Word: nasserism
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...Though Nasser is no longer regarded by the Arab masses as a new Saladin, he remains their best-known and most respected leader, the man to whom all other leaders listen ? in other words, the key to the Arab world today, and thus to peace. He remains for many the embodiment of the ancient Arab dream of Al Umma al Arabia, or unity of all the Arab nations, the hero who threw off foreign domination. He is, above all, the man with whom Israel and the West must deal in seeking a settlement in the Middle East...
...Nasser's army has been re-equipped and retrained by the Russians since the Six-Day War. The MIG-17s and MIG-19s that the Israeli air force destroyed on the ground have been either replaced or augmented by supersonic MIG-21s; most are now protected by a concrete revetment. Egypt is estimated to have 400 combat aircraft (compared with Israel's 350) and 800 tanks (against Israel's 1,100). For the past 16 months, Soviet advisers have been training the Egyptians to use the new equipment, going about the task so methodically that they have even supplied English...
...Egypt's numerical might, the Suez Canal "might as well be the Atlantic Ocean," as a realistic Egyptian officer put it last week. Military experts judge that Nasser could put no more than a company across the canal?and it would be slaughtered. The reason is that the Russians, anxious to avert a fourth round of the war, have carefully not supplied Nasser with the wherewithal for an offensive strike: the amphibious transports, armored personnel carriers and four-wheel-drive trucks that he would need in order to cross the Sinai. Underscoring their concern that the artillery battles might...
Despite the well-founded Russian caution and his own recent admission in private that any strike across the canal would be "suicidal," Nasser has steadily stepped up the level of violence to a point where he might not be able to back down easily. After he was received in February with unprecedented coolness and even rudeness by Egyptian soldiers at the Suez front, who wanted to know when they could fight, Nasser authorized them to mount heavy artillery barrages against the Israelis. The move was intended to raise military morale. It did, for a time, but soon there were fresh...
...Next time, they say, a surprise Israeli blitz will not succeed, because Israel is already at the limits of its natural military frontiers. If the Israelis cross the Suez, the Egyptians plan to take advantage of Israel's overextended supply lines by forcing a prolonged campaign inside Egypt?in Nasser's words, an "inch-by-inch war." It is historically such a Russian concept of defense by attrition that he just possibly did not think of it himself. Says Nasser's confidant, Al Ahram Editor Mohammed Hasanein Heikal: "If the Israelis want to take Cairo, Damascus or Amman?...