Word: canal
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Egyptian artillerymen waited until the sun was low over the Suez Canal and shining in the eyes of Israeli gunners on the occupied east bank. Then, along the 70-mile front, they opened up with a sustained barrage, promptly answered in kind by the Israelis. At a time when a settlement in the Middle East is much on the minds of the leaders of the U.S., Russia and Western Europe, last week's sudden flare-up of violence seemed even more than usually to fit Clausewitz's definition of war as "continuation of diplomacy by other means...
Blackout in Cairo. The Egyptians have an estimated five divisions and 1,000 guns along the canal. The Israelis have roughly one division and crews to man perhaps a third as many guns, which they move frequently to deprive the Egyptians of fixed targets. An estimated 40,000 shells were lobbed across the canal. But despite a marked improvement in Egyptian gunnery since the last major exchange in October, casualties on both sides were relatively light. The Israelis put their own losses at five soldiers killed, 26 wounded, two vehicles destroyed, and a Piper Cub downed by a Soviet-made...
...Perhaps as a mark of soldierly respect, the guns along the Suez were silent for Riad's funeral next day. Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser led a parade of more than 100,000 mourners through Cairo, who broke into chants of "Gamal, Gamal, to the canal...
...last week's barrage was in part designed to slow down that arming, the Egyptians were too late. The Israelis are securely dug in along the canal, in what they call the "Barlev Line," named for Chief of Staff Haim Barlev. It consists of multistory bunkers equipped with electric lights and even television and roofed with a "secret" material (possibly a combination of timber, sand and steel rails ripped up from the trans-Sinai railway line), which the Israelis claim can withstand a direct hit from a 130-mm. shell-one reason why their casualties were so light...
...violence has a momentum of its own, though many suspected that the sudden flare-up had primarily a diplomatic purpose. Just before the exchanges, Nasser's personal representative, Mahmoud Fawzi, showed up in London and Paris, pressing the argument that unless Israel withdraws at least partially from the canal, the Arabs will consider themselves forced to fight another round. In the Israeli view, as Foreign Minister Abba Eban put it, Nasser simply staged the barrage "to cause panic on an international scale" at a time when the Nixon Administration is considering a big-power approach to a settlement...