Saad Mourtada, 78; First Egyptian Envoy to Israel

Saad Mourtada, Egypt’s first ambassador to Israel, has died in the United States. He was 78.

Mourtada, who died Monday at a nursing home in Falls Church, Va., had been suffering from prostate cancer, the Washington Post reported.

He became ambassador to Israel in 1979 after his country and Israel signed a historic peace treaty the same year. He was recalled in 1982 after reports of the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Israeli-occupied West Beirut.

Many of those who were nominated for the ambassadorial posting to Israel rejected it, but Mourtada “was the first to accept this challenge and to overcome the psychological barrier,” Salah Bassiouny, Mourtada’s successor in Israel, told the Associated Press on Wednesday.

Mourtada believed in peace, and “considered this peace treaty as the beginning of peace in the Middle East,” Bassiouny said.

Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, something that shocked and enraged many Egyptians and Arab states.

Before his Israel posting, Mourtada was Egypt’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Senegal and Morocco.

Born in Egypt, the son of a provincial vice governor, Mourtada was a law school graduate of what is now Cairo University and a graduate of the College of Europe in Belgium.

After retiring in 1981, he moved to the United States.

He is survived by his wife, Gulnar Djeddaoui Mourtada; a son from his first marriage; a brother; and three grandchildren.