Word: qantara
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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From its Mediterranean terminus at Pelusium, the so-called Eastern Canal probably headed south for ten miles, veered across what is now the Suez Canal near the town of Qantara, and approached Lake Timsah near Ismailia, where old canal remnants have previously been found. Though wind, sand and irrigation works have wiped out much of the canal's course, Geologists Amihai Sneh, Tuvia Weissbrod and Itamar Perath hint at an intriguing possibility: the waterway may have split in two, one branch following a great east-west depression called Wadi Tumilat to link with the Nile, the other continuing south...
...Qantara East, the assembled crowd released flocks of white doves. At Ballah, a triple line of women in traditional red, blue, green and gold dresses stood on a multicolored mosaic canal bank and danced to flutes and drums. A cascade of balloons sailed skyward. Said one of many banners: WE HAVE OPENED THE CANAL. WE WILL KEEP IT OPEN...
...what a paradise Egypt would be," he says dramatically, "if that had been invested to develop this country." When the Palestine National Council, a kind of parliament of the P.L.O., met in Cairo last year, Sadat sent its members on a sightseeing tour to Suez city, Port Taufiq and Qantara East. Explained an Egyptian editor: "He wanted them to have an idea of what Egypt sacrificed for the Palestinians...
...still strong in the minds of Israeli military planners. But the Egyptians created a deadly zone of ground-to-air missiles and artillery to safeguard their bridgeheads. Up and down the canal, Egyptian forces in assault boats suddenly put out a series of bridges, including three at El Qantara in the north-central sector of the canal, three more at Ismailia and another three at Suez on the southern end. Some of the bridges were old-fashioned pontoons lashed together and topped with roadway; others were a modern type put down by Soviet-developed amphibious vehicles that laid ladder-like...
...fought deadly battles, often at point-blank range. On the first day of mobilization, Israeli Journalist David Halevy, a reserve rank lieutenant colonel, hurried from Tel Aviv to his reconnaissance battalion in the Sinai. By the second afternoon of the war, the reserve unit was in place at El Qantara, but it was unable to break through Egyptian lines to reach the bigger force it was assigned to support. Halevy later reported to TIME: "We were fighting in the area opposite Ismailia and the Firdan ridge. The Egyptian artillery was thick. Our tanks picked up casualties and took them along...