The Suez Canal: Beer and Boredom

NO one knows how many unexploded bombs and shells lie beneath the azure waters of the Suez Canal to threaten dredging operations--even if the Egyptians and Israelis should come to terms on reopening the waterway. The known obstacles, however, are relatively few: the sister passenger steamers Mecca and Ismailia, scuttled on orders of Egypt's late President Nasser at the start of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war; part of a pontoon bridge; two small tugs sunk downstream from the city of Ismailia; and the wreckage of a barge twelve miles north of Suez. The Egyptians calculate that they could reopen the 103-mile canal in four to six months at a cost of $40 million. The Israelis believe that the job might well take upwards of a year and perhaps $250 million--though they include permanent repairs that Cairo does not.

Dredging would not be much of a problem. The silting normally caused by the propellers of passing ships has been considerably slowed, since hardly anything has moved on the canal in nearly four years. The 14 vessels trapped in Great Bitter Lake when the shooting started--four of them British, two Swedish, two West German, two Polish, one American, one French, one Bulgarian and one Czechoslovak--are still there. So is the American freighter Observer, isolated farther upstream. The British ships were abandoned last year after London underwriters paid out a total of $24 million in claims. The skeleton crews who remain aboard the other trapped ships pass three-month hitches in stupefying heat and boredom, which they combat with lifeboat races, movies and an unending supply of beer. All 15 ships are in reasonably good condition and could either sail or be towed out.

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Restoring the once bustling commercial life along the western bank of the canal would be another matter. The city of Suez, once home to 268,000 people, now has 10,000. In Ismailia, nearly every building has been shattered by bombs or pocked by shell holes, and the city's 100,000 former citizens have joined 400,000 other onetime canalside residents as squatters in Cairo and Alexandria. Port Tewfik, at the southern end, needs virtually to be rebuilt. Aside from a few peasants tilling the land, the only population on the Egyptian side is military, including as many as seven divisions of infantry. On the eastern bank, the Israelis are deeply entrenched in shellproof bunkers on the 95-mile Bar-Lev Line. Across the 200 yards of canal, the two sides keep constant watch on each other. The Israelis have built observation towers above the bunkers. The Egyptians occasionally drive a fire truck up to the canal, extend the ladder and clamber up to take a look at the Israeli side.

The canal will probably never regain the vital position of strategic and commercial pre-eminence that it once had. Shippers--and particularly, oil companies--have learned to live without it, chiefly through the use of huge supertankers, which can bring oil from the Persian Gulf to Europe around the Cape of Good Hope more cheaply than the smaller tankers that used to ply the canal. The Trans-Israel Pipeline now transports 19 million tons of oil a year, from Eilat to Ashkelon. Egypt, with French and Italian aid, will begin building its own $210 million pipeline from Port Suez to Alexandria this summer.

The price of living without the canal has come high. The longer voyages around Africa have created a world shipping shortage, vastly inflating charter rates. Some economists estimate that closure has cost consumers in Europe, Japan, and to a lesser extent, the U.S., up to $1 billion a year.

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Despite the advent of supertankers, nearly 90% of the world's ships could use the canal if it were to reopen. Even at the prewar depth of 38 ft., vessels of up to 125,000 tons can traverse the waterway in ballast, cutting off twelve days on the round trip between Europe and the Persian Gulf.

Egypt's Suez Canal Authority intends to deepen the canal to 40 ft. within a year after it is reopened. The authority also has ready a plan for enlarging the canal to accommodate larger ships. Estimated cost: up to $600 million. Against that could be placed the increased revenue from tolls. Even in 1966, the last full year of operation, revenues totaled $220 million. A deeper, wider canal could eventually bring Cairo as much as $1 billion a year. Even so, it would require a solid peace agreement between Arabs and Israelis to make the investment worthwhile.

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