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.
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.
