For thirteen days in September 1978, President Jimmy Carter met with Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat in an attempt to forge together an agreement of peace between the two countries. On March 26, 1979, the two Middle East leaders signed the Camp David Accords.

Anwar Sadat (ON-wahr suh-DOT) was born on December 25, 1918, in a village near Cairo. He graduated from a military academy in 1938 and was stationed in Upper Egypt. He was jailed twice for contacts with Germans in World War II (1939-45) and was later tried and acquitted on charges of conspiring to assassinate a pro-British politician in 1946.

Sadat took part in the takeover of 1952 in which Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) overthrew Egypt's King Faruk (1920-1965). Sadat held several government posts and served as vice president from 1964 to 1966 and again from...