If Britain would not act with France to destroy
Nasser, was there an alternative? The French
chiefs thought so – a military alliance with Israel.
But an alliance with Britain was preferable and
they would have to be careful not to jeopardise
that by premature discussions with Israel. So the
French prime minister Guy Mollet and his foreign
minister François Pineau had a difficult game to
play. Discussions with the Israelis would have to
be held secretly at arm’s length from the joint
military planning with Britain. The Israeli prime
minister was deeply suspicious of Eden’s pro-Arab
policies and had little faith in British reliability.
Thus Eden’s opposition to any Israeli involve-
ment was reciprocated by Israeli doubts about the
wisdom of acting with Britain.
Before the French were ready to start military
conversations with the Israelis, their priority was
to coordinate Anglo-French military planning.
This did not happen until mid-August 1956.
Eden by then was following a two-track policy:
military preparations would be pushed ahead at
the same time as international negotiations
between the maritime nations and Egypt.
It was the US secretary of state John Foster
Dulles who took the lead in the effort to diffuse
the Canal Crisis by conference diplomacy. He and
President Eisenhower also found themselves in a
difficult position. Britain was America’s most
important ally in the Cold War. But Eisenhower
suspected Conservative-led Britain of lapsing into
colonial attitudes. To make war on Egypt was
legally and morally unjustified, would not be
sanctioned by the UN and would, so Eisenhower
believed, turn the whole Arab world against the
West. The attempt to assure Britain of friendly
support while also trying to restrain it produced
much ambiguity in what the US would or would
not sanction. A conference was convened in
London from 16 to 23 August 1956, with India
and the Soviet Union participating. Nasser
rejected the two proposals that were the outcome
of the London Conference as infringing Egypt’s
sovereign rights. Nor did the proposals made by
a second conference convened in London on 21
September find any more favour in Cairo. Britain
and France then took their dispute to the Security
Council of the United Nations early in October.
Nasser seemed to be playing for time, in the mis-
taken belief that the longer it took the less likely
was any military aggression by Britain and France.
Dulles and Eisenhower, however, continued
to urge restraint and patience and to seek new
solutions.
Military plans for Operation Musketeer, the
assault on Egypt, were proceeding apace, but they
had to be revised constantly for military and diplo-
matic reasons. It took time to marshal sufficient
aircraft and paratroops in Cyprus and to assemble
troops there and in Malta, who were to be ferried
by the Mediterranean fleet to Port Said. During
August and September the one clear development
was that Eden learnt that the Americans would
not actively support the use of force. So he
switched to France. But, although Britain and
France were in close partnership militarily, that
did not extend to their diplomatic aims in the
Middle East beyond Egypt. There they were
almost on opposite sides: France was supporting
Israel; Britain was supporting the Arab states, and
it confirmed the full validity of its alliance with
Jordan against Israel when Jordan became the vic-
tim of two Israeli reprisal raids in September 1956.
One of the most extraordinary aspects of the Suez
Crisis is how late British policy changed, only days
before the attack on Egypt: Eden abruptly agreed
to make use of Israel in a plan to legitimise the
assault on Egypt. But until that change took place,
the French had to keep the Israeli connection
secret from their British ally.
During the latter part of September the
French, with diplomatic finesse, began involving
the Israelis and the British in a secret game plan
for war on Egypt. When Eden and his foreign
Secretary Selwyn Lloyd visited Paris for talks with
Mollet and Pineau on 26 September it is possible
that the French revealed that they were having
contacts with the Israelis. The French aim was for
the Canal to be threatened with closure because
Israel had attacked Egypt and was advancing
towards Suez – would not Britain and France
then be justified, in the interests of keeping the
Suez Canal open to international traffic, in acting
as policemen, demanding that both sides with-
draw from the Suez Canal and occupying it if
either the Israelis or the Egyptians rejected the
1
1956: CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST – SUEZ 447
