His Egyptian counterpart was at least as determined to pursue peace. Although Egypt had regained a measure of pride following the 1973 War, the demands of maintaining a wartime footing was breeding worsening poverty in Egypt. By 1977, large-scale riots were occurring in parts of Egypt. President Sadat also came to believe that his Presidency could not last without Egypt’s regaining the Sinai Peninsula and, following the 1973 War, he understood that only peace could bring about that outcome. Once the two men undertook the peace process and had concluded the Camp David Accords, the pressure on them to succeed had grown. They had “developed an ultimate personal stake in what had became their joint venture,” The New York Times explained, adding that having established such a stake, failure “would have destroyed the future of them all.” The combination of personal aspirations, a personal stake in the outcome of the negotiations, and the realization of vital national goals provided the foundation of the kind of motivation that was essential to breeding and sustaining the flexibility and commitment necessary to overcome the challenges that arose on the path to peace.

Early on, both leaders chose to conduct direct bilateral negotiations as opposed to an international conference or some other internationally-created approach. “Direct confrontation is the nearest and most successful method to reach a clear objective,” Sadat told the Knesset in his historic November 1977 address that kicked off the start of the peace process. Sadat rejected the idea of a Geneva conference that would have brought a larger number of players and issues into the mix and thereby made the possibility of achieving peace more complex and more unlikely. In other words, the larger the number of parties and the larger the number of issues, the more likely it is that something could go wrong.