Sharm el Sheikh: A Nice Place to Live

Located at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula and commanding the passage to the Gulf of Aqaba, Sharm el Sheikh is sand-blown, sunbaked and heavy with symbolism and strategic significance. It played a major part in the events leading to the Six-Day War. At that time, Gamal Abdel Nasser threatened that Egyptian artillery at Sharm el Sheikh would sink any ship that ventured into the narrow Straits of Tiran en route to the Israeli port of Eilat, 130 miles to the north, which handles all of Israel's oil imports. Soon afterward, Israeli paratroopers and amphibious forces captured the fortifications. In the 1956 Sinai campaign, the Israelis took and then returned Sharm el Sheikh; this time they intend to keep it, even though it is their most remote occupied territory. Last week, in the first official step toward altering the area's status, an Interior Ministry representative was dispatched from Jerusalem to change the identification cards of residents and list Sharm el Sheikh as their official Israeli home. TIME Correspondent Marlin Levin was there and sent this report:

MY first trip to Sharm el Sheikh was in 1956 in a military DC-3. We came in for a hard landing on a makeshift airstrip. There were no roads and no inhabitants. The only man-made attractions were two British-built naval guns that had been spiked by retreating Egyptians. This time, my Arkia Viscount made the flight from Tel Aviv in 70 minutes and glided to a powder-puff landing on a hard-topped runway long enough to accommodate a Boeing 707.

A tourist bus took passengers on a ten-minute ride over a newly paved macadam road to the Caravan Hotel, Sharm el Sheikh's year-old 350-bed caravansary. Before we started, the bus driver turned to a young man. "Nu, buddy," he said, "where are you going without a ticket?" The man paid the 40-cent fare and said, "Take me downtown." At that the driver smiled. "Downtown? This isn't Tel Aviv--yet." Certainly not, judging from a first look at the treeless landscape, flat stretches of fine reddish gravel, and cone-shaped peaks of the bleak Sinai range. But the driver's yet was indicative. Small red surveyor's pennants are everywhere along the road. -

The present civilian population is about 500, nearly all male. Of these, 100 are construction workers who have been building military installations and a new road to Eilat. "We're here if they want us to build houses too," says Supervisor Avraham Calev. Some of his workers have already joined the waiting list for government-supplied housing. One, Avraham Freedman, mused about the future. "Look at the lights shining on the Caravan Hotel," he said. "It's almost like Chicago." I saw only one string of lights, but Freedman was sincere. "Trust the Israelis; one day it will be like Hollywood here."

Rumors in Sharm el Sheikh are that construction of private housing will begin in three or four months. Among the 180 families who have signed up so far are Herzl and Judith Frizner, who emigrated to Palestine from Germany 33 years ago and now run the lone gas station in Sharm el Sheikh. "What's so bad here?" asks Mrs. Frizner. "It's quiet, and we have contentment like you can get nowhere else. I'd just like to see a few shops."

Shops will be built eventually, along with a refrigeration plant, laundry, bakery, and five additional hotels. There is talk of constructing a shopping center under a Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome which would be air-conditioned to offset temperatures that reach 125DEG. Another problem to be overcome is the water shortage. Yehoshua Shapiro, the Caravan Hotel manager, who wears a jacket, tie and cuff links in spite of the heat, says: "We get our water by tank truck from a military desalination plant down the road. If the tanker breaks down, we're in trouble." Even so, Shapiro intends to settle permanently in Sharm el Sheikh. So do many of his staff. When I asked my waiter what was missing, he thought, smiled and answered: "Pollution." -

I flew back to Tel Aviv with Dov Friedman, manager of the local office of Israel's Egged bus cooperative. Friedman, who recently planted the settlement's first two trees, was returning for a brief visit with his family. "Strategically, this is Israel's neck," said he, offering a typical Israeli view on the importance of the place. "If we ever leave, the Arabs will choke us. If we decide that we have got to keep Sharm el Sheikh, it is only logical that we populate and develop it. That's our way."

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