The Suez War : Introduction To The Region

Egypt, weakened by struggles between Wafdist nationalists and the monarchy, was in a shambles after its 1948 loss to Israel. In 1952, following a bloody confrontation between British soldiers and Egyptian police officers, a group of young army officers led by the charismatic Col. Gamal Abd an-Nasser bloodlessly seized power from the late King Fouad’s corrupt son, Farouk. Calling themselves the “Free Officers,” Nasser’s cabinet instituted major economic reforms and foreign policy changes, siding with the Non-Aligned Movement in the Cold War. Drawing from the writings of countless Arab nationalists, Nasser espoused a highly emotional brand of pan-Ara-bism hoping to unify the Arabic-speaking masses under one state powerful enough to resist imperial encroachments and to reconquer Palestine. When Nasser forced Britain to withdraw in 1954, many of the conservative Arab leaders dependent on foreign assistance became alarmed by Nasser’s growing popularity.

The United States and other foreign powers, which had undertaken extensive development of the oil fields of Arabia, feared that their arrangements with local monarchs would collapse if Nasserism spread. Nasser, alarmed by a British-led alignment of conservative Mideast states (the Baghdad Pact), had begun buying Soviet arms via Czechoslovakia in defiance of a 1950 Western-sponsored arms control deal. In 1956, the United States clumsily attempted to end Nasser’s adventurism by withdrawing an offer to finance the Aswan High Dam. Rather than yield to the snub, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal to use its revenues for the dam.

Israel, angry with Nasser’s recent blockade of Israeli shipping through the Gulf of I Aqaba, annoyed by Egyptian sponsorship of Palestinian guerilla raids, and fearful of I Nasser’s growing military power, joined Britain and France in a scheme to retake the canal. Israel was to attack Egypt with the logistical support of the French, to be fol- ( lowed by a French-English “peace-keeping” force. Initially, the conspiratorial plan ; worked well: Israel conquered the Sinai and dealt Nasser’s military a major setback. An Anglo-French force subsequently entered Egypt and began the seizure of the canal under the dubious pretext of separating Egyptian and Israeli combatants. But Britain. France and Israel had not considered world reaction to their adventure. The United States and the Soviet Union, both furious, applied intense diplomatic pressure. When Israel, Britain, and France withdrew their troops to placate the U.S., Nasser was heralded as the savior of the Arab world without winning a battle.

Syria, racked with internal feuding, joined with Egypt in 1958 to form the United Arab Republic (UAR). Although Nasser trumpeted the creation of the UAR as a triumph of pan-Arabism, the Syrians were irritated by its unwieldy and Egypt-dominated government. But even after the 1961 secession of Syria from the UAR, Nasser remained at the forefront of Arab politics. In 1964, he hosted two Arab summits and created the Egypt-based Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), keeping the Palestinian movement under Cairo’s suspicious eye. A more radical group, Al-Fatah, led by a fiery young Palestinian nationalist, Yasir Arafat, operated under Syrian tutelage.