Gator-Aid

Compared with the AWACS deal, what one Israeli wanted and got last week from the U.S. was a snap: 120 alligators. Alligators? Well, their relatives the crocodiles flourish elsewhere in the Middle East, but not in Israel. Guy Ben-Moshe, who is developing a tourist attraction near the southern Golan Heights, offered to pay up to $1,000 per alligator to further his own resettlement scheme. Joel Smith, who runs an alligator farm near Gainesville, Fla., packed 120 of the reptiles, from 1 ft. to 10 ft. long, into burlap-lined wooden crates and sent them off on an El Al jet. After arriving, one nosed its way out of its crate in a truck en route to the Golan Heights and fell onto the road, but was corralled by some intrepid journalists in the convoy.

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