War and escalated after 1973 and the Yom Kippur War. One reason was intra-Arab rivalry and different ways of viewing Israel. Jordan was more or less favorably disposed, and Egypt used the Yom Kippur War to reclaim some lost territory and eventually open diplomacy with Israel. The Ba'ath Party, prevailing in Syria and Iraq, called for Israel's destruction. The oil-rich Arab states used anti-Israel rhetoric but according to White were "privately working for peace" (p. 103), chiefly it seems for foreign-trade reasons.
In the late 1970s, Egypt under Anwar Sadat, took the initiative toward improving relations with Israel. The result, in 1979, was the Camp David Peace Accord, embraced by Israeli Prime Minister Menachim Begin facilitated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. What should have been a step toward peace turned into Sadat's assassination by Islamists who wanted to push Israel into the sea. Arab rivalries continued, sometimes under color of more or less concern for the Palestinians but mainly a feature of the quest for hegemony in the region and autocrat
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