Meir Batz, a Beersheba engineer, offered today to survey the possibility of a Ashdod-Eilat canal, as a substitute for the Suez Canal, for a fee of 100,000 pounds ($33,000). He made the proposal to Labor Minister Yigal Allon, who promised a careful study of the proposal.
The Finance Ministry allocated that amount last September 7 for a preliminary feasibility study of such a canal, which has been under discussion for some time. Construction costs for such a 200-mile canal has been estimated at around $3,000,000,000, No action is considered likely during Israel’s current austerity and retrenchment effort.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
