Operation Badr

[privatehudson]

Having to deal recognise Israel and deal with them was a political defeat for Sadat, the bottom line is he didn't gain enough in Yom Kippur to be seen to force the return and therefore lost as much as he gained. Simply saying that Egypt "won" because it got the Sinai back is to ignore what it (and especially Sadat) lost also. I would argue that a political victory would have been to achieve the return of the Sinai without the loss of status that came from having to deal with Israel and recognise her. In other words its return by right of occupation or by decimating the Israeli armed forces to the point where further fighting was impossible. I'll bet Sadat's aim wasn't to regain the Sinai at the cost of Egypt's near dominance of the Arab world to say nothing of the cost of his life.

Unless you can prove that Sadat would have (before Yom Kippur) willingly accepted the loss of status over the regain of the Sinai your conclusion suffers. He certainly offered to recognise Israel before the war but not just for the return of the Sinai, he wanted all of Resolution 242 affirmed which would have meant Israel withdrawing from not just the Sinai but also the West Bank and the Golan Heights amongst other things. This may not have cost Sadat as much politically as the Camp David negotiations did.

Also why, if the land was so useless, the Israeli did not give it back?

I never said anything about it being useless.

 

[Adler17]

PH, his main objective remained the Sinai. If he got more, okay, but that was not so important for him. That Israel was and is not willing to return the other occupied areas, what is another tragedy, is only a minor point. But his main target was the Sinai. Also he accepted the loss of the "Arab leadership", if he had such at all, when he offered peace to Israel. He knew, if he was successful, the Arab world would not have accepted it then.

Adler

 

[privatehudson]

If Sadat only wanted the Sinai he wouldn't have demanded all of 242 was adhered to in his initial moves before the war. That he settled for it later at the cost of Egypt's status (Being expelled from the Arab League and at the same time the HQ of the same being removed from Egypt are the two most obvious examples) was as much a failure as a sucess and represents the failure of Egypt to conduct a sucessful enough war to achieve her aims without such loss.

Simply saying he only wanted the Sinai at any cost doesn't make it so, as I said, please show some evidence that he'd have accepted such a loss before the war. Otherwise, because of his lost status the best its possible to argue was that Egypt came out of the negotiations with a draw on a political level, not a victory.

 

[Adler17]

Sadat may demanded the whole cake. True. However even though his main objective was the Sinai. If he got that, he would not have gone for war. And the Arab League was, and still is, a paper tiger (more or less). Also Egypt was a power in the Arab world which could not be neglected for long. As well as a peace with Israel. So that may have been a risk he calculated with.

Adler

 

[privatehudson]

I don't see any evidence in that post.

Lets try this comparison:

Rather than simply being given the Sudetanland in 1938 Germany is forced to fight for it. In a hard fought campaign she achieves little other than occupying a small area of it before a ceasefire is called. In the ensuing peace talks the British and French persuade the Czechs to cede the Sudentenland in return for lasting peace. Despite Hitler loudly proclaiming a victory the German public are not so impressed, their great leader who was to restore Germany's national pride has merely brought back memories of 1918. Shortly after the peace talks Army officers assasinate him.

Before you drag the thread off into the likelyhood of the above happeneing that is not the point, the point is that Hitler wouldn't have counted that as a victory, (although if Hitler died in 1938 I'd count it as a victory for the world!) so neither should we consider Sadat's a victory.