The prospects for Alpha had been reduced, if
not extinguished. There was further desultory talk
of a settlement with Israel, but Nasser insisted
that Jordan should be given the Israeli Negev and
that the new frontier should run across to Gaza.
Then Jordan and Egypt would share a common
frontier – and Egypt, as the stronger country,
would have dominated Jordan. Such a proposal
had no chance of acceptance.
In April 1955 Churchill retired and Eden
became prime minister. With a small inner
Cabinet of ministers, Eden dominated the foreign
policy of his administration. During the summer
of 1955 he and Dulles were still hoping to woo
Nasser. His request for arms, however, ran into
difficulties in Washington. Khrushchev saw his
chance to vault the Baghdad Pact barrier and
trumped anything Nasser could hope to secure
from the West with an offer of planes and tanks
on terms the Egyptian would find hard to refuse.
That October the arms deal with the Soviet
Union was publicly confirmed.
The dismay in London and Washington was
nothing compared to the alarm felt in Israel. In
November Prime Minister Ben Gurion started to
plan for war. Israel’s geographical position made
it extremely vulnerable; a mere fifteen-mile
advance by an enemy would have cut the country
in half. What is more, the combined populations
of its Arab neighbours dwarfed Israel’s. Unlike
those neighbours, Israel had to draw on all of its
manpower to wage war, but it could not do so
for long without facing ruin at home. This deter-
mined Israeli strategy. The war had to be carried
deep into enemy territory and to maximise the
chances of success the enemy had to be caught
off-balance. In such a mortal combat the Israelis
were not concerned with legalistic arguments
over who had technically started the war. As Israel
interpreted it, the huge build-up of Egyptian arms
meant that an Arab attack was only a matter of
time. But who could Israel rely on for help?
Western supplies of arms were controlled by the
Tripartite Declaration of May 1950, yet the
Soviet Union and Nasser had driven a coach and
horses through it. In the winter of 1955, the
French began supplying arms to Israel, including
their superb Mystère IV fighters. It was the start
of a more intimate relationship between Israel and
France, left in the cold by Britain and the US.
Eden and Dulles had not, however, given up
hope that autumn and winter of pulling Nasser
back from the Soviet orbit. Nasser’s great ambition
was to transform the economy of Egypt and he
planned to do so by means of a huge new High
Dam at Aswan that would supply electric power
and irrigation for the Upper Nile. The finance
needed was to be provided by the World Bank, on
condition that the US and Britain contributed as
well. Eden urged Dulles to support the deal in
order to avoid a Soviet–Egyptian financial arrange-
ment. An offer by Britain and the US to finance the
first stage was actually made in December 1955.
There was at this point no British alignment with
France, let alone with Israel – support for Israel
would have alienated the very friends Britain and
the US wanted to make among the Arab states.
Yet within a few months the situation had
totally changed. Britain and the US increasingly
suspected each other’s policies and their cooper-
ation came to an end. Britain instead, with much
hesitation, forged an alliance with France and
Israel, and was drawn into a secret plan to defeat
Egypt and topple Nasser. What had brought
about such an extraordinary upheaval, above all
in British aims?
By March 1956, Nasser was seen by Eden as a
danger to British interests in the Middle East, an
unreliable leader deeply committed to the Soviet
Union. Cairo’s propaganda against Britain’s Arab
friends, especially against Britain’s influence in
Jordan, and Egypt’s hostility to the inclusion of
Jordan within the Baghdad Pact sparked off the
breach. Jordan’s King Hussein was too weak to
resist the pro-Nasser sentiment that swept
through his country. Bowing to pressure, on 1
March 1956 he dismissed the British officer,
known as Glubb Pasha, who commanded Jordan’s
Arab Legion. Eden reacted angrily: it seemed to
him that Nasser was intent upon undermining
Britain in the Middle East. From then on Eden
was determined by one means or another to rid
the Middle East of Nasser.
In April 1956 Dulles and Eden agreed to let
the Aswan loan negotiations languish. Nasser was
now no longer seen as a possible supporter of the
1
1956: CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST – SUEZ 445
