User:Ykantor/Sandbox/Israel1956- Suez war causes

=Leaders=

Israeli leaders
In August 1953 Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary: “Contrary to Moshe Sharetts opinion ... reprisals are imperative. There is no relying for our security on UN observers and foreign states. If we do not put an end to these murders by infiltrators] now, the situation will get worse....(Morris, victims. p. 280)

...(According to the moderates. i.e Sharett) We must restrain our responses to Arab attacks.(Morris, victims. p. 280) Sharett himself acknowledged that to some degree activism reduced terrorist infiltration, for a time in a given area....(Morris, victims. p. 280)

But paradoxically, while he ( Sharett) was prime minister (On 1954 and beginning of 1955), the reprisals increased in magnitude and in the number of casualties inflicted on the Arabs. This was due to the shift from civilian to military targets, and to the growing incidence of terrorism some state-directed from the Gaza Strip” (Morris, victims. p. 281)

On April 13 (1956) Ben-Gurion proposed a strike against a fedayeen base in Gaza, which in the circumstances would probably have provoked wide-ranging hostilities. But the cabinet made its approval of the plan contingent upon a renewal of fedayeen attacks. Sharett, though depressed, had again won the day (Morris, victims. p. 287)

A number of politicians and generals, including Dayan, repeatedly voiced the hope that an opportunity would arise in which Israel could complete its historic mission and round out its borders (as well as expel its own, inconvenient Arab minority). Indeed, they toyed repeatedly with the idea of provoking a second round” and in 1955-56 they at last managed to do so. Morris2011p261

Israels leaders believed and continued to believe that the Arab states primarily Egypt—posed a threat to the existence of their country.(Morris, victims. p. 298)

President Nasser
"During its first two years in power the RCC showed little interest in Israel. In their public utterances, the juntas leaders continued to toe the rejectionist Arab line, though there was an appreciable reduction of incidents along the Gaza Strip border. Israeli peace feelers were politely ignored. In early 1953 Egypt secretly informed Israel that it preferred to maintain the no war, no peace" status quo" Morris2011p266

"in 1955...The U.S offered to finance the High Dam on the Nile river...in exchange for Egypt's help to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict peacefully...But Nasser rejected the offer because it would mean siding with the West in the Cold War.... was the quasi alliance with the soviets more important than solving the Palestinian issue peacefully?...since the alternative to a negotiated settlement was a war with unpredictable price, Nasser's refusal to accept the Negotiation offer was irrational. "  El-Hasan2010p156

Nasser said at 31.8.1955 that "There will be no peace on Israel's border because we demand vengeance, and vengeance is Israel's death." On October 14, Nasser said: "I am not solely fighting against Israel itself. My task is to deliver the Arab world from destruction through Israel's intrigue, which has its roots abroad. Our hatred is very strong. There is no sense in talking about peace with Israel. There is not even the smallest place for negotiations." Caraccilo2011p113

Other Arab leaders
During the years before the 1956 Suez crisis, Egyptian leaders talked openly about destruction of Israel. The Egyptian Foreign Minister, said early in 1954: "The Arab people will not be embarrassed to declare: We shall not be satisfied except by the final obliteration of Israel from the map of the Middle East".

"Arab leaders and media spoke obliquely or explicitly of the need for or possibility of a redeeming “second round,” of wiping out the traces of Zionist aggression” or “righting Palestinian wrongs.” Before 1955 the Arabs did nothing to occasion or prepare for it, but many Israelis feared that such an attack was in fact being planned, and believed that Israel should strike first, before the Arabs were ready and while they were off guard". Morris2011p261

=Peace initiative= "During its first two years in power the RCC showed little interest in Israel. In their public utterances, the juntas leaders continued to toe the rejectionist Arab line, though there was an appreciable reduction of incidents along the Gaza Strip border. Israeli peace feelers were politely ignored. In early 1953 Egypt secretly informed Israel that it preferred to maintain the no war, no peace" status quo" Morris2011p266

Anderson peace initiative. p. 166 : Egyptian territorial contiguity with Jordan...(Nasser) said that "the line should run from Dhahirya ...to Gaza. Alteras1993p166

"in 1955...The U.S offered to finance the High Dam on the Nile river...in exchange for Egypt's help to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict peacefully...But Nasser rejected the offer because it would mean siding with the West in the Cold War.... was the quasi alliance with the soviets more important than solving the Palestinian issue peacefully?...since the alternative to a negotiated settlement was a war with unpredictable price, Nasser's refusal to accept the Negotiation offer was irrational. " El-Hasan2010p156

= The war reasons=

summary
In late 1956, the bellicosity of recent Arab statements prompted Israel to remove the threat of the concentrated Egyptian forces in the Sinai, and Israel invaded the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula on October 29, 1956. Other Israeli aims were elimination of the Fedayeen incursions into Israel that made life unbearable for its southern population, and opening the blockaded Straits of Tiran for Israeli ships.

The Arab statements bellicosity
During the years before the 1956 Suez crisis, Egyptian leaders talked openly about destruction of Israel. The Egyptian Foreign Minister, said early in 1954: "The Arab people will not be embarrassed to declare: We shall not be satisfied except by the final obliteration of Israel from the map of the Middle East". Nasser said at 31.8.1955 that "There will be no peace on Israel's border because we demand vengeance, and vengeance is Israel's death." On October 14, Nasser said: "I am not solely fighting against Israel itself. My task is to deliver the Arab world from destruction through Israel's intrigue, which has its roots abroad. Our hatred is very strong. There is no sense in talking about peace with Israel. There is not even the smallest place for negotiations." Caraccilo2011p113

"Arab leaders and media spoke obliquely or explicitly of the need for or possibility of a redeeming “second round,” of wiping out the traces of Zionist aggression” or “righting Palestinian wrongs.” Before 1955 the Arabs did nothing to occasion or prepare for it, but many Israelis feared that such an attack was in fact being planned, and believed that Israel should strike first, before the Arabs were ready and while they were off guard". Morris2011p261

Tiran straits block
Egypt blocked the Suez canal for shipping and refused to comply with the 1951 Security Council order that Egypt should open the Canal to Israeli shipping. On 12 Sept 1955 Egypt tightened  the Tiran straits block  for an Israeli shipping, and closed the airspace for Israeli flights over the Gulf of Acaba.

Fedayeen, Borders armed clashes
"the Israelis would have to accept a certain degree of friction in their relations with Egypt, and understand  that  such  acts  as  the  blockade  and  armed  infiltration  were  political  necessities  for  Egypt  and  not  representative  of  any  truly  belligerent  intention." Oren2013p120

"During its first two years in power the RCC showed little interest in Israel. In their public utterances, the juntas leaders continued to toe the rejectionist Arab line, though there was an appreciable reduction of incidents along the Gaza Strip border. Israeli peace feelers were politely ignored. In early 1953 Egypt secretly informed Israel that it preferred to maintain the no war, no peace" status quo." Morris2011p266

(Israeli casualty statistics show that 7 or 8 Israelis were killed by infiltrators on the Gaza border annually from 195I to I954, with a dramatic rise to 48 in I955. (Morris, victims. p. 281)

", it is quite clear that regardless of any other possible motives, the direct incentive, goal and purpose was the struggle against the infiltration, and more accurately, against its lethal aspects. Not every assassination was followed by a reprisal attack, but every reprisal attack came after a murderous infiltration incursion. mith2013tal-p140

During the early 50's, the infiltration from Gaza strip to Israel was mainly for economic reasons. Gradually, they developed into violent robbery and deliberate killing attacks. During those years, Israel responded by retaliation operations.

In the Gaza Strip too the Egyptians were to feel the growing Israeli militancy, in part inspired by the newly installed, aggressive CGS, Moshe Dayan. The Israelis, for their part, noted a greater Egyptian readiness to take chances and challenge them. In April 1954, for the first time, the Egyptian military authorities sent squads of official” infiltrators across the border in reaction to an Israeli military sortie a few days before...(Morris, victims. p. 282) it is likely that they were authorized from Cairo as responses to Israeli raids and the provocations of the sabotage ring and the Bat Galim affair.(Morris, victims. p. 283)

this infiltration posed a very serious problem for Israel in general and the border settlements in particular. Many of the inhabitants of the border settlements were new immigrants from Muslim countries. Infiltration from across the border placed their lives at risk, exacted a heavy economic price, and undermined their morale to the point where wholesale desertion became a real possibility. (shlaim, morris, http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0005/Israels%20Dirty%20War.html).

In February (1955) a team of Egyptian intelligence scouts ... killed an Israeli cyclist ....The response ... two IDF paratroop companies raided an Egyptian army camp near Gaza and .... About forty Egyptians died..... The shock and sense of humiliation in Cairo were acute. Egyptian arms had not sustained such a blow since the I948 war.(Morris, victims. p. 283)

On February 28, 1955 Israeli military raid of an Egyptian Army outpost in Gaza, in retaliation for recent fedayeen attacks on Israel. The Gaza Raid resulted in the deaths of 39 Egyptian. Nasser responded by ordering the formation of Palestinian fedayeen units and employed them as an official instrument of warfare against Israel. The amount of the Fedayeen raids increased. Egyptian troops use to fire at the Israeli soldiers almost daily, there were repeated mining attacks and ambushes to the IDF patrols. Egyptian agents recruited and armed Fedayeen in Jordan and Lebanon too. (morris,victims, p. 283).

---"In early March 1955, after a series of murderous fedayeen attacks on Israeli civilians, Sharon sent 149 of his paratroopers to raid the Egyptian forces in the Gaza ..".Falk2005p47

(on Aug 1955) The raids went on for a week. The raiders laid mines, ambushed civilian and military vehicles, and attacked settlements, killing more than a dozen Israelis. The attacks ended only after an IDF paratroop battalion on the night of August 31 took and destroyed the Khan Yunis police fort in the Gaza Strip.” (Morris, victims. p. 283)

The Egyptians tried to stop the infiltration, but it continued. "During December 1955 February I956 the Egyptians appear to have clamped down on civilian infiltration, but their troops fired across the line at Israeli patrols almost every day"

In 4 Apr  1956 the Egyptians shot dead 3 Israeli soldiers, and Egyptian troops use to fire at the Israeli soldiers almost daily, there were repeated mining attacks and ambushes to the IDF patrols. At 5 April both armies were shooting each other, and Egyptians bombarded Israeli settlements. The Israeli army responded by a mortar barrage on the Gaza market: sixty-six Egyptians were killed. The incident touched off a second wave of raids by the fedayeen..." (Michael Oren, Escalation to Suez: The Egypt-Israel Border War, 1949-56, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 24, No. 2, Studies on War. (Apr., 1989), pp. 347-373.

-by late April (1956), Hammarskjold was able to bring about a cease-fire. An Egyptian ambush shot dead an Israel civilian at 29 April but Ben Gurion decided not to retaliate. The resulting calm along the demarcation lines proved only temporary. The situation deteriorated again for a few weeks in July and then improved for several months, Khouri1985p204

During these months, Fedayeen continued to infiltrate and kill Israeli civilians, but they came from other Arab countries, mainly Jordan. Some sources claim that the Egyptians were behind those infiltration.

---"To them the murderous fedayeen raids and constant harassment were just another form of Arab warfare against Israel" Bickerton2009p101 (Israeli casualty statistics show that 7 or 8 Israelis were killed by infiltrators on the Gaza border annually from 195I to I954, with a dramatic rise to 48 in I955. (Morris, victims. p. 281)

Egypt sponsored infilteration from Jordan, Lebanon
Similarly fedayeen squads were recruited and armed by Egyptian agents in Jordan and Lebanon and prepared for cross-border raiding.(Morris, victims. p. 283)

(on sept 1955) Egyptian directed fedayeen attacked Israeli settlements and traffic across the Lebanese and Jordanian borders. (Morris, victims. p. 284)

Arms supply
The Egyptians made continuously attempts to purchase heavy arms from Czechoslovakia years before the 1955 deal.

on September 27 (1955) Nasser announced that Egypt had concluded a major arms deal with Czechoslovakia (..., which promised radically to alter the balance of military power. Egypt explained that it had been forced by the Israeli raids to reinforce its army and make it capable of deterring IDF attack. (Morris, victims, p. 284)

In September 1955 Nasser obtained the massive Soviet arms deal. This deal threatened to tip the military balance against Israel.

"Israeli analysts believed that the Egyptian army could absorb them by autumn I956. Israel had to acquire a similar quantity of arms, or to attack and destroy the Egyptian army while it was relatively weak. In fact Israel did both" (Morris, victims, p. 284)

In late September 1955 the future, from Jerusalems perspective, looked bleak. Preemption seemed a safer course than waiting for Western succor. In seeking to provoke a war with Egypt, Israel had ready-made pretexts in the DMZs along the border in the western Negev (Morris, victims, p. 284)

(Israel received massive shipments of arms from France, although not in the scale of the Egyptian arms deal). E.g. The Egyptian-Czech arms deal included 150 Jet fighters (Mig15) Vs Israel's 16 French made Mystere and 22 Oragan fighters. Smith2013p101

On October 23 (1955), at Dayan's prodding, Ben gurion had agreed to a policy of retaliating massively after small border incidents, forcing an Egyptian counterstrike, which would provide Israel with the pretext to go to war and destroy the Egyptian army before it absorbed its new Soviet weaponry and became too strong.(Morris, victims, p. 285-286)

According to Hasan Afif El-Hasan : "Israel was looking for war to pre-empt the potential threat of Egypt's arms purchase and to thwart Nasser's support for the Palestinian guerrillas. It found one by aligning himself with the french and the British"

According to Hazem Kandil, Israel was alarmed by the Czech arms deal, and believed it had only a narrow window of opportunity to hit Egypt's army.

= Israel preparing for a war= Israel's leaders has set a course for war...During the summer of 1956, only 2 questions remained: When? and what target? (Morris, Victims, p. 288-289)

On 18 March 1956, the Israeli Prime Minister had warned that 'war within a few months could not be avoided unless Israel obtained the arms needed to counter Egypt's weapons'. Smith2013p101

On the eve of 1956 Sinai campaign...16 Mystere...22 Ouragan fighters Varble2009p17

The Sèvres protocol
"In a series of clandestine conferences during June-October 1956, Israeli and French leaders had hammered out an agreement on a joint attack" (Morris, victims, p. 289)

"At the secret Sèvres Conference, ... on October 22-24, ... agreed on a tripartite assault on Egypt. France and Britain would conquer, and resume control of, the Suez Canal .... Israel would destroy the Egyptian army in Sinai and the Gaza Strip fedayeen bases, and ultimately annex all Sinai, or at least its eastern third, .... Perhaps, once and for all, Egypt’s ability to launch terror attacks against Israel would be ended" (Morris, victims, p. 290)

=The war aims= "The aims were to be threefold: to remove the threat, wholly or partially, of the Egyptian rmy in the Sinai, to destroy the framework of the fedaiyyun, and to secure the freedom of navigation through the straits of Tiran." ShemeshTroen2005p5

<P>-"the removal of the Egyptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran at the entrance of the Gulf of Aqaba. The blockade closed Israel’s sea lane to East Africa and the Far East, hindering the development of Israel’s southern port of Eilat and its hinterland, the Nege. Another important objective of the Israeli war plan was the elimination of the terrorist bases in the Gaza Strip, from which daily fedayeen incursions into Israel made life unbearable for its southern population. And last but not least, the concentration of the Egyptian forces in the Sinai Peninsula, armed with the newly acquired weapons from the Soviet bloc, prepared for an attack on ,pIsrael. Here, Ben-Gurion believed, was a time bomb that had to be defused before it was too late. Reaching the Suez Canal did not figure at all in Israel’s war objectives.  Alteras1993p192

<P>-The continued blockade of the Suez Canal and Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping, combined with the increased fedayeen attacks and the bellicosity of recent Arab statements, prompted Israel, with the backing of Britain and France, to attack Egypt

-The (1956) war was waged by Israel, the French and the British. As stated before, Israel wanted to pre-emp the potential threat of the arms purchase, The French wanted to retaliate for Nasser's support to the Algerian Liberation movement and the British wanted to prevent Nasser from Nationalizing the Suez Canal. El-Hasan2010p154

<P>-"Israel was looking for war to pre-empt the potential threat of Egypt's arms purchase and to thwart Nasser's support for the Palestinian guerrillas. It found one by aligning himself with the french and the British" El-Hasan2010p118

=The war = Israel occupied much of the peninsula within a few days. As agreed, within a couple of days, Britain and France invaded too, aiming at regaining Western control of the Suez Canal and removing the Egyptian president Nasser.

=After the war= --The United States and the United Nations soon pressured it into a ceasefire

<P>-(p. 300) In exchange (for Israeli withdrawal) the United states had indirectly promised to guarantee Israel's right of passage through the straits (to the Red sea) and its right to self defense if the Egyptian closed them....(Morris2011p 301)

<P>-Several months later Israel withdrew its forces from Sinai, following strong pressure from the United States and the Soviet Union. In return, Egypt agreed to the demilitarization of Sinai and the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was stationed in Sinai to prevent any further conflict in the Sinai.the Fedayeen murderous incursions into Israel were stopped.

=The war aftermath=

The 1956 war resulted in significant reduction of...Israeli border tension. Egypt refrain from reactivating the Fedaeen, and...Egypt and Jordan made great effort to curb infiltration". Morris2011p300

Arab critics
<P>-meeting on November 15 (1956) ... Amer also lashed out at Nasser, accusing him of provoking an unnecessary war and then blaming the military for the result. Kandil, p. 50

<P>-The prominent historian and commentator Abd al-Azim Ramadan, In a series of articles published in AlWafd, subsequently compiled in a hook published in 2000, Ramadan criticized the Nasser cult, …. The events leading up to the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, as other events during Nasser’s rule, Ramadan wrote, showed Nasser to be far from a rational, responsible leader. … His decision to nationalize the Suez Canal was his alone, made without political or military consultation. … The source of all this evil. Ramadan noted, was Nasser’s inclination to solitary decision making… the revolutionary regime led by the same individual—Nasser— repeated its mistakes when it decided to expel the international peacekeeping force from the Sinai Peninsula and close the Straits of Tiran in 1967. Both decisions led to a state of war with Israel, despite the lack of military preparedness

<P>-"Israel was looking for war to pre-empt the potential threat of Egypt's arms purchase and to thwart Nasser's support for the Palestinian guerrillas. It found one by aligning himself with the french and the British". El-Hasan2010p118

<P>-"in 1955...The U.S offered to finance the High Dam on the Nile river...in exchange for Egypt's help to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict peacefully...But Nasser rejected the offer because it would mean siding with the West in the Cold War.... was the quasi alliance with the soviets more important than solving the Palestinian issue peacefully?...since the alternative to a negotiated settlement was a war with unpredictable consequences, Nasser's refusal to accept the Negotiation offer was irrational. "El-Hasan2010p156

<P>- According to Hazem Kandil, Israel was alarmed by the Czech arms deal, and believed it had only a narrow window of opportunity to hit Egypt's army.

<P>-"The (1956) war was waged by Israel, the French and the British. As stated before, Israel wanted to pre-emp the potential threat of the arms purchase, The French wanted to retaliate for Nasser's support to the Algerian Liberation movement and the British wanted to prevent Nasser from Nationalizing the Suez Canal....He (Nasser) promoted Arab nationalism and claimed himself the defender of the Palestinian cause...but his (Nasser) anti Israel warlike rhetoric that was broadcast in public speeches and publicized in local press did not help the Palestinians. On the contrary, it convinced large section of the Israeli population to oppose reconciliation with the Palestinians". El-Hasan2010p154

=Notes=