The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative Of Israeli Leadership - Plot & Excerpts
asked Begin, in an impatient voice. Yechiel Kadishai flipped through his pocket calendar, and said, “This coming Shabbat, November nineteenth, it ends at five twelve.” The prime minister’s face became sunny. “So, that’s fine, Sam. You can tell your Cairo Embassy to tell the Egyptians eight o’clock is perfectly in order. It will give us time enough to prepare everything for President Sadat’s arrival without our desecrating the Sabbath.” This exchange took place on Wednesday afternoon, 16 November, 1977. The prime minister was addressing Ambassador Samuel Lewis, who had asked to see him urgently to deliver a message from the Egyptian president. He wanted to know what time on Saturday night he could land at Ben-Gurion Airport. The drama behind this sudden and astonishing question had begun a week earlier when, in a rambling address to his parliament – the People’s Assembly – Anwar Sadat had tucked in the following sentence: “Israel will be stunned to hear me tell you that I am ready to go to the ends of the earth, and even to their home, to the Knesset itself, to argue with them, in order to prevent one Egyptian soldier from being wounded.”
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