sider Israel an alien state, created by force in a country rightly belonging to the Arabs. For an Arab, therefore, it is quite unthinkable that the Egyptians, having gained control of the approaches to the Gulf of Akaba, on which the Israeli port of Elat is located, would let Israeli ships pass through. He would also have only contempt for an Arab government that would stop Arab terrorists from slipping through its frontier to spread violence in "occupied Palestine." But Nasser had known since 1956 that each of these acts would compel any Israeli government to mount a military attack. The presence of U.N. forces in these sensitive areas since 1956 allowed Nasser to leave the Straits open and his frontier closed without seeming to do so. Now, suddenly, Nasser changed the situation. His commander in the field asked the U.N. commander to remove his troops.

This event is still shrouded in mystery. What actually happened may have been one of the several misunderstandings of this pre-war phase which seemed quite irrational, yet were really logical results of the attitudes prevailing in the Middle East. Nasser, so it seems, did not really want the U.N. forces to leave; he just wanted some of them to shift a little. This would make his move to the frontier appear more threatening, strike joy in the hearts of the Arabs and intimidate Israel. But the U.N. commander could not move his troops without the consent of U.N. Secretary General U Thant. U Thant decided that if he had to move part of his troops, he would destroy the effectiveness of the whole force; suddenly Nasser had to choose between reversing himself, which would make him look ridiculous, and ordering all the U.N. troops to leave -which is what he did.

The act of removing the U.N. troops dramatized the situation in Israeli eyes. Until then no one took the Egyptian move quite seriously. The idea that Nasser was busy in the Yemen and unable to risk a war with Israel

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