Dr Anwar Mohammed Gargash, Diplomatic Adviser to the UAE President, marked the 53rd anniversary of the October 1973 War by highlighting the approach of the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who used military power as a tool of diplomacy when the ultimate objective was peace.

Gargash said Sadat understood that war was a continuation of politics and that military power could serve as a negotiating tool when the goal was to achieve peace while safeguarding rights and interests.

“On the 53rd anniversary of the October War, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat affirmed that war is a continuation of politics and that power is a tool for negotiation when the objective is a peace that preserves rights and interests,” Gargash wrote on social media.

He described this principle as a strategic rule that Sadat had applied from the outset but said it remained absent from the thinking of many leaders today.

Gargash’s remarks coincided with Egypt’s commemoration of the 53rd anniversary of the October 1973 War.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi marked the anniversary by laying wreaths at the Armed Forces Martyrs Memorial and the tombs of former presidents Anwar Sadat and Gamal Abdel Nasser.

In an anniversary address, El-Sisi also linked the 1973 war to subsequent efforts to achieve peace, saying decades of conflict between Egypt and Israel ultimately gave way to diplomacy and an end to hostilities.

Anwar Sadat was Egypt’s president during the 1973 war and later pursued negotiations with Israel that led to the 1978 Camp David Accords and the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty.