When Gamal Abdul Nasser seized and nationalized the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956, he was directly challenging the power of the United Kingdom and France. The Canal was owned by a joint British/French consortium, and it was also one of the last symbols of European colonial power in the Middle East. Nasser, who saw himself as the leader of Arab nations emerging from the yoke of Western imperialism, seized the canal in retaliation for the U.S. canceling a World Bank loan for the construction of a dam on the Nile. U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, an ardent Cold Warrior, canceled the loan after Nasser purchased arms from Czechoslovakia. Nasser planned to use the tolls from canal shipping to build his dam, but he also saw the seizure as a way to demonstrate to the Arab nations that they could challenge the West without fear of retaliation. That was his mistake, as neither the UK or France were willing to sit idly by while one of their principal sources of revenue dried up.
France saw Nasser as a major irritant, due to Nasser’s support of Algerian rebels who were waging a brutal rebellion against France in their prized colony, Algeria. The British also saw Nasser as a major irritant, as seizure of the canal was further proof that the days of the UK ruling the world were over. UK Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden also saw in Nasser the same demon he saw in Hitler in the 1930’s: a dictator, who if left unchallenged, would wage wars of aggression against his neighbors. When Eden was serving in the cabinet of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, he had resigned in protest of Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler. Now that he was prime minister of a greatly diminished UK, he felt he must do something to stop Nasser in order to prove that the UK was still a relevant power. The French agreed, but since both countries were members of the UN, launching a war against Egypt without UN authority was out of the question. Both French and UK leaders also knew that President Eisenhower would never authorize them to launch a war to retrieve ownership of the canal.
The wild card in the game was Israel. The Israelis also wanted to deal with Nasser, as he was directly funding terrorists in the Gaza strip (Gaza belonged to Egypt until the Six Day War of 1967, when Israel seized it), who would then launch raids into Israel. Nasser’s purchasing of arms from Czechoslovakia also threatened Israel’s security, since as night follows day, Czech arms would soon be followed by Soviet arms, arms which could be used in a future war agains Israel. Shortly after the seizure of the canal, the French foreign minister, Christian Pineau, contacted his Israeli counterpart to discuss a possible joint French/Israeli operation against Nasser. Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was in agreement with the plan, but he told the French that he didn’t want anything to do with the operation if the British were going to be involved. The Israeli leader, and most of his cabinet, distrusted the British, as they had spent the better part of their lives fighting against British forces when Palestine was a UK colony. The French were adamant that the British had to be involved, so it was decided that leaders of all three nations’ defense and foreign policy establishments would meet in October to discuss their differences and then to come up with a plan to deal with Nasser.
On 22 October, 1956, Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion, Director General of the Ministry of Defense Shimon Peres and Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces Moshe Dayan secretly travelled from Israel to an isolated house in Sèvres to meet the French Minister of Defence Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury, Minister of Foreign Affairs Christian Pineau and Chief of Staff of the French Armed Forces General Maurice Challe, and British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd. Together the men came up with the Protocol of Sevres. Israel would attack Egyptian forces in the Sinai on the pretext that Egypt was planning a major assault from Gaza into Israel. As Egypt and Israel battled, London and Paris would issue an ultimatum to both sides to stop fighting and withdraw 10km from either side of the canal. Israel would comply, Egypt would naturally refuse, giving the French and British the pretext they needed to invade Egypt to “protect the canal”. The protocol would lead to the Second Arab-Israeli War.
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