Word: arabism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...been upset by the war, which pitted the left-wing Muslim groups and the well-armed Palestinians against Lebanese Christians and moderate Muslims. The Israelis were alarmed at the prospect of a leftist victory; so were the Syrians, who were apprehensive over the idea of a war pitting Arab against Arab on their border...
...weekend war with Egypt, which abrogated its friendship treaty with Moscow only last year. Egypt has also warned Libya to knock off its guerrilla activities against Chad, a former French territory adjacent to Libya and Sudan. Libya, in the meantime, is sending military aid to Ethiopia-the only Arab state to do so. All in all, the situation is so complex and unstable that it has become difficult to tell who is doing what to whom without a score card. Says a Western diplomat in Moscow: "The Horn of Africa is the new battlefield between the big powers...
This time Deneuve-or is it Deneuve-1?-plays an elegant, slightly tarnished Parisienne who, rather implausibly, finds herself accompanying a detachment of French Foreign Legionnaires to Morocco just after World War I. The Legionnaires are assigned to protect a French archaeological expedition against attacks by uppity Arab tribes who seem to think they have a right to their own national treasures. Deneuve is attracted to a roguish cat burglar (Terence Hill), who is seeking refuge in the Legion from the cops. Having already lost a husband and father to war, however, she wants no more entanglements, no more feeling...
...movie trudges toward Hackman's climactic stand against the Arabs, its few substantial themes are left behind in the dunes like exhausted Legionnaires. Hackman is pitted in an early sequence against a scholar from the Louvre (Max von Sydow), who believes that the recovery of a few life-enriching shards of history and art is well worth the loss of hundreds of Legion and Arab lives. "We're both in the grave business," sneers Hackman. "You dig them up and I fill them in." Later, Von Sydow seems to lose the thread of the argument and takes...
More important, Arab Leader Holm denounces the mission of both men-the soldier as well as the archaeologist-as "a rape of our heritage." But nobody pays much attention to what Holm says after he emerges as an opportunist who is only using the colonialist issue to unite the desert tribes in his own drive for power. This is a pity. In view of some of the tacky beach-front resorts that have since been built with foreign money along the Moroccan coast, one cannot help thinking that the fellow really had a point there...