On March 26, 1979, on the White House lawn, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and US President Jimmy Carter signed a historic peace treaty that transformed the Middle East. “No more war, no more bloodshed,” Begin declared at the ceremony.
Eighteen months prior to the signing, in November 1977, Sadat landed at Ben Gurion Airport, becoming the first Arab leader ever to pay an official visit to Israel. Barely four years after the trauma of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Israel Television broadcast history in the making. The black and white footage showed Sadat visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, addressing the Knesset in Arabic, embracing Begin and discussing with him a “peace of the brave.”