CAIRO: Israel’s invitation for the Saudi crown prince to visit occupied Al Quds, while an unlikely prospect, has awakened memories of the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s dramatic initiative 25 years ago. “Now that Crown Prince Abdullah’s plan has been made public and, supposing that he wants to move it forward, the most natural way of doing so is to have a meeting with the government of Israel,” Katsav said Monday.

The prospect of such a visit, although highly unlikely as the two countries have no ties, has drawn comparisons with that made by Sadat in Nov 1977. The Saudi prince outlined his Middle East land-for-peace ideas in the New York Times earlier this month. While the Saudi proposal would involve all Arab states, Sadat’s move was a personal initiative which led in 1979 to the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, bringing about a rupture between Cairo and the rest of the Arab world.

Back on Nov 9, 1977, Sadat told the Egyptian parliament in the presence of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat that he was ready to go to Israel and meet its leaders in the Knesset.

The conditions placed then by Sadat for resolving the Middle East crisis were not far off those made today by the Saudi prince: Israeli withdrawal from all Arab territories and the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

Then prime minister Menachem Begin reacted positively to the proposition, while at the same time describing the conditions put forward by the Egyptian head of state as “unacceptable.” On Nov 11, in an appeal to the Egyptian people, Begin proposed peace between the two countries and said that he was ready to play host to Sadat in Israel.

Events then gathered their own momentum, turning upside down decades of war and impasse: opposition from Syria, disapproval from Arafat’s Fatah movement, and calls from Palestinian radicals for an uprising by Egypt’s people and army.

On Nov 19, Sadat arrived in Israel, where he shook hands with his sworn enemies. The next day at dawn, he went to the Al Aqsa mosque and offered Eid prayers. From there he went to the Knesset, where he delivered a 55-minute speech to Israeli MPs. He then proposed a peace pact to the Jewish state, conditional on the end of Israel’s occupation of Arab territories and establishment of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people.—AFP