What was the Suez Crisis?
It was the 1956 attack on Egypt by Israel, Britain and France after President Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company. Under a plan secretly agreed at Sèvres, Israel invaded Sinai on 29 October, and Britain and France bombed Egypt and landed at Port Said. Pressure from the United States and the United Nations forced a ceasefire and the withdrawal of all three.1
The Suez Canal links the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. In 1956 a dispute over who should run it turned into a short war, fought by three states against Egypt and ended by pressure from the United States and the United Nations.2
Background: the canal and the dam
The Suez Canal Company, a British and French enterprise, had run the canal since it was built in 1869. By 1956 France held the majority stake and British banks and companies about 40 percent. In mid-July 1956 the United States and Britain withdrew their promised funding for the Aswan High Dam, Egypt's great development project. On 26 July President Gamal Abdel Nasser answered by nationalizing the canal company, offering compensation to its shareholders.3
Britain and France were outraged. France also resented Egypt's support for the rebels in Algeria. Israel had its own grievances: Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, fedayeen raiders struck Israel from the Gaza Strip, and in 1955 Nasser had signed an arms deal with Czechoslovakia backed by the Soviet Union. An American plan for an international users' association to run the canal won no real support.4
Sèvres: the secret plan
From 22 to 24 October 1956 Israeli, French and British representatives met in secret at Sèvres, near Paris. David Ben-Gurion came with Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres; the French side included Prime Minister Guy Mollet and Foreign Minister Christian Pineau; Britain was represented first by Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd and then by the senior diplomat Patrick Dean. On 24 October Ben-Gurion, Pineau and Dean signed a document setting out the plan.5
Israel would invade Sinai on 29 October. Britain and France would then call on both sides to withdraw ten miles from the canal and accept a temporary Anglo-French occupation, and if Egypt refused they would attack early on 31 October. Pineau later called the paper a protocol; Lloyd insisted it was only a record of discussion and denied any collusion.6
29 October: Israel strikes in Sinai
Israel called its campaign Operation Kadesh. Its aims were to threaten the canal, to open the Straits of Tiran and to destroy the Egyptian forces in northern Sinai. On the evening of 29 October a paratroop battalion under Raphael Eitan dropped near the Mitla Pass, deep in Sinai. Israeli columns advanced along three axes across the peninsula, and another force drove south toward Sharm el-Sheikh. Within days they were within ten miles of the canal.7
As planned, Britain and France called on Israel and Egypt to pull back ten miles from the canal. Nasser rejected the demand.8
31 October to 6 November: bombing and landings
On 31 October British and French aircraft began attacking Egyptian airfields. According to the bpb, Germany's Federal Agency for Civic Education, Egypt's air force was almost entirely destroyed within two days. On 5 November Anglo-French paratroopers landed at Port Said, Port Fuad and Gamil airfield, and on 6 November seaborne troops came ashore at the northern end of the canal and took Port Said.9
By then the political ground had gone from under the invaders. The United Nations General Assembly met in its first emergency special session from 1 November, and early on 2 November it called for an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of forces. On 5 November the Soviet government threatened to use force against the aggressors. The United States, which had condemned the Soviet invasion of Hungary that same week, refused to be tied to European colonialism and pressed Britain and France hard. A ceasefire was agreed on 6 November; the UN dates its coming into force to midnight GMT on 7 to 8 November.10
The UN steps in
The UN credits its first peacekeeping force mainly to the vision of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and the Canadian foreign minister, Lester Pearson. On 5 November the General Assembly set up a UN Command under the Canadian general E. L. M. Burns. Egypt agreed on 14 November, and the first contingents of the United Nations Emergency Force arrived on 15 and 16 November. It was the first UN peacekeeping force of its kind.11
The UN dates the end of the Anglo-French withdrawal to 22 December 1956, when UNEF took over the Port Said area; other accounts give 23 December. Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip on 6 and 7 March 1957 and from Sharm el-Sheikh by 8 to 12 March.12
Casualties
The sources used for this page do not give casualty totals, and the published estimates for the war vary widely, especially for Egyptian soldiers and civilians. This page therefore does not quote a figure.
Why Suez mattered
Militarily the invasion had gone well; politically it was a disaster for Britain and France. American censure strained relations with London and Paris and helped bring about the resignation of the British prime minister, Anthony Eden, in January 1957. In the same year the Eisenhower Doctrine gave Washington more power to aid Middle Eastern states. Egypt kept the canal and ran it successfully, against the forecasts of its former owners. Israel had to give back Sinai and Gaza, and relations between Britain and France on one side and the United States and the UN on the other stayed strained for some time.13
