NOT only were Arab and Israeli soldiers eyeball to eyeball in the Middle East last week, but the press was lens to lens. Photographers would drive down from Tel Aviv to the Gaza Strip and aim their long-range cameras across the line to where Egyptian troops had replaced the U.N. forces. Often as not, they would sight right into the long-range cameras of photographers on the opposite side, shooting the other way. The Middle East is a place where the smallest distances can mark in superable barriers, and the only way to cover the situation is to have men on both sides.

Much of the reporting from the Arab camp for this week's cover story was done by TIME'S Beirut bureau chief, Lee Griggs, who during the past year has had long interviews with Egypt's President Nasser, Jordan's King Hussein, Saudi Arabia's King Feisal and the Shah of Iran. Working out of Beirut, Griggs was able to cover the week's events in Jordan and Syria. "The main trouble is knowing whom to believe," says Griggs. "Everyone has an angle and facts are relative at best. Fortunately, after nearly three years here, I have been able to establish a certain reliability index."

On hand in Egypt was William Rademaekers, who had flown down from his usual post in Vienna. He found himself cooped up in Cairo with 150 other Western journalists, all itching to get a look at the frontier. "You can climb into an ancient, wheezing taxi and make it known by various gestures that you want to go 'to the front,' " reports Rademaekers. "Off you go in the general direction of Suez in a billowing cloud of dust, accompanied for three hours by the weakening wail of the horn. In the end, you are usually delivered to a police station, where you are politely offered coffee and firmly told to go back to Cairo. In many ways, it is similar to the war between India and Pakistan, which I covered by taking a taxi to the front and back. But that was a shooting war and this one is not--yet."

On the Israeli side, things also seemed fairly familiar to Marlin Levin, our Jerusalem stringer, who has been through every previous Arab-Jewish crisis. A U.S. newspaperman from Harrisburg, Pa., he went to the Holy Land on his honeymoon in 1947, stayed on to cover the war of independence, and has been there ever since. When the current clash developed, he was joined by Rome Bureau Chief Israel Shenker and Madrid Bureau Chief Peter Forbath.

Shenker interviewed Premier Levi Eshkol, whom he found sitting at his desk with his hand on a small Hebrew Bible. Shenker was particularly struck by his good humor. "How do I manage to keep my temper?" said the Premier in response to a question. "If I were in America, I would have a psychiatrist to explain it. Don't all Americans have psychiatrists?" Shenker also interviewed the new Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, who showed him a treasury of archaeological finds he has unearthed himself. Shenker collects jokes much as Dayan collects ancient pottery, and he obtained at least one specimen. "They say," remarked the new Minister, "that it took 80,000 Egyptian soldiers to get me into the government."

Since Israel is on a war footing, outgoing dispatches are subject to censorship, but both Shenker and Forbath were delighted by the censors' light touch. "Every deletion was accompanied by a detailed, reasonable and slightly sorrowful explanation," reported Forbath. "They even offered literary advice or translations from Hebrew into English." Added Shenker: "On saying good night, one of the censors remarked, 'We enjoyed your file.' They are much more sensitive than most editors."

But not more so, we trust, than Ed Jamieson, who edited the story, and John Blashill, who wrote it.

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