...Sadat surprises the world with his historic…

Although Sadat expresses his commitment to the settlement of the Palestinian issue and to that issue's centrality in Arab-Israeli relations, his main interest remains Israel's return of Egyptian territory.

Begin's acceptance of the Egyptian initiative is based on the premise that Sinai, but not the West Bank, is negotiable.

He foresees that exchanging Sinai for a peace treaty with Egypt will remove Egypt from the Arab-Israeli military balance and relieve pressure on Israel to make territorial concessions on the West Bank.