Exclusive: ‘History has proved my father was right,’ late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s son tells Arab News

Short Url
Updated 06 October 2021
Follow

Exclusive: ‘History has proved my father was right,’ late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s son tells Arab News

  • Gamal El-Sadat discusses his father’s life and legacy in wide-ranging interview on the 40th anniversary of his assassination
  • He provides rare insight into the rationale behind Anwar Sadat’s decision to go to war and later pursue peace with Israel

CAIRO: On Oct. 6, 1981, Islamist extremists gunned down Egyptian President Anwar Sadat as he reviewed troops at a military parade in Cairo to celebrate the country’s 1973 war against Israel. Sadat’s bullet-riddled body was rushed to the Maadi Military Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 2:40 p.m. due to “intense nervous shock and internal bleeding in the chest cavity.”

Two years earlier, Sadat had become the first Arab leader to make peace with Israel — a decision that angered many Egyptians and led to violent demonstrations against him. But the assassination of Sadat did not derail the peace process, which continued without him, with Egypt formally establishing diplomatic relations with Israel in 1982.

In an exclusive interview ahead of the 40th anniversary of the assassination, Gamal El-Sadat, son of Anwar Sadat and chairman of Etisalat Misr, spoke with Arab News about his father’s political legacy, the values he learned from his father, and his memory of that fateful day.

“I was traveling in the US at that time with a couple of my friends,” Gamal El-Sadat said, referring to his location on Oct. 6, 1981. “I had just arrived in Florida. It was a fishing trip that never happened. It was the only time that I had missed the parade.”

Back in Cairo, a group of officers wearing army uniforms and led by Khaled Al-Islambouli, a lieutenant in the Egyptian army, stopped in front of the parade’s reviewing stand. They then fired shots and threw grenades into a crowd of Egyptian government officials.

Anwar Sadat, who was shot four times, died two hours later as 10 other people were also killed in the attack.




Egyptian President Anwar Sadat shown in a photo taken February 11, 1981 during a private visit to Paris. (AFP/File Photo)

“In the morning, I woke up to a call from the resort manager telling me that there was a shooting in the parade and my father was hurt,” Gamal El-Sadat said. 

“I tried to call Cairo, with no luck, then turned the news on. The bulletin said that Anwar Sadat was hurt in his arm, but he was in stable condition. I kept trying to call Cairo until I reached my mother (Jehan Sadat) who told me directly ‘your father has passed away.’”

Jehan Sadat was sitting in the stands at the military parade, just a few meters away from her husband when the deadly attack unfolded.

Gamal El-Sadat remembers very clearly the events that took place immediately after his return to Cairo. His father’s autopsy had not been conducted yet. There was a theory at the time that Anwar Sadat’s murder might have been an inside job.

Opinion

This section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)

Gamal El-Sadat recalled arriving directly at the Sadat family home but something cropped up. “I received a call from the prime minister at the time, Dr. Fouad Mohideen, who told me that ‘we would like to have an autopsy done because there is a bullet that is lodged somewhere. We just need to verify because there is a theory that some of my father’s own bodyguards might have assassinated him.’”

Gamal El-Sadat said he would like to be present for the autopsy. 

“The autopsy concluded that when the shooting started, my father stood up and he took bullets in his arm and thigh. Those were not fatal,” he said.

“However, another bullet from an AK-74 assault rifle that was fired from one of the parade’s trucks had ricocheted off the counter in front of my father, took an upward trajectory to enter his chest. The bullet went through his heart and got stuck in his neck.

“This finding laid to rest all suspicions about my father’s murder being an inside job. Members of his security detail used to carry sidearms only.”

Less than two years before his killing, in an unprecedented move for an Arab leader, Anwar Sadat traveled to seek a permanent peace settlement with Israel after decades of conflict.

Sadat’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and address to Israel's parliament were met with outrage in most of the Arab world. The global reaction was different: Sadat and Begin were jointly awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize for peace.

Gamal El-Sadat said: “Before going to Jerusalem, my father went to Syria when he met President (Hafez) Assad to invite the Syrian leader to join him. President Assad was a dear friend of my father but he said ‘No, I will not come with you.’ So, my father told him, ‘Please, I ask you to give me your permission to speak on your behalf. If I fail, it will be me who failed. If I succeed, then we will both succeed.’ But Assad told him ‘No, I will not give you permission to do that as well.’ So, my father left and was very unhappy because it was an offer that had no downsides for Syria at the time.”

Gamal El-Sadat continued: “My father believed that the military had finished its role; there was no way we were going to go any further with the military. It had to be political. It had to be diplomacy. …  He had no other choice. (He could not be) the man who looked out for his own fame and kept saying ‘I will throw (the Israelis) into the sea’ and got the support of all the countries, yet not do anything in the end, because nobody was going to throw (the Israelis) into the sea because their safety was guaranteed by the US and the Soviet Union.”

Despite criticism from Egypt’s regional allies, Sadat continued to pursue peace with Begin, and in September 1978 the two leaders met again in the US, where they negotiated an agreement with President Jimmy Carter at Camp David, Maryland.

The Camp David Accords, the first peace agreement between the state of Israel and one of its Arab neighbors, laid the groundwork for diplomatic and commercial relations.

The peace efforts were greeted with suspicion and hostility across the Arab world. In addition to being subjected to political, economic, and diplomatic sanctions, Egypt was also suspended from the Arab League and the body’s headquarters was temporarily moved from Cairo to the Tunisian capital, Tunis.

Today, besides Egypt, five other Arab countries — Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco — have established full diplomatic relations with Israel.




Sadat was portrayed as "The Hero of the Crossing" following the 1973 war with Israel, which gave him a huge bump in status and popularity. (Getty Images)

“When my father came to office as president after Gamal Abdel Nasser, he made several proposals for peace with Israel, but they were never met with any seriousness,” Gamal El-Sadat said. 

“They were completely disregarded, and he came to understand that the world only listens to power. It was the October war that demonstrated that Egypt would not keep silent regarding Israel’s occupation of its territory.”

Gamal El-Sadat rejects the notion, however, that Egypt did not emerge victorious in the 1973 war. 

“The Israelis crossed over to the western side of the Suez Canal, yes,” he said. “They tried to take Suez but could not take Suez, which was a civilian city. And they could not go any further west. The Egyptian reserves blocked the west.”

Gamal El-Sadat continued: “My father understood the (necessity of the) peace deal earlier. He knew that wars were not going to solve the issue. He wanted other Arab countries to join Egypt in the Camp David Accord, and history has shown his vision to be right. Now Arab countries have begun to build strong relations with Israel as they have started to understand that the only solution is politics and dialogue.”

Gamal El-Sadat cited the generosity shown by Anwar Sadat to the dying shah of Iran as proof of the principles his father lived by. Their friendship dated back to the 1970s when Mohamed Reza Pahlavi stood by Egypt during the 1973 war with Israel and sent medical aid and doctors.




The coffin of late Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat is transported on a gun carriage during his funeral 10 October 1981 in Cairo. (AFP/File Photo)

After being overthrown by the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the ailing shah moved between Morocco, the Bahamas, Mexico, the US, and Panama. He then took refuge in Egypt on March 24, 1980, after being received by President Sadat.

Gamal El-Sadat said: “My father did not want to make an enemy of anyone or hurt anyone’s feelings. But he could not deny (the fact) that this man stood by Egypt — not by my father, but by Egypt in its time of need.”

For Gamal El-Sadat, Anwar Sadat was of course not just a president of Egypt whose place in history is recognized and secure. He also remembers his father as a kind and simple person.

“I am biased because I am his son, but I believe this statement is true,” Gamal El-Sadat said. “Anwar Sadat was a man in touch with reality. He had lived a hard life and understood what it was to be poor. He appreciated life and understood that life has so many aspects other than money and politics.”

Indeed, Anwar Sadat’s personal history simply reflected the tortuous history of Egypt itself in the 20th century. He was born into a peasant family in the Nile Delta. He joined the Egyptian army, took the side of the Axis powers during World War II, and participated in activism against the British, who imprisoned him.

Anwar Sadat was a senior member of the Free Officers who overthrew King Farouk in the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and a close confidant of Nasser, under whom he served as vice president twice and whom he eventually succeeded as president in 1970.

“My father was a religious person and very humble,” Gamal El-Sadat told Arab News. “He taught me and my siblings to love our country, and always respect people regardless of their position or station. He used to pray with poor people to show me that we are all alike.”

Until her death from cancer at the age of 88 in July, Jehan Sadat spent much of her life dedicated to promoting social justice and female empowerment in Egypt. Long before she became a global public figure, Jehan helped lead a campaign to reform Egypt’s status law which would go on to grant women new rights to divorce their husbands and retain custody of their children.

She was frequently photographed alongside her husband on official visits abroad and in more intimate settings, at home with their family.

Jehan Sadat would go on to earn a master’s and doctorate degree in comparative literature and, in her later years, took on lecturing posts in Cairo and the US.

“Jehan Sadat was a public figure during Sadat’s time and afterward,” Gamal El-Sadat said. “She was really a strong lady. After my father passed away, she would not sit back and stay at home. She continued her career and got a Ph.D. in Arabic literature, traveled to the US, and started teaching as a visiting professor.

“She used to promote women’s rights in our part of the world. She kept doing so until very recent years when she decided to spend more time with her family.”

Jehan Sadat was just 46 when Anwar Sadat was assassinated. She spent the rest of her life trying to preserve his legacy of peace through her travels and lectures around the world.


UN urges more support to speed up Syria refugee returns

Updated 4 sec ago
Follow

UN urges more support to speed up Syria refugee returns

DAMASCUS: UN refugee agency chief Filippo Grandi has urged more international support for Syria to speed up reconstruction and enable further refugee returns after some 14 years of civil war.
“I am here also to really make an appeal to the international community to provide more help, more assistance to the Syrian government in this big challenge of recovery of the country,” Grandi told reporters on Friday on the sidelines of a visit to Damascus.
Syrians who had been displaced internally or fled abroad have begun gradually returning home since the December overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar Assad, whose brutal repression of peaceful anti-government protests in 2011 triggered war.
But the wide-scale destruction, including to basic infrastructure, remains a major barrier to returns.
Grandi said over two million people had returned to their areas of origin, including around 1.5 million internally displaced people, while some 600,000 others have come back from neighboring countries including Lebanon, Jordan and Turkiye.
“Two million of course is only a fraction of the very big number of Syrian refugees and displaced, but it is a very big figure,” he said.
According to UNHCR, some 13.5 million Syrians remain displaced internally or abroad.
Syria’s conflict displaced around half the pre-war population, with many internally displaced people seeking refuge in camps in the northwest.
Grandi said that after Assad’s toppling, the main obstacle to returns was “a lack of services, lack of housing, lack of work,” adding that his agency was working with Syrian authorities and governments in the region “to help people go back.”
He said he discussed the importance of the sustainability of returns with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani, including ensuring “that people don’t move again because they don’t have a house or they don’t have a job or they don’t have electricity” or other services such as health.
Sustainable returns “can only happen if there is recovery, reconstruction in Syria, not just for the returnees, for all Syrians,” he said.
He added that he also discussed with Shaibani how to “encourage donors to give more resources for this sustainability.”
With the recent lifting of Western sanctions, the new Syrian authorities hope for international support to launch reconstruction, which the UN estimates could cost more than $400 billion.

Water levels plummet at drought-hit Iraqi reservoir

Updated 21 June 2025
Follow

Water levels plummet at drought-hit Iraqi reservoir

  • Visible cracks have emerged in the retreating shoreline of the artificial lake, which lies in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region and was created in the 1950s

DUKAN: Water levels at Iraq’s vast Dukan Dam reservoir have plummeted as a result of dwindling rains and further damming upstream, hitting millions of inhabitants already impacted by drought with stricter water rationing.
Amid these conditions, visible cracks have emerged in the retreating shoreline of the artificial lake, which lies in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region and was created in the 1950s.
Dukan Lake has been left three quarters empty, with its director Kochar Jamal Tawfeeq explaining its reserves currently stand at around 1.6 billion cubic meters of water out of a possible seven billion.
That is “about 24 percent” of its capacity, the official said, adding that the level of water in the lake had not been so low in roughly 20 years.
Satellite imagery analyzed by AFP shows the lake’s surface area shrank by 56 percent between the end of May 2019, the last year it was completely full, and the beginning of June 2025.
Tawfeeq blamed climate change and a “shortage of rainfall” explaining that the timing of the rains had also become irregular.
Over the winter season, Tawfeeq said the Dukan region received 220 millimeters (8.7 inches) of rain, compared to a typical 600 millimeters.


Upstream damming of the Little Zab River, which flows through Iran and feeds Dukan, was a secondary cause of the falling water levels, Tawfeeq explained.
Also buffeted by drought, Iran has built dozens of structures on the river to increase its own water reserves.
Baghdad has criticized these kinds of dams, built both by Iran and neighboring Turkiye, accusing them of significantly restricting water flow into Iraq via the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Iraq, and its 46 million inhabitants, have been intensely impacted by the effects of climate change, experiencing rising temperatures, year-on-year droughts and rampant desertification.
At the end of May, the country’s total water reserves were at their lowest level in 80 years.
On the slopes above Dukan lies the village of Sarsian, where Hussein Khader Sheikhah, 57, was planting a summer crop on a hectare of land.
The farmer said he hoped a short-term summer crop of the kind typically planted in the area for an autumn harvest — cucumbers, melons, chickpeas, sunflower seeds and beans — would help him offset some of the losses over the winter caused by drought.
In winter, in another area near the village, he planted 13 hectares mainly of wheat.
“The harvest failed because of the lack of rain,” he explained, adding that he lost an equivalent of almost $5,700 to the poor yield.
“I can’t make up for the loss of 13 hectares with just one hectare near the river,” he added.


The water shortage at Dukan has affected around four million people downstream in the neighboring Sulaimaniyah and Kirkuk governorates, including their access to drinking water.
For more than a month, water treatment plants in Kirkuk have been trying to mitigate a sudden, 40 percent drop in the supplies reaching them, according to local water resource official Zaki Karim.
In a country ravaged by decades of conflict, with crumbling infrastructure and floundering public policies, residents already receive water intermittently.
The latest shortages are forcing even “stricter rationing” and more infrequent water distributions, Karim said.
In addition to going door-to-door to raise awareness about water waste, the authorities were also cracking down on illegal access to the water network.
In the province of roughly two million inhabitants, the aim is to minimize the impact on the provincial capital of Kirkuk.
“If some treatment plants experience supply difficulties, we will ensure that there are no total interruptions, so everyone can receive their share,” Karim said.


Israel military says hit Hezbollah site in south Lebanon

Updated 21 June 2025
Follow

Israel military says hit Hezbollah site in south Lebanon

  • The military said the site was used by Hezbollah “to advance terror attacks against Israeli civilians”

JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said Saturday its navy hit a Hezbollah “infrastructure site” near the southern Lebanese city of Naqoura, a day after Israel’s foreign minister warned the Lebanese armed group against entering the Iran-Israel war.
“Overnight, an Israeli Navy vessel struck a Hezbollah ‘Radwan Force’ terrorist infrastructure site in the area of Naqoura in southern Lebanon,” the military said in a statement.
The military said the site was used by Hezbollah “to advance terror attacks against Israeli civilians.”
In a separate statement on Saturday, the military said it had “struck and eliminated” a Hezbollah militant in south Lebanon the previous day, despite an ongoing ceasefire between both sides.
In a statement carried by the official National News Agency, Lebanon’s health ministry said late on Friday that one person was killed in a “strike carried out by an Israeli enemy drone on a motorcycle” in the same south Lebanon village.
The November ceasefire aimed to end hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, which sparked months of deadly hostilities by launching cross-border attacks on northern Israel in solidarity with Palestinian ally Hamas following its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Lebanon’s army, which has been dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure as part of the truce, said earlier in June that the Israeli military’s ongoing violations and “refusal to cooperate” with the ceasefire monitoring mechanism “could prompt the (Lebanese) military to freeze cooperation” on site inspections.


Israeli military kill head of Palestine corps in IRGC’s overseas arm – defense minister

Updated 21 June 2025
Follow

Israeli military kill head of Palestine corps in IRGC’s overseas arm – defense minister

  • Veteran commander, Saeed Izadi, led the Palestine Corps of the Quds Force
  • The Quds Force built up a network of Arab allies known as the Axis of Resistance

Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday that the military had killed a veteran commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ overseas arm, in a strike in an apartment in Iran’s Qom.

The veteran commander, Saeed Izadi, led the Palestine Corps of the Quds Force, Katz said in a statement.

There was no confirmation from the IRGC.

The Quds Force built up a network of Arab allies known as the Axis of Resistance, establishing Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1982 and supporting the Palestinian militant Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

But Iran-aligned network has suffered major blows over the last two years, as Israeli offensives since Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel have weakened both the Palestinian group and Hezbollah.

Katz said Izadi financed and armed Hamas during the initial attacks, describing the commander’s killing as a “major achievement for Israeli intelligence and the Air Force.”

Izadi was sanctioned by the US and Britain over what they said were his ties to Hamas and Palestinian militant faction Islamic Jihad, which also took part in the October 7 attacks.


Iran’s FM arrives in Istanbul for Arab League meeting

Updated 21 June 2025
Follow

Iran’s FM arrives in Istanbul for Arab League meeting

  • Around 40 diplomats are slated to join the weekend gathering of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation

ISTANBUL: Iran’s foreign minister arrived in Istanbul on Saturday, Tasnim news agency reported, for a meeting with Arab League diplomats to discuss Tehran’s escalating conflict with Israel.

Around 40 diplomats are slated to join the weekend gathering of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), as Israel and Iran continue to exchange missile strikes.

“The Foreign Minister arrived in Istanbul this morning to participate in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Foreign Ministers’ meeting,” Tasnim reported.

It comes after Araghchi met with his counterparts from Britain, France and Germany in Geneva on Friday.

“At this meeting, at the suggestion of Iran, the issue of the Zionist regime’s attack on our country will be specifically addressed,” said Iranian foreign Abbas Araghchi, according to the news agency.

Israel began its assault in the early hours of June 13, saying Iran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, triggering an immediate retaliation from Tehran in the worst-ever confrontation between the two arch-rivals.

Earlier on Friday, Araghchi said Tehran was ready to “consider diplomacy” again only if Israel’s “aggression is stopped.”

The Arab League ministers are expected to release a statement following their meeting, the Turkish state news agency Anadolu said.