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point in shooting back. We didn’t need to fight, and it was clear that the Egyptians didn’t really want to. Shortly before dark, Lieutenant-Colonel Eitan brought our column to halt. The road we were on cut through tall sandunes on either side. We knew there 90 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011561 were still Egypti
but arming and training them and helping organize cross-border attacks. Then, in 38 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011509 the summer of 1956, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, which had been owned by the British and French. Ben-Gurion was emboldened to go war by the fact that both Britain and France wanted to retake the c
hem agreed Israel needed a specially trained commando force. But not everyone felt Sayeret Matkal could, or should, take on that role. Rafael “Raful” Eitan was perhaps the most strident. He had fought with the Palmach in 1948. He was an officer in Unit 101 and a commander of the parachutists’ Battalion 8
t of the intelligence base our military engineers had built after the war into a 2,400-feet-high mountain called Gebel Um-Hashiba, 20 miles back from the Suez Canal. When I radioed in to tell him I’d decided to abandon the operation, I could hear the surprise in his voice, and what seemed reluctance as well. “If
e point in shooting back. We didn't need to fight, and it was clear that the Egyptians didn't really want to. Shortly before dark, Lieutenant-Colonel Eitan brought our column to halt. The road we were on cut through tall sandunes on either side. We knew there 90 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_027938 were still Egyptia
but arming and training them and helping organize cross-border attacks. Then, in 38 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_027886 the summer of 1956, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, which had been owned by the British and French. Ben-Gurion was emboldened to go war by the fact that both Britain and France wanted to retake the c
hem agreed Israel needed a specially trained commando force. But not everyone felt Sayeret Matkal could, or should, take on that role. Rafael "Raful" Eitan was perhaps the most strident. He had fought with the Palmach in 1948. He was an officer in Unit 101 and a commander of the parachutists' Battalion 8
t of the intelligence base our military engineers had built after the war into a 2,400-feet-high mountain called Gebel Um-Hashiba, 20 miles back from the Suez Canal. When I radioed in to tell him I'd decided to abandon the operation, I could hear the surprise in his voice, and what seemed reluctance as well. "If
Entities connected to both Eitan and the Suez Canal

Hosni Mubarak
PERSON
Lebanon
LOCATION
Damascus
LOCATION
Bashar al-Assad
PERSON
Cairo
LOCATION
United States
LOCATION
George W. Bush
PERSON
Benjamin Netanyahu
PERSON
Saddam Hussein
PERSON
Barack Obama
PERSONSinai
LOCATION
Middle East
LOCATION
Tunisia
LOCATION
Bill Clinton
PERSON
Fatah
ORGANIZATIONthe West Bank
LOCATION
Beirut
LOCATION
Yasser Arafat
PERSON
Ehud Barak
PERSON
Jerusalem
LOCATION