On this day in 1980, diplomats arrived in Tel Aviv to open the first Egyptian Embassy in Israel. This opening was many years in the making, as it marked substantial improvement in relations between Israel and the rest of the Middle East.In 1978, Egypt became the first Arab nation to sign an official agreement with Israel. That agreement was negotiated in secret and is known as the Camp David Accords. The goal of the Accords was to create a framework for stabilizing Israeli-Arab relations. Israel agreed to turn over control of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and to negotiate with Palestinians in the West Bank. In turn, Egypt agreed to officially recognize Israel.Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s president at the time, had a history of being antisemitic, which included him serving as a spy for the Nazis during World War II. This made his desire to negotiate for peace with Israel surprising. He may have been deterred from acting peacefully by the knowledge that negotiation would be a more effective means of regaining Egypt's lost land from the Six-Day War than waging another war.In 1977, Israel alerted Sadat of a planned assassination attempt by Libyan dictator Mu’ammar Al-Qadhdhif. While the attempt was later thwarted, it represented factions of Egyptian society that were deeply unhappy with Sadat’s negotiations over peace with Israel. The Likud was the right-wing party that had a majority in Israel’s Knesset and was generally less willing to make territorial concessions; it was in power at the time of the negotiations, adding further surprise to the success of the Accords. President Sadat was assassinated in 1981, not long after Egyptian-Israeli relations warmed, and fears of tension between Israel and Egypt rose again. Hosni Mubarak (Sadat’s successor) upheld the treaties.Eventually, on February 19, 1980, the first Israeli Embassy located in an Arab state formally opened in Cairo. Normalization of relations continued from there, though scholars have described the calm as a “cold peace” rather than the two nations being close allies. Israeli ambassadors were eventually temporarily recalled from their Cairo embassy after a group of protestors attempted to break into the embassy in 2011. That same year, when Mubarak was ousted from the presidency, his successors indicated that they would continue to maintain relations with Israel.