Anwar Gargash invokes Sadat’s October War strategy, says force can serve path to peace

Dubai: Dr Anwar Mohammed Gargash, Diplomatic Adviser to the UAE President, marked the 53rd anniversary of the October 1973 War on Tuesday by highlighting late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s use of military force as an instrument of diplomacy when the ultimate objective was peace.

Gargash said Sadat understood that war was an extension of politics and that military power could serve as a negotiating tool when the goal was a peace that safeguarded rights and interests.

“On the 53rd anniversary of the October War, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, may he rest in peace, affirmed that war is an extension of politics, and that force is a negotiating tool when the objective is a peace that preserves rights and interests,” Gargash wrote in a social media post.

He described the principle as a strategic axiom that Sadat employed early but which, he said, remained absent from the thinking of many leaders today.

Gargash's comments came as Egypt marked 53 years since the October 1973 War. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi commemorated the anniversary by laying wreaths at the Armed Forces Martyrs’ Memorial and at the tombs of Sadat and former President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

In an anniversary address, Al Sisi also drew a link between the 1973 war and the subsequent pursuit of peace, saying decades of conflict between Egypt and Israel eventually gave way to diplomacy and an end to hostilities.

Sadat led Egypt during the 1973 war and later pursued negotiations with Israel that culminated in the 1978 Camp David Accords and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979.