Ambush at the Gate of Tears

Israelis call their southern seaport of Eilat "a big hole in the right place." Its clear, deep, coral-bottomed natural harbor easily accommodates big ships. Since the completion last year of a 42-in. pipeline that runs 160 miles from Eilat across the Negev to the Mediterranean port of Ashkelon, the big hole is ordinarily choked with tankers waiting to off-load oil. Last week one such ship became a special attraction for vacationers at seaside motels. While moving through the narrow strait of Babel Mandeb (Gate of Tears), which separates the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, the 78,000-ton tanker Coral Sea had been attacked by a speedboat whose occupants fired ten bazooka shells at the unarmed vessel during a ten-minute pass.

Full Responsibility. Meeting newsmen aboard his ship five days after the attack, Hebrew-speaking Greek Captain Marcos Moscos, 37, displayed the damage. Two of the shells had missed from a distance of less than 100 yds., and six did only superficial harm. But two compartments loaded with oil were hit; in one, a fire raged for 45 minutes. "We were lucky the ship didn't explode," said Moscos. "It didn't because we pumped more oil into the tank and kept gases from gathering. But the main credit is God's."

Though angry Israelis suspected that Egypt might have had a hand in the high-seas attack, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine quickly took "full responsibility." It was the Front, a Marxist Arab guerrilla group, that held 357 hostages at various times in Jordan last year and blew up four skyjacked jetliners. Its spokesmen in Beirut insisted that the speedboat had traveled a full 1,300 miles from the Jordanian port of Aqaba to carry out the attack, but this seems highly unlikely. More probably, the boat sailed from islands around Bab el Mandeb controlled by the radical government of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (which was Southern Yemen until a name change six months ago), or was carried to the scene aboard a bigger craft. An unmarked trawler was in the area at the time of the attack. In any case, the guerrillas appeared to be trying to sow trouble among nonradical Arabs. The reference to Aqaba might have been meant to prod Israel into some sort of reprisal against Jordan's only seaport as a way of injuring King Hussein.

Token Force. The attack on the Coral Sea brought into the open what up to now has only been whispered: that crude oil fed into the Trans-Israel Pipeline at Eilat--some 20 million tons is anticipated this year--comes not only from Iran but from Saudi Arabia and some other Arab states on the Persian Gulf as well. Arab oil is not carried by Israeli-flag ships, of course, but by vessels that are registered in third countries, like the Liberian-flag Coral Sea. Sailing orders are often doctored so that there is no record of some ships' ever carrying oil to Eilat at all. Arab leaders have tried not to think about the matter for practical reasons: Saudi Arabia and Kuwait help support Egypt and Jordan with annual subsidies out of oil revenues. How they get their oil to Western Europe's thirsty countries, with the Suez Canal closed, is something that they would prefer to keep to themselves.

Aside from spurring Israel to preventive measures against further attacks and embarrassing a number of Arab countries, the P.F.L.P. attack had a third effect. It raised new doubts about whether Washington will eventually be able to draw Israel and Egypt into an interim agreement on reopening Suez. Secretary of State William Rogers tried to sound optimistic at his press conference last week. He indicated that the U.S. hopes at some point to involve the Soviet Union in the discussions. What Washington wants, according to other sources, is a pledge from Moscow not to move Soviet personnel stationed in Egypt across the canal into Sinai. Both sides in the Middle East still appear interested in an agreement. One difficulty, however, is that the Arab guerrillas are likely to try to scuttle any settlement through methods like the shelling of the Coral Sea. At week's end, the Israelis had not retaliated but, as Defense Minister Moshe Dayan said, "We won't sit with our hands folded."

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