MIDDLE EAST: Troubled Waters

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To Manhattan newspapers, it was only an item for the shipping page when the Seafarers International Union sent a straggle of pickets to an East River pier to prevent the unloading of an 8,193-ton Egyptian passenger-cargo ship named Cleopatra. The seafarers' grievance: Gamal Abdel Nasser's policy of blacklisting any ship that stops at an Israeli port has reduced employment opportunities for U.S. seamen. Longshoremen respected the picket line. The Cleopatra remained unloaded and unnoticed.

But the Arab world from Cairo to Damascus to Jidda broke into shrill cries of rage. Hurriedly calling delegates from many Mideast countries for an emergency meeting, the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions (membership: 2,000,000) gave the New York pickets a week to halt their boycott. "Unless they unload Cleopatra by that time, we will do the same thing to American ships in all Arab ports," said a top official. Sure enough, at the zero hour, Alexandria dockers resoundingly proclaimed, "In the name of Allah and Arabism, we Arab workers by Allah's blessing start our boycott of ships of the Zionist agents.''

Nasser was getting wide support even from his rivals in the Arab world. Tunisia, Jordan and Iraq unions backed the boycott. U.S. commerce would suffer slightly and Nasser's United Arab Republic stood to lose some badly needed machinery and wheat. In Manhattan, the federal courts had refused to interfere, and on Pier 16 the pickets trudged on, ignoring a plea from the State Department that such "an effort by a private group to apply pressure publicly with a view to bringing about shifts in the policies of foreign governments is embarrassing to our government's foreign relations."

Few questioned the justice of the pickets' protest. Real complaint was that their effort to reverse Nasser's policy was ineffective. But by persisting, the pickets were needlessly jeopardizing the small store of good will that the U.S. has painstakingly worked to accumulate with the touchy Arab world.