Innocent Voyage

A 16,500-ton U.S.-flag tanker, on Israel's charter and carrying a full cargo of Persian Gulf oil, sailed up the Gulf of Aqaba last week in a blinding sandstorm and anchored at the Israeli port of Elath. En route, in the Red Sea, a U.S. warship had spoken the tanker and asked it to identify itself. "When we said we were American and on our way to Elath," said the skipper, "the reply was, 'Good luck.' " As the tanker passed through the narrow and disputed Strait of Tiran, the captain ordered the flag dipped in salute to the UNEF troops garrisoning the Egyptian base at Sharm el Sheikh. UNEF fired an answering rocket in recognition. "A historic day!" cried Israeli Finance Minister Levi Eshkol as the tanker began pumping its cargo into newly finished tanks on the barren shore. Israeli crowds went wild with excitement, dancing the Hora, and the national radio interrupted its Sabbath music program to announce the great news.

With the tanker's arrival the U.S. made good on its pledge to Israel, at the time Israel pulled its troops out of the Egyptian gun positions dominating the gulf narrows, to send in a ship flying the U.S. flag to help establish the right of "innocent passage" through gulf waters.

There still remains the question of Israel's right of access to the Suez Canal. Nasser, in a chat to visiting U.S. editors, said he would not let Israeli ships through. In Washington, President Eisenhower indicated that the U.S. had made no such binding commitment on Suez as on Aqaba, and that furthermore, Ben-Gurion. in his letter to Ike, had not even mentioned Suez. This brought Israel's Ambassador Abba Eban around to the U.S. State Department to say that his government attached great importance to the canal issue, and expected U.S. backing.* Through Cairo's fog of propaganda and rumor, no sign could be seen that Egypt's Nasser intends ending his six-year defiance of the U.N. resolution protesting his blockade of Israeli shipping in the Suez Canal.

* In his TV broadcast to the nation in February, Ike said: "We should not assume that, if Israel withdraws, Egypt will prevent Israeli shipping from using the Suez Canal or the Gulf of Aqaba. If, unhappily, Egypt does hereafter violate the armistice agreement or other international obligations, then this should be dealt with firmly by the society of nations."

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