Word: desertion
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...mood or atmosphere the rest of the film had been building. Lawrence of Arabia is the best attempt yet at depicting a spectacular event through an influential individual's viewpoint, but I fear that to his film's misfortune, director David Lean ended up falling in love with the desert much as T. E. Lawrence...
...extent of their power and virtue. Lawrence serves as their catalyst; recognizing British colonial interests, he dares Prince Feisal to take a battle initiative on his own, without the Allied artillery and 'discipline' which could blunt the Arab guerrillas' effectiveness. With the mercenary Howeitat tribe, Lawrence crosses the Nehfu Desert to take the Gulf of Aqaba. (This is, of course, a convenient fiction; Aqaba was taken only after the destruction of the Hejaz railway...
...after the arduous trek to Aqaba and its swift conquest, the film's Lawrence loses heart in the desert campaign. He sees himself as unfit for military command-not out of military considerations, but because of his failure to live up to his own personal vision. He is part Arab and part English, and only a superman would be able to bridge that cultural gap. Lawrence, with a fear of bloodshed which does not control his erratic sadism, and a masochism which is brought to the surface when he is tortured at the hands of a homosexual Turkish...
...kibbutzim before the war. And 72% are for keeping Sharm el Sheikh, from which Egyptian gunners in the past turned back ships bound for the Israeli port of Eilat. About the only territory that significant numbers of Israelis are generally prepared to let go is the sandy western Sinai desert. Yet even here, only 18% are willing to give the captured desert back to Egypt, while 29% favor annexation, and 38% propose neutralizing the territory as a buffer zone...
...Sadat and his lieutenants, in what may be a psychological-warfare gambit designed to pry concessions out of the Israelis, are warning that their military leaders are growing ever more restive. As part of the same gambit, Sadat disclosed last week that rich new oil discoveries in the western desert will help finance Egypt's armed strength henceforth. At the same time, the Egyptians sought to give the impression that Russian military shipments were being stepped...