was still deeply rooted. Overnight, this belief disappeared. The Israeli Army had to prepare for an Arab attack.

You have to understand the Israeli Army in order to realize what this meant. Nasser, commanding a regular army, could move his divisions here or there without changing the texture of life in Egypt. But Israel has only a very small regular army. Its wartime army consists mainly of reserves, a full mobilization of almost the entire population. Once the reserves are called up, the economy grinds to a halt. The men of Israel literally disappear from the streets, the offices, the factories, the coffee shops. The whole country changes, visually and materially. By compelling the Israeli Army to mobilize, Nasser had brought the Middle East to the brink of war without quite realizing it. He still, so I believe, wanted to avoid war, not out of an innate love for peace, but because he was aware that he could not win in any direct military confrontation with Israel.

But now something much worse occurred. The third great mistake was about to be committed. When U Thant ordered his troops out, in unseemly and undiplomatic haste, the Straits of Tiran were left unmanned. Nasser had to fill the gap by putting his troops there, whether he wanted to or not. And once they were there, the awful question posed itself: Now that Egyptian troops commanded the Straits again, how could they possibly permit ships of the hated Zionist enemy to pass through them to the port of Elat?

Logic would have dictated closing the eyes and pretending the Israeli ships didn't exist. Anyone could have guessed that renewing the blockade of the Straits would compel the Israeli government to open them by force; otherwise, the credibility of the Israeli military deterrent would be shattered-quite apart from the economic consequences of the blockade. The Israeli told himself, logically: We have said many times that we shall not tolerate

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