Suez 1956 and the Arab Nationalist Surge

From the Free Officers to Nasser’s Egypt

In July 1952 a group of young army officers, calling themselves the Free Officers, overthrew King Farouk of Egypt. Farouk had been discredited by Egypt’s defeat in the 1948–49 war with Israel, by corruption at court, and by the continued British military presence at the Suez Canal Zone. Within two years one of the conspirators, Gamal Abdel Nasser, had pushed his fellow officers aside and emerged as Egypt’s undisputed ruler. By 1956 Nasser was using the radio station Voice of the Arabs to broadcast a vision of pan-Arabism to households from Casablanca to Baghdad: one Arab nation, free of British and French control, hostile to Israel and aligned with neither superpower bloc.

The Czech Arms Deal, September 1955

Nasser’s first major Cold War move grew out of the Israeli reprisal raid on Gaza in February 1955, which had killed 38 Egyptian soldiers. Refused modern Western weapons by the United States and Britain (who feared upsetting Israel), Nasser turned to the Soviet bloc. In September 1955 he announced an arms purchase from Czechoslovakia: hundreds of tanks, jet fighters and bombers, paid for in cotton. The deal broke the Western monopoly on supplying weapons to the Middle East and brought Soviet equipment into Egyptian hands for the first time. The Eisenhower administration was alarmed and, in retaliation, withdrew its offer to fund the Aswan High Dam in July 1956. Nasser responded a week later.

Nationalisation of the Suez Canal, 26 July 1956

In a speech in Alexandria, Nasser announced that Egypt was nationalising the Suez Canal Company — the Anglo-French firm that had run the canal since 1869. Tolls would now go to Egypt and would, he said, fund the Aswan Dam. The Canal carried roughly two thirds of Western Europe’s oil and was widely treated as a strategic British and French asset; nationalisation was therefore experienced in London and Paris as both an economic and a colonial humiliation. Prime Minister Anthony Eden compared Nasser to Hitler in private; the French government wanted Nasser removed both for Suez and for his support of the Algerian rebels then fighting France.

The Sèvres Protocol

Through the autumn of 1956, Britain, France and Israel held secret talks at Sèvres outside Paris. The resulting Sèvres Protocol set out a deception: Israel would invade Sinai; Britain and France would issue an ultimatum demanding both sides withdraw ten miles from the Canal; Egypt would refuse; Britain and France would ‘intervene to protect international shipping’ and seize the Canal Zone. Israel had its own reasons — ending fedayeen raids from Gaza, reopening the Straits of Tiran for shipping to Eilat and degrading Nasser’s new Soviet weapons before they were absorbed.

War, 29 October – 7 November 1956

Israeli paratroopers dropped into the Mitla Pass on 29 October. The IDF advanced quickly through Sinai. The Anglo-French ultimatum was issued and rejected as planned, and on 5–6 November British and French paratroopers and marines landed at Port Said. Militarily the operation succeeded: the Canal Zone was within reach. Politically it collapsed. The United States, kept in the dark, was furious. President Eisenhower refused to support sterling on the foreign-exchange markets, ordering the IMF to block any British application for emergency loans; the Bank of England was within days of having to devalue. The Soviet Union threatened nuclear action against London and Paris (almost certainly a bluff, but a frightening one in 1956). Eden ordered a ceasefire on 7 November; British, French and Israeli forces withdrew from Egyptian territory by March 1957.

Outcomes: A Humiliation That Became a Victory

For Egypt, defeat on the battlefield turned into political triumph. Nasser kept the Canal, kept his army in place and was acclaimed across the Arab world as the man who had faced down two old colonial powers and survived. UNEF, the first UN peacekeeping force, was deployed along the Egypt-Israel border, freezing the Sinai front for a decade. For Britain and France the crisis confirmed that the era of independent Anglo-French military action east of Suez was over. Eden resigned in January 1957. For Israel the war was a tactical success but a strategic stalemate — Sinai was handed back, but the Straits of Tiran were now open and fedayeen raids subsided. For the United States, Eisenhower set a marker: Washington would oppose old-style colonial intervention in the Middle East, and would prefer to deal directly with Arab governments itself.

The United Arab Republic, 1958

Nasser’s prestige peaked in February 1958 when Syria, fearing a communist takeover at home, asked to merge with Egypt. The two countries formed the United Arab Republic (UAR), with Nasser as its president and Cairo as its capital. To pan-Arab opinion the UAR seemed to be the first step towards a single Arab state stretching from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf. The reality was more difficult. Egyptian officials ran the Syrian provinces; Syrian businessmen and army officers resented Cairo’s dominance; the union dissolved in September 1961 when Syrian officers staged a coup. The UAR collapsed but its symbolic effect endured — pan-Arabism had become the leading ideology of the region, and Nasser the leading Arab.