Infitah was accompanied by a break with longtime ally and aid-giver the USSR—which was replaced by the United States—and by a peace process with Israel, symbolized by Sadat's dramatic flight to Jerusalem in 1977.
During the 1950s and 1960s, in the midst of the Cold War, some countries along the Middle East were seeing waves of Arab nationalism in Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq when aligning with the Eastern Bloc.
He believed that capitalist economic policies would build a substantial private sector and that alliance with the United States and the West would lead to prosperity (rakhaa رخاء) and eventually democratic pluralism.
"[5] The government rewarded its cronies and allies (many of whom became quite rich) and built a power base loyal to the regime with concessions on land, goods and commodities; mandates and contracts to agencies and dealerships but did little to create free markets and an open economy.
[6] Millions of previously poor Egyptians who had joined the middle class under the Nasser regime through education and jobs as doctors, engineers, teachers, lawyers, journalists for the government or parastatals, were left stuck in an "increasingly marginalized, stagnant and low-paying public sector," under Infitah.
[7] Infitah was a shock to the Nasser-era middle class, reversing the socialist principles of Nasserism, seeming to revoke policies of free education, social equality, abolition of feudalism, nationalization of land and industry, and progressive taxation.
"[10] In 1977, negative public reaction to Infitah policies led to massive spontaneous riots involving hundreds of thousands of Egyptians when the state announced that it was retiring subsidies on basic foodstuffs.