough the P a p e r rep eated fam iliar N a sserist them es of confrontation and Arab unity, th ere w as a n em phasis on the need to a d ap t to new in tern atio n al circum stances: E gypt's economy should be 'opened up' to foreign investm ent from th e new ly oil-rich A rab states an d from th e W est; the private sector would have to be involved, and the public sector stream lin ed .80 This pronouncem ent and su b seq u en t developm ents showed th a t S ad at intended fu n dam entally to challenge th e prevailing state-centric ethos. It was this new, m ark et-o rien ted philosophy which underpinned Law 43 of J u n e 1974, th e legal basis of E gypt's 'opening' to foreign investm ent. Some forty laws
77 Gamal Zahran's analysis of Sadat's public policy statements - for all the