(5 of 10)
That could be mere talk. But one of the genuine unknowns in the situation is the Egyptian army. The army now totals 300,000 combat troops plus some 1,600 tanks and 640 mostly late-model Soviet jets to support them. Against this force the Israelis have a regular army of 75,000, plus 300,000 combat-ready reservists, at least 1,080 tanks and 368 warplanes. Most Egyptian military men concede that in a fourth round of fighting, the Israelis would clobber them once again but probably at a great cost to Israel.
The most troublesome question, of course, is what role the Russian servicemen in Egypt would play. Most observers figure that Russian advisers and technicians would pull back to avoid incidents if Egypt decided to mount any kind of cross-canal raid. Less certain, however, is the status of the Russian pilots who are flying the most advanced jets that Moscow has shipped to Egypt. If the Israelis began sending their planes over the Egyptian interior, the Soviet pilots would almost certainly challenge them. But what if the Israelis avoided "deep penetration" raids, yet were giving the Egyptians such a beating that Cairo began pressuring Moscow to send its pilots into battle? Beyond that, there is another peril-fraught contingency. The Israelis claim that they can neutralize or destroy the Soviet-built missile network if a new round of fighting erupts. Could they do so without either killing many Russian technicians or provoking a response from Russian jets — or both?
That leaves the Egyptians. As a Western diplomat in Cairo said recently: "No one really knows what the Egyptian army is thinking. They were fueled with the rhetoric of Nasser, and doubtless, feel a longing for that kind of sustenance. They were eternally frustrated by a policy of 'no war, no peace,' and the war of attrition hardly seemed like an answer. Sadat's diplomacy for peace is therefore appealing, provided it produces results. But there surely is a point down the road when an intolerable moment will arrive. It could then be that the pressure would bear down hard on Sadat and he would have to order a go-ahead." That would probably mean another defeat and an end to Sadat's reign.
Cadet Nasser
It would be ironic if the army brought about the downfall of Sadat, a one-time career officer who managed to come far from the little village of Mit Abu al Kom. Sadat's father was a humble civilian clerk with the army; young Sadat dreamed of wearing the pips of an officer on his shoulders. Despite a passion for movies, he got acceptable grades in secondary school after the family moved to Cairo's Kubri al Quba section. Finally he secured an appointment to the military academy at Abbasiyah, which had just begun to accept sons of the lower classes as well as the aristocratic boys it traditionally favored. Sadat quickly became friends with Cadet Gamal Abdel Nasser, his classmate. "We were young men full of hope," wrote Sadat later in his Revolt on the Nile. "We were brothers-in-arms, united in friendship and common detestation of the existing order of things. Egypt was a sick country."