SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Anwar Sadat Centen-
nial Celebration Act’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds the following: 
(1) Anwar Sadat was born on December 25, 
1918, in Mit Abu al-Kum, al-Minufiyah, Egypt, as 
1 of 13 children in a poor Egyptian family. 
(2) In 1938, Sadat graduated from the Royal 
Military Academy in Cairo and was appointed to the 
Signal Corps. 
(3) Sadat entered the Army as a second lieuten-
ant and was posted to Sudan where he met Gamal 
Abdel Nasser and fellow junior officers who became 
the ‘‘Free Officers’’ who led the Egyptian revolution 
of 1952. 
(4) Sadat held various high positions during 
Nasser’s presidency, assuming the role of President 
of the National Assembly in 1960 and Vice Presi-
dent in 1964. 
(5) President Nasser died of a heart attack on 
September 28, 1970, at which point Sadat became 
acting President. Sadat was subsequently elected as 
the third President of Egypt. 
(6) On October 6, 1973, President Sadat, along 
with his Syrian counterparts, launched an offensive
against Israel. A permanent cease-fire was reached 
on October 25, 1973. 
(7) In 1974, after talks facilitated by Secretary 
of State Henry Kissinger, Egypt and Israel signed 
an agreement allowing Egypt to formally retrieve 
land in the Sinai. President Sadat later wrote in his 
memoirs that his meetings with Kissinger ‘‘marked 
the beginning of a relationship of mutual under-
standing with the United States culminating and 
crystallizing in what we came to describe as a ‘peace 
process’. Together we started that process and the 
United States still supports our joint efforts to this 
day’’. 
(8) Months of diplomacy between Egypt and 
Israel followed the signing of this initial agreement 
and a second disengagement agreement, the Sinai 
Interim Agreement, was signed in September of 
1975. 
(9) President Sadat addressed a joint session of 
Congress on November 5, 1975, during which he un-
derscored the shared values between the United 
States and Egypt. In this speech, President Sadat 
addressed the path to peace, saying, ‘‘We are faced, 
together with other nations, with one of the greatest 
challenges of our time, namely the task of convincing
this generation, and those to follow, that we can fi-
nally build a viable international system capable of 
meeting the demands of tomorrow and solving the 
problems of the coming age’’. 
(10) On November 19, 1977, President Sadat 
became the first Arab leader to visit Israel, meeting 
with the Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin. 
President Sadat spoke before the Israeli Knesset in 
Jerusalem about his views on how to achieve com-
prehensive peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict. 
(11) Before commencing negotiations, President 
Sadat courageously announced to the Knesset, ‘‘I 
have come to you so that together we might build a 
durable peace based on justice, to avoid the shedding 
of 1 single drop of blood from an Arab or an Israeli. 
It is for this reason that I have proclaimed my read-
iness to go to the farthest corner of the world’’. 
President Sadat further poignantly stated that ‘‘any 
life lost in war is a human life, irrespective of its 
being that of an Israeli or an Arab. . . . When the 
bells of peace ring, there will be no hands to beat 
the drums of war’’. 
(12) On September 17, 1978, President Jimmy 
Carter hosted President Sadat and Prime Minister 
Begin at Camp David where the 3 leaders engaged
in 13 days of negotiations that resulted in the 
‘‘Framework for Peace in the Middle East’’ (com-
monly known as the ‘‘Camp David Accords’’). 
(13) Following negotiations, President Sadat 
and Prime Minister Begin signed the Egypt-Israel 
Peace Treaty (in this section referred to as the 
‘‘Peace Treaty’’) at the White House on March 26, 
1979. Addressing President Sadat at the signing of 
the Peace Treaty, which remains an important an-
chor for peace in the region today, Prime Minister 
Begin commended President Sadat by saying, ‘‘In 
the face of adversity and hostility, you have dem-
onstrated the human value that can change his-
tory—civil courage’’. 
(14) The Peace Treaty featured mutual rec-
ognition of each country by the other and ultimately 
the cessation of the state of war that had existed be-
tween Israel and Egypt since the 1948 Arab-Israeli 
War. Israel completely withdrew its armed forces 
and civilians from the rest of the Sinai. 
(15) In 1978, both President Sadat and Prime 
Minister Begin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 
for signing the Peace Treaty, which made Egypt the 
first Arab country to officially recognize Israel.
(16) While presenting the Nobel Peace Prize to 
President Sadat, Aase Lionaes, Chairman of the 
Norwegian Nobel Committee, said, ‘‘During the 30 
preceding years, the peoples of the Middle East 
have, on 4 separate occasions, been the victims of 
warfare and there seemed no prospect of peace. 
President Sadat’s great contribution to peace was 
that he had sufficient courage and foresight to break 
away from this vicious circle. His decision to accept 
Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s invitation of No-
vember 17, 1977, to attend a meeting of the Israeli 
parliament on November 19 was an act of great 
courage, both from a personal and from a political 
point of view. This was a dramatic break with the 
past and a courageous step forward into a new age’’. 
(17) During his Nobel lecture, President Sadat 
remarked, ‘‘I made my trip because I am convinced 
that we owe it to this generation and the generations 
to come not to leave a stone unturned in our pursuit 
of peace’’. 
(18) In remarks to the People’s Assembly in 
Cairo on March 10, 1979, President Carter praised 
President Sadat, telling the Assembly, ‘‘Your Presi-
dent has demonstrated the power of human courage 
and human vision to create hope where there had