The biggest Arab state fought Israel four times in 25 years, then became the first to make peace, and kept it. Egypt is the proof that the conflict was never bottomless: when an Arab leader truly wanted peace, he got it, and got his land back too.
From 1948 to 1973, no country fought Israel harder than Egypt. Then its president flew to Jerusalem, signed a treaty, and got back every grain of Sinai sand Israel had captured. The peace has held for over four decades, through intifadas, Gaza wars and a revolution. It cost Anwar Sadat his life, murdered by the same Islamist movement that is Israel's enemy too.
Egypt led the Arab effort to destroy Israel at birth and three times after. Each war was begun or escalated from Cairo, and each is on the record.
1948 · The War of Independence
The day Israel declares statehood, Egypt invades from the south alongside four other Arab armies, vowing to strangle the new state in its cradle. Egypt ends the war holding the Gaza Strip, which it will rule, without ever offering its people a state, for the next 19 years.
1956 · The Suez Crisis
Egypt's Nasser blockades the Straits of Tiran and Israeli shipping, sponsors cross-border fedayeen raids, and nationalises the Suez Canal. Israel, Britain and France respond militarily; Israel takes the Sinai, then withdraws under US pressure for a UN buffer force and open shipping.
May–June 1967 · The Six-Day War
Nasser expels the UN buffer force, masses 100,000 troops in the Sinai, again closes the Straits of Tiran (an act of war), and declares the goal is "the destruction of Israel." Israel strikes first and, in six days, takes the entire Sinai and Gaza from Egypt. The full lead-up →
October 1973 · The Yom Kippur War
On the holiest day of the Jewish year, Egypt and Syria launch a coordinated surprise attack. Egypt storms across the Suez Canal. Israel, caught off guard, recovers and crosses to the canal's west bank within weeks. The shock of near-defeat, on both sides, finally opens the door to talking.
What no war had settled, one leader's courage did. Egypt did not get its land back by fighting. It got it back by making peace.
November 1977 · Sadat in Jerusalem
President Anwar Sadat does the unthinkable: he flies to Jerusalem and addresses the Israeli Knesset, recognising the state his country had fought four times. "No more war," he says.
September 1978 · Camp David
Brokered by US President Jimmy Carter over twelve days, Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin sign the Camp David Accords, the framework for peace. Both men win the Nobel Peace Prize.
26 March 1979 · The treaty
The Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty is signed in Washington: mutual recognition, an end to the state of war, full diplomatic relations, and Israeli withdrawal from all of the Sinai. Israel completes the pull-out, evacuating its own settlements, by 1982.
Peace with Israel was treated as treason by the Arab world. Egypt was suspended from the Arab League for a decade. And in October 1981, Sadat was assassinated at a military parade by officers of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the same Islamist current that later spawned al-Qaeda and inspires Hamas. He was killed not by Israel, but by the very ideology that calls Israel illegitimate. The peacemaker was murdered by the rejectionists.
It is often called a "cold peace": correct between governments, cooler between peoples, and Egyptian media is frequently hostile. But it has never broken.
Egypt and Israel now share deep security cooperation: jointly fighting the ISIS insurgency in the Sinai, coordinating on the Gaza border and Rafah crossing, and Egypt has repeatedly served as the lead mediator in ceasefires between Israel and Hamas. Israel even agreed to let Egypt deploy forces in the Sinai beyond treaty limits to fight the jihadists. The two former enemies are now, quietly, strategic partners.