Who was Anwar Sadat?: Anwar Sadat was President of Egypt from 1970 to 1981. He signed the Camp David Accords with Israeli PM Menachem Begin in 1978 and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty in 1979, the first Arab-Israeli peace agreement. He was assassinated in Cairo in October 1981 by Islamist soldiers opposed to the treaty.Source: Nobel Committee / Egyptian state records
Why was Anwar Sadat assassinated?: Sadat was killed on 6 October 1981 by members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad during a military parade in Cairo. His assassins opposed his 1979 peace treaty with Israel and his secular, pro-Western governance.Source: Egyptian state archives
What did Sadat agree to at Camp David?: At Camp David in 1978, Sadat and Israeli PM Menachem Begin, mediated by US President Jimmy Carter, signed a framework that led to the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty. Egypt recognised Israel; Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.Source: Camp David Accords text
How does Sadat's peace compare to the Abraham Accords?: Sadat's 1979 treaty ended an active state of war and involved territorial exchange. The 2020 Abraham Accords normalised relations between Israel and Gulf States that had never been at war with it, and involved no land concessions. Both are cited as models for Arab-Israeli normalisation.Source: US State Department
Does Egypt still honour the peace treaty Sadat signed?: Yes. As of 2026, Egypt under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi maintains full diplomatic and security cooperation with Israel under the 1979 treaty. The treaty has survived multiple regional wars and has not been abrogated despite public hostility in Egypt.Source: Egyptian Foreign Ministry

Background

Anwar Sadat served as President of Egypt from 1970 until his assassination in October 1981. A lieutenant in Nasser's Free Officers movement, he succeeded Gamal Abdel Nasser and pivoted Egypt from Soviet alignment to Washington. His 1977 visit to Jerusalem was the first by an Arab head of state, shattering a taboo that had held since Israel's founding.

Sadat co-signed the Camp David Framework with Menachem Begin under US Mediation in 1978, producing the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty: the only Arab-Israeli accord to endure. As Benjamin Netanyahu and the Trump administration coordinate strikes on Iran and threaten Hormuz, the architecture Sadat built is invoked as the precedent the region now abandons.

Sadat shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Begin in 1978; he was simultaneously expelled from the Arab League and shot dead by Islamist soldiers at a Cairo parade. As Iranian missiles reach Israeli refineries, the question his peace raised, whether normalisation can outlast the next regional war, remains violently open.

How the World Sees Them

Egypt

Sadat remains deeply divisive in Egypt: celebrated by secularists for ending costly wars with Israel, condemned by Islamists and pan-Arab nationalists for betraying the Palestinian cause. His successor el-Sisi preserves the treaty but never rehabilitates Sadat's legacy publicly.

Israel

Israel regards Sadat as the Arab world's sole genuine peacemaker; the 1979 treaty secured Israel's southern flank for four decades. As the current conflict with Iran isolates Israel regionally, Israeli commentators invoke Sadat's model as the only proven path out.

Arab world

Sadat was expelled from the Arab League after Camp David and remains contested; most Arab governments privately accept his logic of state interest over pan-Arabism but rarely say so. The Iran-Israel conflict has revived the debate over whether his approach was realism or capitulation.

United States

Washington brokered the Camp David Accords as a Cold War strategic win, and treats the Egypt-Israel treaty as the template for all subsequent normalisation efforts. The Abraham Accords and Trump-era Gulf outreach explicitly cite Sadat's precedent.