Impasse at Suez

After the worst flare-up of shooting across its placid waters since last October, the Suez Canal last week seemed more than ever a permanent casualty of the Arab-Israeli war. Even the brief hopes that 15 trapped freighters might finally be freed after eight months of captivity flickered rapidly away in a three-hour gun duel between Egyptian and Israeli forces. By the time the truce was restored by the U.N.'s blue-helmeted observers, the Egyptians had not only suspended their efforts to release the rusting ships but declared that they would do nothing at all to reopen the canal until a complete Middle East settlement is reached.

The ship-clearing operation had begun smoothly enough. For two days Israeli soldiers idly watched from the east bank while Egyptian tugs probed south of the midway port of Ismailia to chart an exit channel past sunken obstacles (scuttled ships, downed jets). Then, breaking a tacit understanding with Israel that they would clear only the southern half of the canal, the Egyptians suddenly announced that they also wanted to look over the canal's northern half. The Israelis immediately suspected an Egyptian maneuver aimed not only at reopening the canal's entire 107-mile length but perhaps at clearing the way for a blockade-busting run by one of the Soviet warships that have been anchoring at Port Said at the canal's Mediterranean entrance. Next day, as the Egyptian tugs pushed north from Ismailia, they opened fire.

Irrigation Ditch. Aside from the grief over the dozen or so casualties, no one seemed overly distressed by the new impasse. Though their battered economy is losing $5,000,000 a week in tolls, the Egyptians do not really seem all that anxious to open the canal, apparently hoping that as long as it remains closed the maritime nations will put pressure on Israel to withdraw from its east bank. The Israelis, on the other hand, have no intention of letting the canal open so long as they are denied its use. As for the U.S., it seems quite content to watch Soviet ships bound for North Viet Nam having to take a wearying 14,000-mile trip around Africa (v. 7,000 miles through Suez).

The longer the canal stays shut, the harder it will be to open. Silt is piling up in the canal so fast in the absence of dredging operations since June that five feet of navigable depth have already been lost. "If the canal stays closed another year," said an American engineer in Beirut last week, "it will be in such bad shape that they might as well turn it into an irrigation ditch and plant potatoes around it." Even the Egyptians seemed to be looking for alternatives: off to London last week went an official delegation to discuss construction of a 42-in. pipeline along the canal to carry 50 million tons of oil a year from Suez at the southern end to Port Said on the north.

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