The Peace Treaty with Egypt

In November 5738 the unthinkable happened: President Anwar Sadat of Egypt flew to Jerusalem and addressed the Knesset. The country watched live, transfixed. The man whose tanks had crossed into Sinai five years earlier stood at the podium and spoke of peace.

The negotiations were hard. At Camp David in September 5738 Sadat, Menachem Begin and President Carter argued for thirteen days and nearly broke off several times. The treaty was signed in Washington on 26 March 5739—six years after the Yom Kippur War.

The price was high. Israel returned the whole Sinai Peninsula—three times its own size—with its oilfields, airfields and the town of Yamit, built only four years earlier. In 5742 Yamit was demolished and its residents removed by force; the footage of weeping families lifted off rooftops became one of the era's hardest memories. The country was deeply split, and part of the religious-Zionist world held that giving up the land was forbidden.

But the peace held. Egypt, the largest Arab state and the main military adversary in four wars, has not fought Israel since. Begin and Sadat received the Nobel Peace Prize; Sadat was assassinated by Egyptian Islamists in 5742.