Anticipating that any major news developments in the Middle East would revolve around the leaders of Egypt and Israel, TIME Picture Editor John Durniak last July commissioned Photographer David Hume Kennerly to shoot a portfolio of pictures of both President Anwar Sadat and Premier Menachem Begin. Durniak's prescience paid off. Our cover story this week on the Egyptian President and his mission to Jerusalem is enhanced by four pages of Kennerly's intimate color photographs of Sadat and his Israeli host.

Kennerly spent two months in the Middle East photographing the leaders at home and at work. As official White House photographer during the Ford Administration, he had met Sadat two years ago when Sadat visited Washington. Quickly re-establishing a rapport, Kennerly accompanied Sadat on his daily walks along the Suez Canal, visited with his family, and toured the country in his private helicopter. One day when Sadat and Kennerly were in Mit Abu el Kom, Sadat's home village, the President looked up to the sky and lamented the fact that so many Egyptian military planes now flew over the once tranquil town.

Continuing his shutter diplomacy, Kennerly flew to Jerusalem, where he found Begin an equally receptive subject. He accompanied the Premier on visits to what the Israelis call the New Territories, sat in on his business conferences, and watched him relax with his family. Says Kennerly: "Both Begin and Sadat are consummate politicians. I think they would probably get along well--perhaps not politically, but personally."

Sadat's historic visit to Israel, and his meeting with Begin was paralleled, on a far less cosmic scale, by the journey of TIME Cairo Bureau Chief Wilton Wynn, who flew to Israel with the Egyptian President and was greeted at the airport by Jerusalem Bureau Chief Donald Neff. The occasion marked the first time Wynn and Neff had met and exchanged views in Israel (their previous meetings had occurred on neutral ground such as Athens and Paris), and the first time that Wynn had set foot in the Jewish state. Says Wynn: "Before the 1967 war, when East Jerusalem was in Arab hands, I used to cover the Easter and Christmas festivities there every year. Visiting the area again was a real homecoming for me."

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