THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973Eg yptian civilians.^55 When the Israeli diplomat Nitzan Hadas’s German contacts told
him “the Soviets do not yet have naval and air bases in Eg ypt fully manned by
Soviets,” this time his home office pointed out:
they hardly need it. All the equipment in these ports is Soviet, there are Soviet experts
everywhere serving the Soviet ships, the USSR has its own stores in Port Said and
Alexandria where it keeps all that its naval forces need—in a sovereign fashion, even if it
has not signed a territorial lease agreement.^56By mid-October, the initial reports of discord in Nasser’s Moscow visit were
reversed: “United States officials” now viewed “with growing concern ... a long-term
military and political pact” that had been reached with Nasser in July. The time frame
for enabling Eg yptian forces to retrieve territory lost to Israel was set “within two to
five years,” but meanwhile military pressure against Israel would be kept up by “long-
range guerilla penetration, sabotage and espionage.”^57
Both the Moskva’s tour and the Eskadra’s peak strength ended by December, and
thus could be attributed to routine rotation as much as to temporary prepositioning
for the clashes on the Suez Canal in September and October. As a forcible canal
opening was never attempted and no evidence has emerged that it was ever planned,
this theory appears to have been by way of Soviet disinformation, Western guesswork
or a combination of the two. At any rate, it distracted attention from the lasting
upgrade of Soviet presence in Eg ypt.
E. Czechoslovakia and Eg ypt: diversion or multitasking?
Another line of speculation about the cause, and mainly the timing, of the 8 September
cannonade was that the lack of a firm Western response to the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia had emboldened Eg yptian commanders. These, it was suggested, “are
now pressing their Soviet allies not to restrain them too much in warlike activity toward
Israel, and not to be overly apprehensive that local incidents might cause [global] dete-
rioration and a superpower clash ... The Soviet military advisers ... are very influenced
by this pressure.”^58 Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon told Johnson the day after
the Eg yptian bombardment that “the trouble along the Suez is serious. ... After the
Czechoslovakia affair where the West had been incapable of responding ... the UAR
might well consider that it has greater freedom of action.”^59 The Americans understood
this to mean that “the Czech experience ... had (a) made the Russians anxious to ... take
the light of world publicity off them, and (b) possibly encourage the Eg yptians to start
probing across the Canal because of the passivity of the Western reaction.”^60 A converse
theory held that the Soviets themselves were making the best of global attention being
focused on Czechoslovakia to make hay in other arenas.
But it can also be argued that the artillery duel at Suez served as a diversion when
global outrage over Czechoslovakia peaked. Either way, there are several indications