Word: nasser
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...Nasser's predicament that he must continually talk of war and show himself in action against Israel in order to retain the confidence of militant Arabs and, more crucially, of his own army. At the same time, it is doubtful whether he could long remain in power if he led the Arabs into another round and lost. He no longer shares power in Egypt with General Abdel Hakim Amer, who committed suicide?or so the government said?after the 1967 war, and so Nasser could not again place the blame for defeat on the army. Since...
...Nasser no longer shows the strain of his darkest days in the aftermath of the 1967 war. He appears robust, cured of a reported circulatory ailment by Russian doctors, who ordered him to quit smoking. He has resumed playing tennis and Ping-Pong and, he tells friends, has recently taken to reading the Old Testament "to better understand the Jewish mind." His living room in the Cairo district of Manshiet al Bakri is filled with pictures of world leaders, many of whom he has outlasted in power, from Indonesia's Sukarno to Lyndon Baines Johnson...
Intensely conscious of his place in history, Nasser, by a grandiose reach, sometimes likens himself to Winston Churchill in World War II, and Suez to the English Channel. He has declared, at least until recently, that he will not go down in history as the Arab leader who made peace with Israel. For two years, his tactic has been sumud?standing fast, or at least not admitting defeat, no matter what the odds. It is linked in his mind and rhetoric with two other words: radda, retaliation, and tahrir, liberation of the occupied lands. Says Nasser...
...When Nasser came to power in 1952, he used to insist that any renewal of war with Israel would detract from his most important task, raising the standard of living of his people. "In Egypt today," he complained at the time, "a water buffalo is more valuable than a human being. I mean, it costs more to hire a water buffalo for a day's work than it does to hire a fellah." Today the same holds true, though the price has gone up for both a man's labor (58� a day) and a water buffalo's hire (69?...
...hacking a way through the urban jungle is difficult enough for ordinary Cairenes, visible in the streets as ranks of sullen men in unpressed suits. Bitterly insecure, frustrated and angry, they might, in a less apathetic country, provide the base for a revolution. In Egypt, carefully watched by Nasser's security police, they care for neither politics nor war?nor, for that matter, the empty sands of Sinai...