This was the background for French-British-Israeli collusion in October 1956 to attack Egypt with a variety of different aims for the different players. The British above all wanted to restore their control of the Suez Canal. And at the same time perhaps, in war against Egypt to depose Abdel Nasser. The French would've wanted to rid themselves of Abdel Nasser as well, but mainly to prevent Egypt from continuing its intervention in Algeria. And Israel wanted to secure the border of Israel with Egypt and the Gaza Strip by defeating the Egyptians militarily, and therefore adding to Israel's long-term security. And thus the forces came together for what was called the Sinai Campaign at the end of October in 1956. Israel launched a land operation in the Sinai Peninsula. And the French and the British launched an assault in the Canal Zone. But these two military operations were not conducted simultaneously. First it was Israelis who attacked in the Sinai Peninsula, and within four days they had occupied the entire area. The Anglo-French military campaign, which started a few days later, started late and turned into a political, military, diplomatic fiasco. By starting late [COUGH] they didn't catch anybody by surprise and they were faced immediately with US and Soviet condemnation, both powers which had severely condemned the Israelis for attacking Egypt. The US believe that the Israeli attack, and that by the French and the British a few days later, would only push the Egyptians and other Arabs more firmly into the camp of the Soviet Union. There was US and Soviet pressure on the British and the French and the Israelis to withdraw their forces immediately. The British and the French therefore never really reoccupied the Canal Zone. They had to end their operation before achieving their military objectives. And the US, most effective in its pressure, coerced the Israelis to withdraw from Sinai, which was in fact completed by March 1957. Israel withdrew however from the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for a US guarantee for the freedom of navigation in the Straits of Tiran, that is in the naval area leading to the port of Eilat. In another element of Israeli political gain from the Sinai campaign was the establishment of a UN emergency force along its border with Egypt to keep the peace between the two countries. For Britain and France the Suez fiasco was the end of an era. These two powers and their influence in the Middle East had come to a tragic end. As for Egypt, Nasser, though defeated militarily by Israel, had won politically, at least in the sense that he had defeated the British and the French military effort. He had remained in power, as opposed to the wishes of those who had attacked him. And Nasser emerged from the Suez campaign as the unquestioned, undeniable leader of the Arab world. There was widespread belief and popularity amongst the Arabs, generally speaking, not just in Egypt but in the Arab world as a whole, in what one could call the Nasserist formula. That is, this seemingly certain winner for the Arabs, Pan-Arabism, Arab unity, Arab socialism in terms of the structure of their economy, and reliance on the Soviet Union as the three components of the formulation of Arab power, prestige, and prosperity that would finally liberate the Arabs from imperialist influence and at the end, defeat Israel. Israel having cooperated in the Sinai-Suez War of 1956 with France and Britain only reinforced in the eyes of the Arabs its image as a tool of imperialism. That did not make peacemaking with the Arab states any easier. But Israel's victory did bring an end to the border problems that had existed between Israel and Egypt, and even between Israel and Jordan. Israel's victory seriously undermined for the first time the rather simplistic Arab thinking about a second round. Arab thinking about the conflict after Suez became much more complex. It was now firmly understood by Abdel Nasser and by other Arabs. But the struggle with Israel was not about a simple second round that will allow the Arabs to defeat Israel. This was going to be a struggle for generations. Israel militarily was a powerful country. Israel was here to stay, or so it seemed, and for the Arabs there was this recognition as a result that the struggle with Israel was a long term affair. After 1956-7, Israel had what one could call its ten good years until the war of 1967, when Israel, relatively speaking to other periods in its history, enjoyed relative quiet on its boundaries. After 1956 the boundaries had solidified, as had ideological positions. That is, the Arabs did not accept Israel's boundaries as final by no means. But, the boundaries for the most part were quiet. And what Nasser and the Arabs had understood from the war was that being a long term affair, a struggle with Israel for generations, required an entirely new strategic approach. If this was going to be a struggle for generations the Arabs could not afford to allow the Palestinian issue to be forgotten. If Israel was to last for decades until the Arabs could deal with it and emerge victorious the claim of the Palestinian people to the territory of Palestine had to be maintained. The Arabs could not allow the Palestinians to disappear and be absorbed into the overall entity of the Arab people.
