increasing numbers, making life in Israel increasingly intolerable. But if you react, we shall destroy you." This is how it sounded in Israel. The psychological abyss between the two nations is so immense that Nasser did not, and could not, realize this in time.
Nor did Nasser understand the automatic reaction of the Israeli the minute he realized that a powerful military force was being concentrated on Israel's frontier. Our country is small, much smaller than most people realize. Our security is based, first of all, on our ability, by the prestige of our army, to deter any enemy from threatening our existence, and secondly, if this deterrent fails, to hit first and win quickly, thereby avoiding an invasion of our constricted territory. When Nasser marched his troops through Cairo, drums rolling and trumpets blaring, letting them pass beneath the windows of the American Embassy -instead of moving them quietly to the front-he hoped to intimidate Israel and dissuade her from taking military action; in actuality, he achieved the exact opposite. By posing the threat to our frontier, he rang the bell hidden in the unconscious mind of every Israeli, a signal which turns Israel, within the minute, from a peaceful country into an armed camp. It is the psychology of a besieged fortress. Let the sentry on the tower sound the alarm if an enemy force approaches, and everybody inside rushes to man the bastions.
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Before Nasser realized that without really intending to, he had created a war like situation overnight, he made a second mistake. Since the Sinai War in 1956, the frontiers between Israel and Egypt, as well as the shores of the controversial Gulf of Akaba had been patrolled by the United Nations Emergency Force. UNEF was not really a military factor, but rather a device enabling Nasser, without losing face in the Arab world, to avoid having to do anything which might provoke an Israeli attack. Most Arabs con¬