ISRAEL: Provocation in the Desert

In Palestine last week, an earnest gesture of peace became a clever pretext for war. Last September, U.N.'s Count Bernadotte made a ruling on the hotly contested supply routes in the northern tip of the Negeb desert. The Egyptian army, he said, could use the roads for six hours each afternoon to supply their forces in the interior across an east-west road running under Jewish guns. The Jews, in turn, would have six hours each morning to supply their settlements in the Negeb across a north-south road blocked by Arab troops. When the Egyptians rejected the ruling, it became a...

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