MIDDLE EAST: Border Battle

A waxing moon silvered the green hillside fields and sand dunes that make up the Gaza strip — the 6-mile by 30-mile sliver of Palestine crowded with 200,000 Arab refugees which Egypt rules under the armistice. Captain Mahmoud Ahmed Sadek, commander of a 35-man garrison guarding the ancient city of Gaza, had put his chair under a tree beside the trenches along the road. At the outpost up the hill toward the Israeli border, guards heard voices calling out in Arabic.

Suddenly, out of the calling dark, a burst of bullets smashed into...

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