A graduate from
Cairo University, he studied for six years in the United States, where he obtained his master's degree from
Harvard Law School. El-Baz later joined the Egyptian foreign service, and was made
chef de cabinet with ambassadorial rank in 1977. When
Ismail Fahmi resigned in 1977 to protest President
Anwar El Sadat's visit to
Jerusalem, El-Baz volunteered to help the president in planning his negotiations with
Israel. He was sent to Israel where he negotiated the terms for the Egyptian President's visit. His colleague in those preparations was
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who later went on to become
Secretary-General of the United Nations. El-Baz represented the Arab nationalist, while Boutros-Ghali was a cautious pro-Westerner. Following
Sadat's assassination in 1981, Egypt's new president
Hosni Mubarak took El-Baz as an advisor, where he headed the Presidential Office for Political Affairs. El-Baz was considered an
éminence grise, and was more influential than most members of the
Cabinet, especially in foreign-policy matters. He was sent on sensitive missions which would be inappropriate for the
Foreign Minister to undertake. According to
Al-Ahram, he was sidelined during the last years of the Hosni Mubarak regime. El-Baz was even spotted during the 18-day
Tahrir Square sit-in in January 2011, at the start of the
Arab Spring. Osama El-Baz is the late father of Egyptian industrialist, entrepreneur, and business executive
Basil El-Baz, as well as a brother to famed NASA geologist
Farouk El-Baz. ==Personal life==