The Suez Crisis

JUL 26 1956 · 12:00

Crowds in Alexandria as President Gamal Abdel Nasser announces the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company, 26 July 1956. Place: Cairo, the Sinai, Port Said; emergency at the UN in New York; reckonings in London and Paris Figures: Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt · Anthony Eden, British Prime Minister · Guy Mollet, French Prime Minister · David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel · Dwight D. Eisenhower, US President · Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet First Secretary · Lester B. Pearson, Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs (who proposes the UN Emergency Force) Nationalization and Sèvres Nasser announces the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company on 26 July 1956 in a speech at Alexandria, citing the World Bank and Anglo-American withdrawal of finance for the Aswan High Dam the previous week. The Canal Company is a private concession dating to 1858, jointly held by British and French interests; the canal itself runs through Egyptian territory. Nasser offers full compensation at the closing share price. The act is legally defensible and politically intolerable to London and Paris. Through August and September, Britain and France pursue diplomatic options at the UN that they expect will fail. On 22–24 October at Sèvres outside Paris, British, French, and Israeli delegations agree a secret protocol: Israel will invade Sinai; Britain and France will issue an ultimatum demanding both sides withdraw from the Canal; Egypt will refuse; Britain and France will then occupy the Canal Zone as peacekeepers. The Israeli invasion begins on 29 October, the ultimatum on 30 October, the Anglo-French air campaign on 31 October, paratroop landings at Port Said on 5 November. By 6 November the canal is in coalition hands. Washington and Moscow Say No Eisenhower, six days from a presidential election he wins on 6 November, refuses to support the operation. The United States sponsors UN General Assembly resolutions demanding a ceasefire under the Uniting for Peace procedure (which bypasses the Security Council, where Britain and France hold vetoes). More damagingly, the US Treasury declines to support sterling in the foreign-exchange markets and indicates that any IMF assistance to Britain will be conditional on withdrawal. The pound loses 15 percent of its reserves in the first week of November. Khrushchev simultaneously threatens nuclear strikes on London and Paris. Eden accepts the ceasefire on 6 November; British and French forces withdraw by 22 December; Israeli forces by March 1957. The Crisis ends the postwar pretense that Britain and France remain autonomous Great Powers within the Westphalian system. Eden resigns in January 1957; the Fourth French Republic does not survive the next North African crisis, the Algerian, and falls to de Gaulle in 1958. Pearson's UN Emergency Force, deployed to Sinai under the General Assembly's authority, becomes the template for UN peacekeeping. The first UN-flag soldiers in blue helmets ar Video: President Gamal Abdel Nasser's Alexandria speech announcing the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company, 26 July 1956. The code-word "de Lesseps" triggers Egyptian seizure of the canal.