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Anwar Sadat was president of Egypt from 1970 to 1981, leaving office via assassination. He had been immensely popular, but in 1979 he signed a peace treaty with Israel that won him (and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin) the Nobel Peace Prize. It also won him great enmity in the Muslim world. He signed the accord knowing it was likely the same as signing his own death warrant.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: October 6, 1981--
After ascending the presidency Sadat became popular for expelling the Soviet military from the country, opening up the economy, restraining the despised secret police, and reforming the military for another showdown with Israel. Egypt had lost the Sinai Peninsula in a war with Israel in 1967, and on October 6, 1973, Sadat, along with a coalition of Arab states, launched war against Israel to get some payback. It wasn’t exactly a victory, but there were early successes in the war that restored Arab pride after the ass-kicking they took in ‘67. Sadat was a hero.
The peace process began in 1978, brokered by President Jimmy Carter. The terms were that the two countries recognize each other, making Egypt the first Arab country to acknowledge Israel, and ending the state of war that had existed between them since Israel declared statehood three decades earlier. It also saw the complete withdrawal of Israel from the Sinai Peninsula that it had occupied for the previous dozen years.
The Arab and wider Muslim world was pissed. They saw the treaty as a betrayal of Arab unity against the “Zionist Entity.” Within Egypt many were pleased with the return of the Sinai, with the exception of the country’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood who despised the thought of peace with Israel. Additionally, those on the left were vexed at Sadat for not holding Israel to the fire on the issue of Palestinian statehood.
Within two years of the signing of the peace treaty, things had gone to shit in Egypt. There was rampant inflation due to the country’s isolation by other Arab nations, leading to rioting. Islamists in the country began to stockpile weapons and recruit officers in the military; an attempted coup in June of 1981 led to military crackdowns and imprisonments.
On October 6, 1981, there was a military parade in Cairo celebrating the initial victories of the 1973 war with Israel; Sadat was in attendance. A militant Jihad cell that had been missed during the roundups disguised itself as part of the parade and assassins leapt from a truck and attacked President Sadat with grenades and assault rifles, killing him and 11 others.
The assassination had been “approved” as a fatwā (a ruling under Islamic law) by Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who died in a U.S. prison in 2017 for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
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