The victory of Israel in 1949 marked a watershed
in the history of the Middle East. It laid cruelly
bare the comparative weakness of the Arab
nations and the growing strength of the new State
of Israel. In the Arab nations the upheavals that
followed brought new forces to prominence.
They had been developing, however, long before
the outbreak of the war. The foundation of Israel
in the heat of war was not alone responsible. But,
within a decade of those Arab defeats, Britain’s
bases of power in Egypt, Jordan and Iraq had
been eliminated by a renewed wave of Arab
nationalism. Western influence declined during
the Cold War for the paradoxical reason that the
Arab nations knew that the Western powers
would defend them from Soviet attack. The
Middle East, with its vast resources of oil in the
Gulf and Saudi Arabia, was vital for Western
industry and for Japan, leaving aside the strategic
importance of the region.
As the West became more dependent upon
Arab goodwill, so Western influence over internal
developments in the Middle Eastern states diminished.
The monarchial Arab states did not become
more Westernised, constitutional and liberal;
indeed, there was a decisive turn to authoritarian
rule by new elites, to internal suppression, police
states and torture. There was also a new urgency
to build up military and economic strength against
the twin threat of Israel and Western interference.
Israel alone remained Westernised and democratic,
heavily dependent upon Western, especially
American, financial and military support. As the
US’s only reliable anti-Soviet ally in the region,
Israel was able to follow an independent Middle
Eastern policy, frequently to the discomfiture of
its Western allies.
The Palestine war in 1949 weakened the
undisputed hold of the Arab ruling classes of
landowners and politicians over the nations
created under Western tutelage after the First
World War. The old ruling elites were not overthrown
simultaneously, but were steadily supplanted
in a process that saw radical change in the
ten years after 1949 and that still has not come
to an end. A new, much more violent Arab
nationalism now swept through the Middle East.
The Cold War provided added tensions as well as
opportunities for the new Arab leadership to play
off West against East to extract supplies of arms
and development aid.
The appeal of the new leadership lay in its calls
for a renewal of Arab national pride and for complete
independence from the Western powers,
whether Britain, France or, later, the US, even
while the Arabs benefited from the Western shield
of security against the threat of Soviet territorial
expansion. The new leaders promised an acceleration
of social change and a concern for the welfare
of the poor masses, with the state playing a planning
role. A new radicalism and impatience with
the corruption of the past and with the Western
imperialist connection stirred Arab society. There
was a search for fresh solutions and frequent con-
flict about the best course to adopt. Communists
sought revolutionary change, but the new rulers
feared that such a pace would sweep them away as
well. Some groups, such as the powerful Muslim
Brotherhood, insisted that the only road to Arab
salvation was to reject Western secularism altogether
and to return to an Islamic past that would
allow religion to embrace the whole way of life
and guide all aspects of social policy and statecraft.
Others insisted that outside help, whether
Western or Soviet, was essential for rapid progress
and that Islamic fundamentalism was an obstacle
to modernisation. The emerging leadership derived
its authority not from the ballot box or from
constitutional procedures, but from violent coups.
In this way the military replaced the landowners
as the backbone of the new regimes. When they
came to power the officers frequently had no central
strategy nor any detailed policies; the coherence
of their programme depended on the quality
of the leadership.
In Syria the repercussions of the lost war contributed
to a military coup in March 1949. Three
further military coups occurred during the next
three years, but it was not until 1966 that the
secular socialist Ba’athist Party, strong in the
army, seized undisputed power, by staging yet
another coup. Neighbouring Lebanon, with its
delicate compromises, began to fall apart when, in
1958, the Christian president attempted to forestall
pro-Nasser and anti-Western Arab nationalist
movements (for Nasser, see p. 440). The struggle
between Christian and Muslim groups plunged
the country into confusion, and the presence of
Palestinian refugees had added a further destabilising
element to the kaleidoscope of the Lebanese
polity. The US threw its weight behind the
Christian president, landed marines and for a
time an uneasy peace was maintained between
the various armed factions loyal to their own leaders,
Druze, Sunni, Shia and Christian Maronite
Falangist. The threat of civil war was not banished,
only postponed.
In Jordan too the rise of Arab nationalism
made itself felt. The astute King Abdullah, who
had wanted to live peacefully with the Jews provided
they would accept his rule over Palestine,
and who had then gone on to capture the West
Bank and half of Jerusalem during the Palestinian
war, was assassinated by a Palestinian Arab in July
1951. His successor in 1952, after a brief interlude,
was the young King Hussein, who managed
to retain his throne by preserving the loyalty of
the army and – despite Jordan’s continued financial
and military dependence on Britain – severing
treaty ties with the British, so asserting Jordanian
independence. Saudi Arabia, still feudal, still disciplined
by a fundamentalist Islamic tradition remains
the only major Arab nation apart from
Jordan where the monarchy has survived into the
last quarter of the twentieth century.
In Iraq, King Faisal II and the most powerful
politician in the country, Nuri-es-Said, seemed to
guarantee a firmly pro-Western conservative government,
but Arab nationalism in Iraq in 1948
already limited the conservatives’ freedom of
action. There was no open break with Britain, but
even Nuri-es-Said could not afford to identify
himself too closely with the West. The Arab
League, of which Iraq was a leading member, also
contained Egypt, which disputed with Iraq the
leadership of the Arab peoples. Policies of reform
and development were too slow in Iraq; the
landowners and conservative politicians had no
wish to promote radical change, so Nasser’s
Egyptian revolution proved a serious threat to the
‘old gang’ in Iraq. In 1958 the Iraqi army led a
bloody revolution. It came as a shock to the West,
not least because of the brutal murders of Faisal
and Nuri-es-Said. The alliance with the West was
discarded.
In neighbouring Iran, after the Second World
War, a groundswell of discontent threatened to
oust the Shah and the conservative politicians
from power. The withdrawal of the Russians and
the provision of US advice and aid had not solved
the inherent problems of Iranian society. A widespread
rejection of foreign influence, both
American and British, was just one indication of
the growth of nationalism. The technologically
advanced Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was the
most visible sign of foreign exploitation, and
though it provided much of the state’s revenue it
employed only a very small proportion of the
Iranian working population. Despite the development
of the oil industry, Iran was still one of the
most backward Middle Eastern nations and the
peasant masses were sunk in poverty. Urban
development, especially the growth of Teheran,
expanded the number of artisans and shopkeepers
at the bottom of the social scale, who formed,
with a burgeoning bureaucracy, a disparate lowermiddle
class. But it was students who became the
spearhead of revolutionary and nationalist sentiment,
aided by a backlash of Islamic fundamentalism
against modern Western ways and their
accompanying corruption and secularism.
In the spring of 1951 the Shah’s political control
was loosened when opposition pressure forced
him to appoint as prime minister a veteran, radical
politician called Mohammed Mossadeq. With the
struggle focusing on foreign influence – of which
the most potent symbol was the Anglo-Iranian
Oil Company – Mossadeq put himself at the head
of the nationalist movement. Control of oil supplies
had become the vital new factor in the
region’s politics. In the five years following the
war the production of crude oil was doubled from
250 million tons to 500 million; by 1960 production
reached 1,000 million tons. The West’s
demand for oil seemed insatiable, output reaching
2,000 million tons in 1968. By far the largest
producer was Saudi Arabia, which also had the
largest reserves.
Britain’s position in the Middle East seemed
seriously threatened when in May 1951 the
largest oil refinery in the world, at Abadan, and
all other installations of the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company were peremptorily expropriated and
nationalised by Mossadeq. Anti-British rioting
heightened the tension. The British Labour government
considered using force to protect the
valuable British investment, but the prime
minister, Clement Attlee, wisely chose to work
with the Americans and the United Nations to
achieve a peaceful settlement. A nation could not
be prevented from taking charge of its resources;
the oil companies, moreover, had not paid a fair
price for the oil that they had been extracting.
Pressure to settle was put on the Iranians by
Britain and the US, with British technicians withdrawing
from Abadan and bringing the refinery
to a halt.
But the most important lesson learnt by the oilproducing
countries was that possession of the
resources and installations did not give them complete
control. Since the oil-producers had to
export the bulk of the oil to the West, the international
companies continued, through their marketing
facilities and outlets, to exert great influence.
Thus in 1951 the Americans cooperated with
Britain to block the sale of oil produced by the
national Iranian oil company. Mossadeq’s moves,
at first applauded, plunged Iran into economic difficulties
and his political supporters began to fight
each other. In August 1953, the Shah staged a
coup to recover the powers he had lost, with
strong support from America’s Central Intelligence
Agency and Britain’s intelligence services.
In the following year, the oil dispute was settled.
For the next twenty-five years, until 1979, the
Shah’s authoritarian rule, with American support,
appeared to provide the West with a secure ally.
Far-reaching in its consequences for the whole of
the Middle East was the Egyptian revolution of
1952, which produced the dominant Arab leader
of the 1950s and 1960s, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Defeat in Palestine had not immediately brought
about the fall of King Farouk: there were plenty
of other fuses besides Palestine that led to revolution.
The inequitable distribution of land, made
worse by a rapidly increasing peasant population,
meant that living standards for the mass of underprivileged
Egyptians were falling, not rising. The
luxury and corruption of the Palace came to be
symbolised by the figure of the gross King
Farouk. Worse, the politicians and the king had
failed to remove the British troops from the Suez
Canal Zone. The last Palestine war was seen as
the latest indication of the inability of Egyptian
rulers to stand up to foreign, imperialist influence.
The Wafd Party had also, by this time, become
identified with weakness and corruption. A Wafd
government in 1951 tried to deprive the British
of any right to remain in the Suez bases by unilaterally
abrogating the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of
1936. All that this gesture demonstrated was the
continued helplessness of the Egyptians.
Guerrilla attacks were launched on the British
in their bases and were answered by British
counter-attacks that culminated in a British assault
on the Egyptian police headquarters in
Ismailia. Forty-one policemen were killed in the
battle that followed, martyrs of the Egyptian
nationalist cause. With nationalist feeling aroused
to a frenzy, Cairo was burnt and looted by mobs
of angry Egyptians. Within Egypt, the only force,
other than the British, able to restore order was
the Egyptian army. The politicians had lost
control and the army leadership now held the key
to the future of Egypt. Farouk had long since
become a spent force.
Inside the army a nationalist group of middleranking
and younger officers conspired to seize
power to provide Egypt with new leadership.
Calling themselves the Free Officers, they were
led by Lieutenant-Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser.
To provide a figurehead among the generals,
General Neguib was won over to the conspiracy,
but most of the senior military commanders
remained loyal to the king.
Farouk believed he could rely on the army and
underestimated the conspirators. They seized
power in a bloodless coup in July 1952. The old
order had collapsed without a fight. Farouk was
allowed to depart on his luxury yacht into exile.
It was a revolution from above without any really
popular participation. But there was no lament
over Farouk and the departed politicians either.
They had made too many enemies among influential
groups, including the powerful Muslim
Brotherhood, to be able to offer any effective
resistance. Nor did the British see any reason for
defending Farouk, who had so recently turned
violently on the British presence in Egypt. They
adopted a wait-and-see approach. There was no
rioting in Cairo and the people evidently accepted
the transfer of power.
The revolutionary colonels purged the army
of the senior officers who had remained loyal to
Farouk. Beyond this the Free Officers had no
constructive plans for a new society or state.
They knew, however, what they wished to end:
the monarchy and corruption, British imperialism
and Egypt’s military weakness. When General
Neguib sought real power, Nasser ousted him in
the spring of 1954 and became Egypt’s sole
authoritarian leader. The Muslim Brotherhood,
however, and the Wafd, both of which could still
command popular mass support, stood in his
way. They had taken the side of Neguib, so
Nasser now marked them down for suppression.
His own support, he noted, had come from
the army and from the poor. Socialism, with its
promises, appealed to the masses, and Nasser
realised that by espousing it he would strengthen
his popular base. He had come to power with
no ready-made ideology; the two characteristic
features of his regime, socialism and pan-Arabism,
were only gradually developed and adopted.
Fundamentally, however, it remained a military
dictatorship which won mass support from the
Egyptian people. It relied heavily on his personal
charisma.
Was there a clear division in the mid-twentieth
century between those countries that used force
to get their way and those that accepted international
standards and took their obligations
under the Charter of the United Nations seriously?
The Suez Crisis and the Hungarian rising
occurring at the same time in November
1956, should have demonstrated to the world
that contrast in the international behaviour of the
powerful when confronting the weak. But it did
not, at least to begin with. Yet it was British scruples,
the wish to appear to be acting with right
on its side, which ensured the failure of the
Anglo-French attack on Egypt. The figleaf of rectitude
with which the ingenious French had
attempted to cover the aggression proved too
transparent. There was an outcry in Britain and
the government lost the necessary backing of a
deeply divided electorate at home. Without that
backing a democratic country could not for long
wage a distant war. In the end the free world did
not behave as the Soviets were doing in Hungary,
and for one reason: the most powerful democracy,
the US, compelled Britain and France to
withdraw and to accept the will of the United
Nations, whereas Soviet control over Hungary
after the brutal repression was allowed to endure.
None of the countries involved, Egypt, Israel,
Britain, the US, France and the other Arab
nations, followed clear and consistent policies
from the beginnings of negotiations in 1954 to
the invasion in November 1956. That makes it
hard sometimes to distinguish the wood from the
trees and from the tangle of undergrowth.
For Nasser and the Egyptians the desire to end
a semi-colonial status and subservience to Britain
took first place. British troops stationed in the
Suez Canal Zone were an army of occupation on
Egyptian soil. The Canal Company, with its headquarters
in Paris, was alien too. It managed and
organised the passage of ships through the Canal
thousands of miles distant. No wonder that in the
mid-twentieth century Egyptians saw the Company
and its protectors as the successors of the
imperialists who had first occupied Egypt in the
1880s. The Egyptians were regarded as backward
by Westerners, incapable of running the Canal
effectively by themselves. All this was deeply
humiliating to nationalists in Egypt. Moreover,
Egypt was still smarting from its defeat by Israel.
As most Israelis had come from Europe in recent
times they too were regarded as Westerners and
Zionism as another facet of imperialism. They had
displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinian
Arabs during the war for Israeli independence.
Now these Arabs were refugees in their own part
of the world. Not that Colonel Nasser or any of
the Arab leaders were much bothered about
Palestinian Arabs. But Nasser’s credentials as a
pan-Arab leader depended on espousing the Arab
cause and proclaiming his enmity to the Zionist
intruders.
Nasser knew that Egypt was militarily weak but
he did have some cards to play. The Suez Canal
had been constructed by Ferdinand, Vicomte de
Lesseps in the typical imperialist manner of the
nineteenth century. Ruthless and brilliant, de
Lesseps had set up the Suez Canal Company and
had plundered the Egyptian treasury, while the
Egyptians had supplied 20,000 forced labourers.
Construction began in 1859 and was completed
in 1869. When the khedive went bankrupt he
sold the Egyptian shareholding in the Canal to
Britain for a mere £4 million in the famous financial
coup masterminded by the Rothschilds for
Disraeli. The Canal Company, with its British and
French shareholders, did not actually own the
Canal; the territory through which the canal was
constructed remained under Ottoman sovereignty.
The Company had merely acquired a concession
to operate the Canal for ninety-nine years
after its opening. Thus it would end in November
1968. That gave Nasser a legal claim. Was he prepared
to wait? For France and Britain time was
running out.
The Zone through which the Canal ran was
effectively controlled by British troops. Under the
Constantinople Convention of 1888 the Canal
was to be ‘free and open in time of war as in
peace’. The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 was
supposed to give Egypt real independence and
was indeed a step towards it. But Britain extracted
as the price the right to continue to occupy the
Canal Zone for twenty years and even to reoccupy
the rest of Egypt if necessary in the event of
war. Britain made use of this right during the
Second World War.
The time for renegotiating the alliance, then,
was rapidly approaching in the 1950s. And here
was the quandary for the West: in the era of Cold
War antagonism, to concede completely equal
rights in the Suez Canal to all countries, as
required by the Convention of 1888, could allow
the Soviet Union to secure a foothold. That was
unthinkable as far as London and Washington
were concerned. There was a way out, the solution
the West had found for that other crucial international
‘canal’, the Straits of Constantinople.
There was one exception to the requirement for
free passage of international canals. The sovereign
power through which the canal ran could take any
measures it felt necessary for its defence. By tying
Turkey into the NATO alliance the Soviets could
be kept out. So, if Egypt could be induced to continue
the Western alliance, the Soviet Union would
be denied any influence. The situation would of
course be catastrophically reversed if Egypt concluded
an alliance with the Soviet Union!
The Cold War and the fear of Soviet penetration
of the Middle East provide the key to an
understanding of Washington’s and London’s
policies in the early negotiations with Nasser.
Anthony Eden, foreign secretary in Churchill’s
government, worked hard to secure a friendly
agreement with Nasser over the issues outstanding
between Britain and Egypt, and he was
backed by the US secretary of state John Foster
Dulles. There was an additional issue of the future
of the Sudan, hitherto under dual Anglo-
Egyptian authority. In February 1953 agreement
was reached that the Sudanese should decide their
own future. To Nasser’s surprise they opted not
for union with Egypt but for independence. The
following year Nasser was more successful. In
October 1954 a new Anglo-Egyptian treaty was
concluded which provided for the complete evacuation
of all British troops from the Suez bases
within twenty months. The bases were to be
mothballed. This compromise formula would
allow Britain to reactivate the bases should war
break out in the region. The treaty was to run for
seven years until 1961. The British chiefs of staff
calculated they would not need a Suez base after
1961 anyway. Nonetheless, with the Suez Canal
still foreign-owned and foreign-run, it was less
than immediate complete freedom for Egypt. The
Muslim Brotherhood denounced Nasser’s agreement
with Britain as treachery, while in London
Eden was accused by right-wing Conservatives of
‘scuttling from the Canal Zone’. Eden had made
considerable concessions on Britain’s behalf and
had taken a risk with his popularity at home,
which made him later all the more sensitive to the
charge of appeasing the Egyptian dictatorship.
Britain, together with France and the US, claimed
the right to exercise a major role in ensuring that
stability should be preserved throughout the
Middle East. During the years immediately following
the signature of the armistice between
Egypt, Israel and the other Arab states in 1949 an
uneasy peace prevailed. But the Arabs refused to
accept that Palestine had disappeared, its territory
partitioned between the new sovereign State of
Israel and an enlarged Jordan. The armistice could
not be turned into a permanent peace. To stop the
outbreak of another war the US, Britain and
France, by their Tripartite Declaration on 25 May
1950, sought to regulate the arms supplied to
Israel and its Arab neighbours; and they appointed
themselves policemen in the Arab–Israeli conflict,
stating that:
should they find that any of these States was
preparing to violate frontiers or armistice lines,
[the three powers] would, consistently with
their obligations as members of the United
Nations, immediately take action, both within
and outside the United Nations, to prevent
such violation.
The Arab states and Israel were not a party to this
treaty nor was the Soviet Union invited to join it.
By leaving out the Russians, the unregulated
supply of arms from the Eastern bloc led to the
very arms race the West had tried to prevent.
The Declaration, with its assumption of great
power overlordship, was more impressive on
paper than in actuality. Britain, France and the
US were uneasy partners. The US believed, not
unjustly, that Britain had still not abandoned its
old colonial attitudes, which would alienate the
Arab nations. The British, for their part, resented
the growth of American influence and the way in
which the US was diminishing Britain’s commercial
stake. Although France was to cooperate with
Britain in the mid-1950s at the time of the Suez
Crisis, cooperation was based on considerations
of Realpolitik. Had not the British ruthlessly
destroyed France’s empire in the Lebanon and
Syria at the end of the Second World War? The
purpose of France’s continued involvement in the
Middle East was at least to retain, and if possible
to expand, its shrunken influence in North Africa
after the military debacle in Indo-China. The
most critical struggle of all was being waged in
Algeria, which the French declared to be an indivisible
part of France. Nasser’s propaganda supported
the Algerian rebels, and the tension was
raised still further because the French were overestimating
the quantity of weapons Nasser was
able to send to the Algerian nationalists.
The US too faced a dilemma. Britain and
France were its most important Western allies but
America also wished to be regarded as the friend
of independent Arab nations; it saw itself as being
free from the colonialist taint and condemned the
old British and French attitudes. How to side
with Arab nationalism as well as with Britain and
France? There was no reconciling such a contradiction
six years later during the Suez Crisis of
1956. In strengthening US economic power in
the region through the oil giants, its disinterested
friendship had in any case carried little conviction.
America’s opposition to social revolution – any
form of socialism being regarded as little different
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 opposition
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 themselves
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 reasonably
secured. But the Middle East in the aftermath
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 publicly
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 contention.
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 government
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 attempting
to ride two horses at once.
The Anglo-American Middle Eastern peace
project was a secret effort known by the codename
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 discussing
the possibility of peace with Israel. This
gave some hope for Alpha, had it not been for
the militant Palestinians. The Palestinian guerrillas,
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 Palestinian
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
1954. Why then did the Palestinians continue
their attacks? Their leader, Yasser Arafat, calculated
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 confront
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.
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 determined
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 arrangement.
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 cooperation
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
West. Britain’s and America’s withdrawal was formally
announced by Dulles on 19 July 1956.
That Congress would vote the necessary money
to part-finance Nasser’s dam with the World Bank
was by now inconceivable. But the abrupt manner
of the announcement unnecessarily and probably
unintentionally increased the snub to Nasser, who
could not meekly accept such a setback. His next
move should not have come as such a surprise.
On 26 July, in a dramatic speech in Alexandria,
Nasser declared that Egypt had nationalised the
Suez Canal Company, thus ending Western
control twelve years ahead of the expiry date of
the Suez concession. Overnight he became the
hero of the Arab world. He was not acting unlawfully,
however, as he offered to compensate the
Company’s shareholders. Nasser had turned the
tables on Britain and the US. At first this was
not appreciated. With what was still a common
Western arrogance, it was widely believed that the
Egyptians would not be able to manage the Canal
once the European pilots and technicians were
withdrawn. It came as a shock therefore when the
Egyptians, with help from Eastern communist
friends, demonstrated that ships would continue
to pass through the Canal without difficulty.
For Eden, Nasser’s behaviour, little more than a
month after the last British troops had left the
Canal in compliance with the 1954 Treaty, was
a personal humiliation that exposed him to a
renewed attack from the Conservative right.
Moreover, with two-thirds of Western Europe’s
oil passing through the Canal, Eden believed that
Nasser’s control of it would give him a stranglehold
on the economies of Britain and Western
Europe, or as Eden graphically put it, the
Egyptian dictator ‘would have his hands on our
windpipe’. If Nasser was allowed to get away with
it, Eden concluded, there would be no stopping
him from trampling over other British interests.
Personal anguish, an exaggeration of the threat to
Britain, and ill health all combined to drive Eden
forward (albeit with Cabinet support) into an illconsidered
international adventure.
The decision in London to prepare a military
option had been taken by the British Cabinet on
27 July, a day after Nasser’s speech nationalising
the Suez Canal. There was agreement that, if all
else failed, Egypt would be attacked and forced to
accept an international agreement ensuring free
passage of the Suez Canal not merely until the
Suez Canal Company’s concession ran out in
November 1968, but in perpetuity. The Egyptians,
it was assumed, were not capable of managing
and running the Canal by themselves or of
assuring that international agreements would be
observed. The Cabinet accordingly instructed the
British chiefs of staff to prepare a war plan. As yet,
no real thought was given to coordinating military
and diplomatic moves with France. That came
later in mid-August. As for Israel, Eden insisted
that it be kept out of the conflict so that Britain’s
Arab friends would not be antagonised. An inner
Cabinet committee of six, including the chancellor
of the exchequer Harold Macmillan, was
set up to manage the crisis. The US at this stage
in late July was kept in touch. Eden cabled to
President Eisenhower that Britain could not
afford to let Nasser win. There was, he stressed, a
need for a firm stand by all maritime countries
because, if Nasser were not stopped, ‘our influence
throughout the Middle East will, we are convinced,
be finally destroyed’. In the last resort
Britain would use force, and he added, ‘I have this
morning instructed our Chiefs of Staff to prepare
a military plan accordingly.’ He asked for an
American representative to come to London to
help coordinate policy. While Eden expected to be
working with the Americans, the French, who
were even more determined to topple Nasser than
the British, offered to place their forces under a
British commander. Not only was the nationalisation
of the predominantly French-owned Suez
Canal Company an affront to France’s international
standing, but Nasser as the champion and
hero of the Arab world was undermining the
French hold over Algeria. Nasser’s open support
for the Front de Libération Nationale with propaganda
and arms was rated so serious in its effect
that it could swing the balance against France in
the Algerian struggle. The French worked hard to
forge a military alliance with Britain, but feared
that Eden might in the end continue to work with
Dulles and adopt the American policy of seeking a
negotiated settlement.
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 involvement
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 mistaken
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 diplomatic
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 victim
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 withdraw
from the Suez Canal and occupying it if
either the Israelis or the Egyptians rejected the
demand? Given its fears of Egyptian rearmament,
Israel might well make a pre-emptive attack on
Egypt, and in that event the British and French
could justify military intervention to keep the
combatants apart and at a distance from the
Canal.
An Israeli delegation led by the redoubtable
Golda Meir arrived in Paris and went into secret
talks on 30 September and 1 October. Mollet and
Pineau outlined their scheme. For the Israelis a
war with Egypt might determine their country’s
future existence, yet relations with Britain after the
Israeli raids into Jordan had sunk to a new low.
Indeed, since the days of the Mandate, Britain had
not been held in high esteem in Israel nor
regarded as trustworthy. What if Jordan joined in
on the Egyptian–Israeli war? Golda Meir wanted
to know on whose side Britain would then fight.
Pineau did his best to persuade the Israelis that
Britain’s priority would be the defeat of Egypt but
he went on to explain that the British government
needed a pretext to attack Egypt.
The first two weeks of October were decisive.
At the beginning of the month Eden was still
undecided, the chancellor of the exchequer
Harold Macmillan was a hawk and the foreign
secretary Selwyn Lloyd a dove. Under the aegis
of the United Nations, Selwyn Lloyd was in New
York trying to negotiate a settlement of the Canal
problem directly with Mahmoud Fawzi, the
Egyptian foreign minister. Pineau, the French
foreign minister, who was also involved, was far
less keen on a peaceful outcome. On 12 October
they finally reached an agreement based on ‘six
principles’, and the UN Security Council
endorsed them. Eden cabled Selwyn Lloyd at
lunchtime on 14 October that he was ready to
negotiate further with the Egyptians and those
members of the Security Council anxious to see
the issue peacefully resolved.
The possibility of joint Anglo-French military
action seemed to have receded, though to maintain
pressure on Egypt Eden reserved Britain’s
rights to use force if the Egyptians did not accept
a satisfactory settlement. But later that afternoon
Eden received two envoys from Paris. The French
prime minister wanted to know what Britain
would do if Israel attacked Egypt. The Tripartite
Declaration of 1950 had promised US, British
and French help to the victim of aggression,
though the French pointed out that Nasser had
recently repudiated its application to Egypt. The
French then revealed the plan they had discussed
with the Israelis on 30 September and 1 October:
Israel would attack Egypt and, on the pretext
of separating the combatants and safeguarding
the Canal, a French and British force would
invade Egypt and occupy the Canal Zone. Eden
promised to reply by 16 October but was clearly
attracted to the scheme.
Eden saw the French proposal as a possible
escape from mounting difficulties. War was
drawing closer in the Middle East and Britain
would not be able to keep out of it. Jordan was
in crisis. On 10 October, that is four days before
these crucial Anglo-French conversations in
London, in a massive reprisal raid on Qalquilya,
which marked the climax of Israeli–Jordanian
clashes, over seventy Jordanians were killed. The
Israelis were trying to foil an agreement between
Iraq and Jordan, backed by Britain, to bring Iraqi
troops to the help of the Jordanians. Where did
Britain stand? Its credibility in the Arab Middle
East and its strengthening of the Baghdad Pact
now depended on it honouring the defensive
alliance concluded with Jordan. Thus Britain
looked like being dragged in against Israel and on
the side of the Arab states if war broke out
between Israel on the one hand and Jordan and
Egypt on the other. This involvement in the
general Arab enmity towards Israel now cut right
across Britain’s own conflict with Egypt. France,
moreover was backing Israel. No wonder Selwyn
Lloyd thought that any outbreak of war would be
a disaster for Britain.
While French and Israeli military staffs worked
on plans to attack Egypt, Eden now made up his
mind that the best way out was to accept the
French plan of Anglo-French military action in
collusion with Israel. As part of this plan he could
ensure that Israel would not attack Jordan, and
so save Britain from the dilemma of defending it.
Time was now running out: military plans could
not be for ever revised and postponed without
demoralising British forces being readied for the
attack. On 16 October Eden and Lloyd returned
to Paris to consult further with Mollet and
Pineau. The ‘contingency’ of an Israeli attack
towards the Canal was discussed, as was the proposed
response of an Anglo-French ultimatum
requiring both sides to withdraw from the Canal.
This would then be followed by an Anglo-French
invasion of the Canal Zone, as the Egyptians were
bound to reject the ultimatum. Eden fell in with
this deception and, after the return of the prime
minister and the foreign secretary to London, the
Cabinet endorsed it too.
Events now moved swiftly to their climax. As
the Israelis were assigned the role of starting the
war, they would need to be certain of the support
of the British and French. A general understanding
was not enough – there had to be a precise
timetable too. It was one thing for Eden and
Lloyd to say what Britain would do if, supposedly
regrettably, the Israelis attacked Egypt and threatened
the Canal. It was quite another to encourage
and pre-plan with Israel an attack on Egypt
to be followed by Anglo-French intervention.
Israel’s war objective was not the Suez Canal in
any case, but the breaking of a naval blockade of
the Tiran Straits dominated at its mouth by the
Egyptian batteries at Sharm al-Sheikh. The military
sideshow towards the Canal was intended
only to provide Britain and France with the
pretext they needed to join Israel in defeating
Nasser. The Israelis would open hostilities as part
of the general plan only if they secured watertight
guarantees from the British. Prime Minister Ben
Gurion, accompanied by General Dayan, flew to
Paris at the invitation of the French to confer with
them and the British. The crucial secret discussions
were held in a villa in the suburb of Sèvres.
Mollet and Pineau and the Israelis were joined
on 22 October 1956 by the foreign secretary,
Selwyn Lloyd, who was uneasy about the whole
scheme. On Eden’s instructions the discussions
were to be so secret that no official record was
to be made of them. The Israelis nevertheless
made notes. Selwyn Lloyd confirmed that if the
Israelis decided to attack Egypt Britain and
France would intervene to safeguard the Suez
Canal. A timetable was discussed. The Israeli
attack was to begin on 29 October. The Israelis
had been promised the support of French pilots,
planes and warships. At Sèvres there was discussion
about how long after an Anglo-French ultimatum
the bombing of Egyptian airfields would
begin. Nothing had been definitely decided when
Lloyd left to consult Eden and the Cabinet.
In fact the meeting had not gone well. Ben
Gurion’s mistrust of the British in general and
Selwyn Lloyd and Eden in particular had not been
lessened by the encounter. In London the following
day, 23 October, the Cabinet received a
report from Selwyn Lloyd about the secret Paris
meeting which indicated that the Israelis would
not launch a war on their own. One implication,
therefore, was that Israel would start a war allowing
Britain and France to intervene only if a prior
agreement with Britain and France had been
reached. The Cabinet met again on 24 October.
From a confusing discussion it was not evident to
them that an agreement with Israel actually to
launch a war was being contemplated. That same
day, Foreign Office official Sir Patrick Dean was
sent back to Paris after being instructed by Eden.
He was authorised to reach an agreement with
the Israelis on the military timetable.
The Paris discussions ended with a three-page
typed statement in French embodying ‘the results
of the conversations which took place at Sèvres
from 22–24 October 1956 between the representatives
of the governments of the United
Kingdom, of the State of Israel and of France’.
The much debated agreement, which still has not
been officially published, provided, first, that the
Israelis would launch a large-scale attack on
Egyptian forces on 29 October and would thrust
towards the Canal Zone on the 30th; second, that
on the 30th Britain and France would ‘appeal’ to
the Egyptian and Israeli governments to halt acts
of war, withdraw troops ten miles from the Canal
(this left the Israelis in Egyptian territory) and
accept the temporary occupation of key positions
on the Canal by Anglo-French forces until a final
settlement guaranteeing free passage to all nations
could be reached. If Egypt or Israel did not agree
within twelve hours, Anglo-French forces would
intervene. Third, if the Egyptians did not agree,
Britain and France would launch military operations
on 31 October; there was a provision that
the Israeli forces would occupy the Egyptian
western shore of the Gulf of Aqaba. Fourth, Israel
undertook not to attack Jordan unless Jordan
attacked it; in that event the British would not
come to the aid of Jordan. An article was added
which stipulated that the agreement would be
kept strictly secret. Finally, it was stated that the
agreement would enter into force after the concurrence
of the three governments.
On 26 October the Israelis received France’s
assurance in a letter from the prime minister.
Britain’s agreement was circuitous; it took the
form of a letter to Mollet from Eden noting the
conversations at Sèvres and confirming ‘that in
the situation there envisaged they [Britain] will
take the action described’. Why such circumlocution?
It was an attempt by Eden to lay the basis
for a denial that there had been any secret treaty
between the three countries to attack Egypt –
Eden believed it could be presented merely as a
contingency plan, setting down what Britain
would do in certain circumstances. He would
claim that he could not be certain the circumstances
would arise. The difference unfortunately
was rather less than paper-thin. Eden had all
along wanted to avoid a treaty, any written and
signed agreement. But the hapless Dean, not
knowing this, had added his signature to Pineau’s
and Ben Gurion’s copies and taken his copy back
to London. Eden was upset when he learnt that
there was now a written record. Of course, if it
had all been entirely above board he would not
have minded. Dean was sent back to Paris to
retrieve all the copies so that they could be
destroyed. He did not succeed. Ben Gurion, ever
suspicious of the British, had carefully folded the
document in his pocket and returned with it to
Israel. Neither he nor Pineau would now give up
their copies. The British request added a touch of
humiliation to the subterfuges adopted to cover
up the secret arrangements. The way was now
clear for the military plans to go ahead.
If the collusion with Israel was not to be
obvious, the Anglo-French invasion of the Canal
Zone could only take place for logistical reasons
six days after the Israelis began the campaign. The
troops that would have to be conveyed to Port
Said were assembled in Malta and Cyprus; it was
expected to take eight days from the start of
Israel’s attack to ferry them to Egypt. Nor could
the parachute brigade stationed in Cyprus be
dropped immediately without land support, so
they too would have to wait. But it was part of
the secret tripartite agreement that Egyptian airfields
would be bombed at dawn on 31 October,
some thirty-six hours after the Israeli attack, so as
to put the Soviet-supplied Egyptian bombers out
of action. The French had also secretly agreed to
station their fighters in Israel to protect its cities.
The final preparations were made with the
Americans still being kept in the dark. The
Hungarian rising was occupying the headlines of
the world press. The presidential elections too
were rapidly approaching, with voting on 6
November. A few ships were authorised to leave
Valletta Harbour in Malta on Sunday night, 28
October, and the aircraft-carriers on the morning
of the 29th, that is before the Israeli attack that
same afternoon. All that weekend preparations
had been actively under way in Malta and Cyprus.
The Anglo-French and Israeli troop movements
alerted Dulles and Eisenhower in Washington.
But from London to Washington there was a
freeze on all communication about the impending
Suez war. The majority of government ministers
in London too were not fully briefed. The
same was true of British ambassadors abroad, so
great was the secrecy insisted upon by Eden.
At 5 p.m. on 29 October the Israelis began
their attack as arranged. Their prime object was
to reach the tip of the Sinai Peninsula, where the
batteries at Sharm al-Sheikh were closing the
Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. The batteries
were taken on 5 November. A diversionary thrust
towards the Canal also began on 29 October and
was completed by 2 November, with Israeli parachutists,
after suffering severe casualties, capturing
the Mitla Pass some forty miles from the
Canal. On 30 October Britain and France sent
their ultimatum to Egypt and Israel to withdraw
ten miles from the Canal, according to the Sèvres
scheme. Egypt was given just twelve hours to
reply.
In Washington the response was anger, heightened
by the fact that the British–French–Israeli
defiance of international law was distracting attention
from the brutal Soviet repression of
Hungary. Eisenhower made it clear that the US
would not back France and Britain. At home
Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the Labour Party,
warned Eden on 31 October that his party would
not support the government in warlike actions
against Egypt. Gaitskell received no answer when
he demanded to know if Britain was at war. By
the morning of the 31st, the ultimatum had
expired but no shot had been fired by Britain or
France. The Security Council was in session in
New York that day. In Cairo, Nasser had not panicked,
but was getting ready to defend Egypt
from the threatened Anglo-French assault. The
British ambassador was still unmolested, occupying
the Embassy in Cairo; to preserve secrecy he
had not been recalled; nor were the British and
French civilian employees of the Suez Canal
Company evacuated in time – this put many civilian
lives at risk. Then during the evening of 31
October RAF Canberras and Valiants started
bombing Egyptian airfields. The Egyptian air
force was grounded throughout the Suez War,
thus removing Israel’s principal concern.
The attack on Egypt in breach of the UN
Charter deeply divided the British people. In the
House of Commons the Conservative majority
ensured the defeat of a motion of censure tabled
by the Labour Party, and much popular opinion
welcomed Britain’s standing up to Nasser,
though the more thoughtful condemned the
aggression. But there was no doubt where the US
stood. Dulles nevertheless attempted to help
Britain by delaying United Nations action. France
and Britain were able, by using their veto power,
to stymie the Security Council, but they could
not prevent the General Assembly from acting
under the United for Peace Resolution invoked
six years earlier when the Korean War broke out.
Even so, the interval between the air attack on
Egypt on 31 October and the actual main landings
of troops brought by sea was too long. On
3 November, unhappily for Britain, Dulles – who
was trying to limit the damage – entered hospital
for a cancer operation that put him out of action.
On 4 November the General Assembly called on
the secretary-general to arrange a ceasefire.
The pressure on the three belligerents was now
considerable. The Israelis promised to comply if
the Egyptians also agreed to a ceasefire. Nasser,
though, was naturally not intimidated, given the
worldwide condemnation of Britain and France.
He was ready to carry on a guerrilla struggle if
Britain and France occupied the Canal Zone.
Meanwhile differences were also opening up
between Britain and France on how best to carry
on military operations. After the UN ceasefire resolution,
Eden was determined that the invasion
should take place even though he had accepted
‘in principle’ a UN peacekeeping force to take
over from the British and French. The creation of
a peacekeeping force was approved by the UN on
4 November; a day later French and British paratroops
landed in the Canal Zone. The main
landing from the sea followed on the 6th. The
Anglo-French troops needed only three more
days to advance south from Port Said and to complete
the occupation of the Canal Zone. But
politically time had run out.
The Soviet Union issued nuclear threats while
engaged in bloody repression of the Hungarian
rising. But US pressure on Israel, plus the capture
of Sharm al-Sheikh, decided the Israelis to stop
fighting. How could Britain and France now
credibly continue, given that they had claimed
that the purpose of the military action was to keep
Egypt and Israel apart? The French were ready to
defy the UN for a little longer, but Eden saw
no alternative to accepting the ceasefire on 6
November. Harold Macmillan, the chancellor of
the exchequer, forecast a financial catastrophe as
foreigners were depleting their sterling holdings
and the US was refusing to help. There would
anyway be the additional costs of bringing in oil
now that the Egyptians had blocked the Canal by
scuttling fifty ships.
What had been achieved? Eden’s reputation for
statesmanship had been tarnished just as ill health
forced him to rest. He left for Jamaica on 23
November, but it was the prelude to his retirement
in January 1957, a sad end to a long and
distinguished career. UN troops began arriving in
Port Said in late November 1956. Anglo-
American relations reached their lowest ebb that
autumn with the re-elected Eisenhower administration
refusing either to ship oil from the Gulf
of Mexico or to help stem the flight from the
pound. Without dollar support Britain could not
afford to pay for the oil from the Western hemisphere.
But relations improved the moment the
Anglo-French troops handed over to the UN
peacekeeping force; the British and French finally
left two days before Christmas. The French prime
minister was then welcomed in Washington;
ironically, it was Macmillan, originally a strong
proponent of the Suez adventure, who succeeded
Eden in January 1957 and was received by
Eisenhower and Dulles the following March in
Bermuda. The alliance was restored. On 24 April
of that year the Egyptian Canal Authority opened
the Canal to traffic again. Nasser had not fallen.
The Zone and the Canal were the property of
Egypt. The Americans, pronouncing the Eisenhower
Doctrine in January 1957, attempted to fill
the void left by the defeat of Britain and France
in the Middle East.
The conflicts of Suez were just a part of the
continuing Middle Eastern crisis which the West
failed to solve then or later. When it came to
armed conflict, in 1947, neither Britain nor the
US had been prepared to jeopardise its relations
with the oil-rich Middle East to ensure an independent
Israel in Palestine. The Israelis had to
achieve this by their own fortitude. The Tripartite
Declaration of 1950 might then have served as a
basis for a great-power imposition of peace, but
the Cold War, the rise of Nasser and his challenge
eventually to Israel, France and Britain sowed
divisions in the West and shifted Britain, France
and the US away from the role of impartial peacekeepers.
The Soviet Union took advantage of this
to fuel Egyptian–Israeli tensions by its large arms
deliveries to Nasser. The Anglo-French attack on
Egypt in collusion with Israel appeared to serve
the interests of all three nations threatened by
Nasser’s ambitions.
Eden only entered late, in mid-October 1956,
into the plan. He knew that the US did not
believe during the summer and early autumn that
diplomacy had been exhausted. It seemed, according
to Washington’s perceptions, that Egypt
was showing readiness to compromise in order to
reach a settlement over the Canal. The French
from the start were far more ready to act independently;
it was they who persuaded Eden to
join in the Sèvres scenario and to work behind
America’s back. Eden and Mollet mistakenly
believed that Eisenhower, faced with presidential
elections on 6 November 1956, would not be
able to act against Israel, Britain and France if
they attacked Egypt before then. Finally, the condition
the Israelis made that they would launch
an attack on the Egyptians, which was to provide
the pretext of French and British intervention,
only if the British and French neutralised the
Egyptian air force by bombing their airbases
within thirty-six hours of the Israeli attack was
bound to reveal the collusion. In a vain attempt
to preserve the fiction of the impartial policemen,
the main combat forces were obviously not supposed
to sail from their base in Malta until after
the start of hostilities between Israel and Egypt.
(They actually left a little earlier.) It was thought
that they would need at least eight days, though
they actually made it in six, reaching Port Said on
6 November. That had left a week for the international
community at the UN to intervene. Had
France and Britain been less concerned to maintain
the fiction of not colluding with Israel they
could have landed earlier and faced the US and
the UN with a fait accompli and occupied the
Canal Zone; they could even have dispensed with
Israeli cooperation altogether. But even a successful
occupation of the Canal Zone would not
have been the end of the affair. In the last resort
it was not really a question of timing. It was not
the Americans who doomed Suez to disaster. The
most powerful Western nations could no longer
simply impose their will on the whole region
without unacceptable costs to themselves.
World History
