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Fahmy possessed strong views and prejudices. He coveted his status as foreign minister and used his authority and power to deflate the influence of colleagues. 36 Fahmy managed the contacts with the UN and Moscow and was a staunch defender of the Palestinian cause, if not their champion among Sadat’s advisers. Sadat did not object to Fahmy s toughness with the Syrians or aggressiveness with the Jordanians and let him implement the technical details surrounding the execution of his foreign policy.

Sadat knew well the jealousies, divisions, and shortcomings of Arabworld politics and the difficulty Arab states had in reaching consensus decisions; he also knew that his Arab colleagues would be reluctant to reach an accommodation with Israel. Believing his Arab contemporaries were procrastinators, at times he used inter-Arab wrangling and bickering to Egypt’s benefit. Sadat’s loudest detractor was Syria, and yet Damascus progressively used Sadat’s tilt toward the United States and Israel to bolster its ties to Moscow increasingly on its own terms.

The Jordanians denied the request. Independent of their discussions, Jordanian leadership reasoned that, in the event of war, Amman could not afford to be dragged in like it had been in the June 1967 War. In the October War, when the Syrian military condition on the Golan area greatly deteriorated after a series of Israeli counterattacks, Jordan did send two brigades to assist them; otherwise, Jordan remained out of the war. ’… Any loss on the Jordanian front would undermine his successes and military victories on his front.