But in the absence of extraordinary leaders like Sadat, recovered Arab pride is no sure formula for peace. Sadat's example challenges the lifetime belief of Ariel Sharon, Israel's current prime minister, that Arab nations will not make peace with Israel unless they have been so thoroughly beaten and humiliated that they internalize the certainty of defeat. Underscoring those connections, Islamic opponents of that treaty assassinated Sadat at an October 1981 military parade marking the anniversary of the 1973 war. A direct line runs from the Egyptian Army's crossing of the Suez Canal in 1973 to Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem four years later, and then on to the first formal peace treaty between Israel and an Arab state. But Egypt, a country humiliated and demoralized by Israel's crushing victory in June 1967, regained enough of its pride to pursue peace. Israel rallied its reserves, recovered its losses and added new territory along the critical Golan frontier. Never did the prospect of Israel's destruction seem more imminent than in the first days after Egypt and Syria's devastatingly effective surprise attack. The Arab-Israeli war of October 1973 forms the hinge between these two periods. The second period, still under way, has been less dangerous but more frustrating as Israel has struggled to translate military strength and territorial gains into real security and diplomatic recognition by its Arab neighbors. Yet Israel emerged victorious from all of them, each time extending, even if only temporarily, the amount of territory under its control. Defeat in any could have brought the end of the Jewish state. Four heroic wars shaped its first quarter-century. ISRAEL'S brief history falls into two periods.

Lovely war book review