The Suez Crisis
DOCUMENT IN CONTEXT
Israel lived in an uneasy neighborhood after its establishment in 1948. Egypt regularly
sent armed guerrillas, or fedayeen(“volunteers”), on raids into Israel from the Gaza
Strip, and other Arab states periodically threatened more serious conflict. Israel also
engaged in provocative acts, notably attacks on Egyptian forces in Gaza in February
1955 and on Syrian forces along the Sea of Galilee in December 1955. For the most
part, however, Israel’s first eight years of existence were relatively peaceful. All that
changed in 1956, when Israel became a major actor in what the West calls the Suez
crisis and in Israel is referred to as the Sinai campaign. Regardless, it was one of the
most dangerous episodes of the cold war.
In 1954 Gamal Abdel Nasser emerged as the dynamic new leader of Egypt and
fashioned himself the champion of a putative pan-Arab nation. Among Nasser’s goals
was the elimination of the last vestiges of Western imperialism from the Middle East.
He made a significant step in that direction in July 1954, when Britain agreed to
remove its military bases adjacent to the Suez Canal within twenty months. A year
later, Nasser upset the geostrategic balance in the region when he signed an agreement
to buy some $200 million worth of advanced warplanes and other weapons from
Czechoslovakia, then a client state of the Soviet Union. The step appeared to herald
Moscow’s determination to play a greater role in the Middle East, and it frightened
Israel, which was relying on France to help it retain a military edge over the Arab
states.
In June 1956, Britain completed its withdrawal from the Suez Canal, and Nasser
won the first of several uncontested elections for the presidency of Egypt. The fol-
lowing month, the United States and Britain unexpectedly backed away from their
promises to provide financing for the Aswan High Dam, the cornerstone of Nasser’s
economic development program. The project was designed to regulate the Nile’s
annual floods and to generate the bulk of Egypt’s electricity. Although the Eisenhower
administration cited technical concerns, its principal reason was anger at Nasser’s deci-
sion two months earlier to recognize the communist government of China, a step
regarded as moving Egypt even deeper into the anti-Western camp. Nasser quickly
responded by announcing Egypt’s intent to nationalize the Suez Canal. The canal’s
British and French owners would be compensated, he said, but the canal henceforth
would be in Egyptian hands and its profits used to subsidize construction of the Aswan
High Dam.
British and French officials immediately began plotting to retake the canal mili-
tarily and, they hoped, to force Nasser from power. In October, Israel joined the oper-
ation. During a secret three-day meeting in the Paris suburb of Sèvres, senior officials
from the three countries developed a detailed plan in which Israel—claiming to be
responding to Egyptian attacks—would send its army across the Sinai Peninsula toward
the Suez Canal; Britain and France would then intervene to separate the warring
Egyptian and Israeli parties and in the process seize control of the canal. The plan,
80 ARABS AND ISRAELIS