306 • 17 ISRAEL'S REBIRTH AND THE RISE OF ARAB NATIONALISMIsrael alone, so he offered technical and economic assistance, notably a
large loan to finance the construction of a new dam at Aswan. On the
other hand, Dulles resented Nasir's "positive neutralism" between com¬
munism and the West, his threats against Israel and pro-Western Arab
regimes, and his recognition of the People's Republic of China. In July
1956, just after Egypt had decided to accept the Aswan Dam loan offer,
Dulles, hoping to humiliate Nasir, yanked it away. The Egyptian leader re¬
sponded by nationalizing the Suez Canal Company, pledging to use its
profits, most of which had gone to European investors since it opened in
1869, to finance the dam. "O Americans," he shouted before a vast crowd,
"may you choke to death in your fury!"
It was not the Americans who choked. After all, the British and French
were the canal's primary users, mainly for oil imports from the Persian
Gulf. They began planning diplomatic (or if need be military) measures to
get it back. That summer and fall witnessed international conferences,
trips to Cairo, and other Western stratagems aimed at prying the canal
from Nasir's grip. Meanwhile, the Arabs hailed Nasir's defiance as just ret¬
ribution for all they had suffered from Western imperialism. When diplo¬
matic attempts to subject the canal to international control failed, the
British and French resolved to regain it by force—and to overthrow Nasir
if they could. Significantly, they turned to Israel as an accomplice.ISRAEL'S EARLY YEARSWhile the Arabs viewed Israel as an agent of Western imperialism, the
Israelis saw themselves as an embattled nation seeking to ensure the sur¬
vival of the Jewish people in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust. They regarded
their war for independence as a struggle by an oppressed people for free¬
dom from outside domination. Most of the Arab states against which Israel
fought in 1948 were still influenced by British advisers and ruled by kings
and landowners. Few Israelis realized that they had created another op¬
pressed people: the Palestinian Arabs.
When revolutions later toppled the discredited regimes in Syria and
Egypt, the Israelis were disappointed that the new leaders made no peace
overtures toward them. The republican Arab nationalists in uniform were
no less bitter than the monarchical and feudal politicians in kufiyas, fezzes,
or turbans. But the Israelis were busy rebuilding a war-torn country. In ad¬
dition, they absorbed the thousands of Jewish refugees who had survived
the war and the death camps of Europe. They also had to cope with the in¬
flux of even greater numbers of Jewish refugees from Arab countries, of