Suez Crisis
| Suez Crisis | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Cold War and the Arab–Israeli conflict | |||||||||
Destroyed Egyptian M4 Sherman in the Sinai Peninsula | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
|
Israel United Kingdom France | Egypt | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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| Strength | |||||||||
|
175,000 45,000 34,000 | 90,000 | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
Israel:
|
| ||||||||
| 1,000 civilians killed | |||||||||
The Suez Crisis, also known as the Second Arab–Israeli War, the Tripartite Aggression in the Arab world and the Sinai War in Israel, was a British–French–Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956. Israel invaded on 29 October, having done so with the primary objective of re-opening the Straits of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as the recent tightening of the eight-year-long Egyptian blockade further prevented Israeli passage. After issuing a joint ultimatum for a ceasefire, the United Kingdom and France joined the Israelis on 5 November, seeking to depose Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and regain control of the Suez Canal, which Nasser had earlier nationalised by transferring administrative control from the foreign-owned Suez Canal Company to Egypt's new government-owned Suez Canal Authority. Shortly after the invasion began, the three countries came under heavy political pressure from both the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as from the United Nations, eventually prompting their withdrawal from Egypt. The Crisis demonstrated that the United Kingdom and France could no longer pursue their independent foreign policy without consent from the United States. Israel's four-month-long occupation of the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula enabled it to attain freedom of navigation through the Straits of Tiran, but the Suez Canal was closed from October 1956 to March 1957.
U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower had issued a strong warning to the British if they were to invade Egypt; he threatened serious damage to the British financial system by selling the American government's bonds of pound sterling. Before their defeat, Egyptian troops blocked all ship traffic by sinking 40 ships in the canal. It later became clear that Israel, the UK, and France had conspired to invade Egypt. These three achieved a number of their military objectives, although the canal was useless.
The crisis strengthened Nasser's standing and led to international humiliation for the British—with historians arguing that it signified the end of its role as a world superpower—as well as the French amid the Cold War (which established the U.S. and the USSR as the world's superpowers). As a result of the conflict, the UN established an emergency force to police and patrol the Egypt–Israel border, while British prime minister Anthony Eden resigned from his position. For his diplomatic efforts in resolving the conflict through UN initiatives, Canadian external affairs minister Lester B. Pearson received a Nobel Peace Prize. Analysts have argued that the crisis may have emboldened the USSR, prompting the Soviet invasion of Hungary.