Culture Shock! Egypt - A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette

A Tour of Egypt 39

Nasser’s 18 years at the helm of Egypt, many of his goals
were accomplished. Nasser finally succeeded in removing
the last vestiges of British rule from Egypt. Valiant efforts
failed to unify the Arab world, however. The nadir in Nasser’s
presidency was the ‘catastrophe’ of the Six-Days War with
Israel in June 1967.

Egyptian-Russian Ties

Under Nasser, Egypt developed a close alliance with the Soviet

Union between 1956–1967. The World Bank, under strong pressure

from the United States, refused funding of Nasser’s most important

infrastructural project (construction of the Aswan High Dam) due

to Egypt’s expressed hostility towards Israel. This action triggered

Nasser’s turn to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union agreed to fi nance

the dam, which was completed in 1971.

Even though he had been in poor health for some time,
Nasser’s death came as a shock to many Egyptians. Following
his death in 1970, Anwar el-Sadat, his vice president, was
installed as president as per constitutional procedure. Sadat,
long thought by many to be Nasser’s ‘yes’ man, soon showed
his strength.
Very shortly after assuming the presidency, Sadat
introduced a ‘revolution of rectification’ which he said was
needed to correct the errors of his predecessor. Seeking to
ally Egypt more closely with the United States, in 1972 he
ordered 15,000 Soviet advisors to leave Egypt. In October
1973, Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal and broke
through Israeli lines in the occupied Sinai. This attack was
co-ordinated with an attack from Syria on Israel’s eastern
border. The surprise attack initially pushed the Israelis back,
but they later regrouped and subsequently regained most
of the territory they had lost. Following that, a stalemate
highlighted Arab-Israeli affairs until Sadat took a dramatic
chance announcing at a meeting of the Egyptian People’s
Assembly that he was ready to talk to the Israelis in their own
house—the Knesset. And he did so. Sadat’s foreign policy
successes culminated in the 1979 peace treaty with Israel
and, subsequently, the Nobel Peace Prize.