219 Crisis Points of the Cold War
32.5: Crisis Points of the Cold War
32.5.1: The 1956 Suez Crisis
The Suez Crisis was a mostly failed invasion of Egypt in late 1956 by Israel followed by the United Kingdom and France. The aims were to regain Western control of the Suez Canal and remove Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser from power.
Learning Objective
Explain the events of the 1956 Suez Crisis
Key Points
- The Middle East, directly south of the Soviet Union, was an area of extreme importance and also great instability during the Cold War.
- The Suez Crisis was an invasion of Egypt in late 1956 by Israel followed by the United Kingdom and France. The aims were to regain Western control of the Suez Canal and remove Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser from power.
- The invasion was poorly planned and Eisenhower persuaded the United Kingdom and France to retreat, which was an international embarrassment for the latter countries and emboldened the USSR and Egypt.
- As a result of the conflict, the United Nations created the UNEF Peacekeepers to police the Egyptian–Israeli border, and British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned.
- The Suez stalemate was a turning point heralding an ever-growing rift between the Atlantic Cold War allies, who were becoming far less of a united monolith than in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.
Key Terms
- Gamal Abdel Nasser
- The second President of Egypt, serving from 1956 until his death, who led the 1952 overthrow of the monarchy and introduced far-reaching land reforms the following year.
- Suez Canal
- An artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez, which offers watercraft a shorter journey between the North Atlantic and northern Indian oceans via the Mediterranean and Red seas by avoiding the South Atlantic and southern Indian oceans, reducing the journey by approximately 4,300 miles.
Overview
The Suez Crisis, also named the Tripartite Aggression and the Kadesh Operation, was an invasion of Egypt in late 1956 by Israel, followed by the United Kingdom and France. The aims were to regain Western control of the Suez Canal and remove Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser from power. After the fighting started, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Nations forced the three invaders to withdraw. The episode humiliated Great Britain and France and strengthened Nasser.
On October 29, Israel invaded the Egyptian Sinai. Britain and France issued a joint ultimatum to cease fire, which was ignored. On November 5, Britain and France landed paratroopers along the Suez Canal. The Egyptian forces were defeated, but did block the canal to all shipping. It became clear that the Israeli invasion and the subsequent Anglo-French attack were planned beforehand by the three countries.
The three allies attained a number of their military objectives, but the Canal was now useless and heavy pressure from the United States and the USSR f