ABSTRACT
The Egyptians claimed that the cease-fire line began at the water’s edge on the canal’s east bank. If this were so, Egypt would—theoretically at least—be entitled to send patrol boats right up alongside Israeli positions. Israeli army engineers and civilian contractors stripped bare the railbed of the Sinai railways, and Israeli purchasing agents scoured the junkyards of Europe for old rails. Egyptians just how vulnerable their economic infrastructure was. After the Nag Hammadi attack, Nasser ordered the army to keep the cease-fire along the canal. Sergeant Yaacov Sarei of the Israeli army engineers learned a lot more about the Sinai and the east bank of the Suez canal than he could ever have imagined as a child in Casablanca. The Israeli public was wholly unaware of it. Senior Cabinet officers did know about it, and Dayan may even have favored Tals ideas, on grounds that deployment behind the canal waterline would be less provocative to the Egyptians.
