Word: gulf
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...granted as the normal state of affairs. But as tensions mounted and public concern increased in the U.S., the Administration acknowledged that an edgy situation had indeed been transformed into a potentially explosive one. When Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser announced that he was sealing off the Gulf of Aqaba against all Israeli vessels and other ships that might be carrying "strategic" cargo to the Israeli port of Elath (see THE WORLD), Washington acted firmly. In so doing, the U.S. exerted a sobering effect on the excitable antagonists, and may well have helped nudge them back from the brink...
...President canceled minor appointments, put the White House Situation Room on special alert, and went before television cameras with a som ber, seven-minute statement. "The purported closing of the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping has brought a new and grave dimension to the crisis," said Johnson. "The U.S. considers the gulf to be an international waterway and feels that a blockade of Israeli shipping is illegal and potentially disastrous...
...statement included an implicit threat of U.S. intervention, it was heartily applauded by many of those who have most stridently and steadfastly castigated U.S. intervention in Viet Nam. Oregon's Democratic Senator Wayne Morse urged the maritime nations to test the Egyptian blockade by sending ships into the gulf "with their flags flying." Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who knows where the votes come from in New York, proposed that the U.N. send a naval patrol into the gulf. If the U.N. failed to act, he said, the U.S. should step in with other interested nations. Such a seaborne...
...threat to world peace was real enough. Egypt, having already moved some 80,000 troops into the Gaza Strip and all along its 117-mile border with Israel, announced that it would not permit Israeli ships or vessels bearing strategic materials to Israel to enter the Gulf of Aqaba, at the head of which sits the important Israeli port of Elath...
...back up its threat, it set up guns on the heights of Sham el Sheikh and trained them on the narrow Tiran Strait that controls the gulf's entrance, planted mines in parts of the passage, and sent torpedo boats and jets to patrol the waters. Israel announced that it would consider a blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba "an act of war." The U.S., joined by Britain and France, made it clear that it considered the gulf to be international waters and would oppose any Arab attempt to close it off indefinitely...