Word: canals
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...result, Sadat in his travels through the Middle East must beg for funds even as he is trying to solidify his position as spokesman for all the Arab people. So far, he has had some success. Several new housing cities are rising alongside the Suez Canal as part of a rebuilding program that goes hand in hand with canal renovations: Faisal City, named for the late King of Saudi Arabia; Sabah City for the Sheik of Kuwait; Zayed City in honor of Abu Dhabi's Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al Nahayan...
Some Middle East observers suggest that Sadat badly needs a lift right now. He has just about exhausted the political popularity that he accumulated in the October war and as a result of the disengagement negotiations that put Egyptian troops back on the east bank of the canal last year. There are considerable signs of unrest in Egypt. Workers rioted briefly in January and again in March to protest rising prices and food shortages, and students also demonstrated...
...terminus of the great waterway, workers swarmed over docks and piers that had been empty for years. Buoys were being assembled, and pilot ships recaulked and overhauled. In the freshly painted warehouses, piles of new, sweet-smelling hemp rope rose like giant becalmed cobras in spirals to the ceilings. Canal pilots, the skilled men who guide ships through the narrow canal, were flocking back from all over the world. The Suez Canal, once the vital link between the West and the East, was being prepared for this week's gala reopening, eight years to the day after its closing...
Since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the 101-mile-long canal has been little more than a fortified ditch. The Israeli pullback into the Sinai in the aftermath of the October 1973 war still leaves it open to easy attack. But with both banks now under Egyptian control. President Anwar Sadat gambled that he could open it again. To underscore his seriousness, Sadat also approved a $10 billion five-year plan to rebuild the ruined cities along the canal's banks and construct new airports, rail lines and communications facilities in the area...
...task of readying the canal kept an international team busy for more than a year removing the detritus of two full-scale wars and a war of attrition. As the first step, U.S. Navy Sea Stallion helicopters towed minesweeping sleds the entire length of the waterway, searching for magnetic sea mines. The Israelis refused to say whether or not they had planted any, but none were found. Next, teams from the U.S., the Soviet Union, Britain, France and Egypt cleared out land mines, bombs, antitank mines, cluster bombs and anything else that might have accidentally fallen into the water...