THE MIDDLE EAST: Blitz in the Desert

The border was only an arbitrary line drawn between two hatreds, and it had been violated for eight years by raiding parties from Egypt or reprisal raiders from Israel. But this was bigger. In the cooling desert dusk, along the 120-mile border separating Israel from Egypt's Sinai peninsula, heavily armored Israeli army units assembled at positions. Tank engines, in World War II U.S. Shermans and light 13-ton French AMXs, coughed, then roared. Behind the armor trailed streams of troop carriers, weapons carriers, artillery pieces. Some 30,000 men in sand-tan battledress rode in...

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