friendship had in any case carried little conviction.
America’s opposition to social revolution – any
form of socialism being regarded as little differ-
ent from communism – meant that US support
was given to kings, princes and feudal minorities,
the ‘old gang’, thus making anti-Americanism an
appealing slogan with which the political opposi-
tion in the Middle Eastern states could arouse the
masses. British governments, whether Labour or
Conservative, took a similar line to the Americans
and had done so for much longer, allying them-
selves with the feudal leaders of the Arab peoples
and failing to change course after the Second
World War. For these Arab monarchs and their
ministers the West became an essential pillar of
support against their own peoples in opposition.
But it exposed them to accusations of betraying
Arab independence for the sake of maintaining
their corrupt regimes. That their accusers could
be just as corrupt did not lessen the power of their
propaganda.
Still, in 1954 it seemed that Anglo-Egyptian
relations, and so Western influence, had been rea-
sonably secured. But the Middle East in the after-
math of the Arab–Israeli War was an unstable
region. Regional conflicts and hostilities might
yet undermine the West. To promote a general
peace in the Middle East was therefore the other
side of the coin to the Cold War objective of
keeping the Russians out.
The Arab refusal to accept Israel meant that no
peace treaties were concluded between it and its
Arab neighbours. The Arab states continued pub-
licly to declare that they would attack and destroy
Israel. In reality Nasser was seeking a peaceful
solution from 1952 until February 1955, and
secret, high-level Israeli–Egyptian negotiations
were held but they led to no settlement. Britain,
France and the US had meanwhile stepped in as
guarantors of the frontiers.
Making friends with Nasser, though, was not
going to be easy. There was another bone of con-
tention. Nasser’s bid for revolutionary pan-Arab
leadership was opposed by the feudal, oil-rich
rulers of Saudi Arabia and the sheikhs of the Gulf
states. They in turn had the backing of the US
and Britain. Nasser’s ambitions were also opposed
by the kingdom of Iraq, whose pro-Western gov-
ernment had just concluded the military Baghdad
Pact as a Turkish–Arab–Western-backed barrier
against Soviet penetration. The Arab world in the
mid-1950s was thus rent by the bitter rivalry and
antagonism between Egypt and Iraq. In trying to
be friends with both sides, Britain was attempt-
ing to ride two horses at once.
The Anglo-American Middle Eastern peace
project was a secret effort known by the code-
name Alpha. In the very month that the Baghdad
Pact was signed between Iraq and Turkey, in
February 1955, Eden flew to Cairo to meet
Nasser. The Egyptian leader left him in no doubt
about his hostility towards the Pact but appeared
more moderate on the Palestine issue, even dis-
cussing the possibility of peace with Israel. This
gave some hope for Alpha, had it not been for
the militant Palestinians. The Palestinian guerril-
las, known as the fedayeen, had in 1953 begun
conducting raids into Israel from Egyptian-held
Gaza and the Jordanian West Bank. The Israelis
responded with massive reprisal raids which they
hoped would deter the countries hosting Pales-
tinian fighters from allowing incursions into
Israel. One such Israeli reprisal in October 1953
had destroyed much of the Jordanian village of
Qibya; more than fifty men, women and children
lost their lives in the attack. There were further,
though less savage, reprisals against Jordan in- Why then did the Palestinians continue
their attacks? Their leader, Yasser Arafat, calcu-
lated that provoking Israeli strikes inside Jordan
and Egypt would prove counter-productive for
the Israelis: Jordan might not be able to strike
back but Egypt could. The Israelis fell into the
trap. A Palestinian raid from the Gaza Strip led
to an Israeli counter-blow on 28 February 1955
in which sixty-nine mainly Egyptian soldiers
and Palestinians were killed or wounded. This
brought to an end the direct contacts between
Israel and Egypt in pursuit of a peaceful solution
of their differences. Nasser could not accept such
a humiliation. Egypt’s priority now was to
increase its military strength to enable it to con-
front Israel at least on equal terms in the future.
Nasser wanted a huge quantity of arms. He would
get them from the West if he could; if he could
not, he would get them from the East.