The impact of the Suez crisis on Britain, Egypt and Israel

Résumé du document

The Suez Crisis of 1956 has been commonly seen as a turning point in post war world history, the moment when Britain's pretension to world power status was stripped away, and when Egypt became the leader of the Arab world, an event which triggered a radical change in the relations between Israel and its Arab neighbours. The impacts of the Suez crisis are, however, perhaps more ambiguous than would appear at first sight, especially when one examine the background of the crisis. Indeed, since the Second World War, we can notice that the British Empire weakened, the United States developed new global interests, in Egypt, and in the Middle East, the forces of nationalism were emerging and that the tensions of Arab-Israeli conflicts were already strong. After such examinations, we are lead to wonder whether the Suez Crisis really triggered changes in Britain, Egypt and Israel or if the crisis only reflected a former trend and accelerated these transformations. We will thus examine for each country what the impacts of the crisis were, and if these were really caused by the Suez Canal crisis.

Extraits

[...] For instance, in 1957, the Gold Coast became independent but this had long been in train. Indeed, historians are divided over the influence the Suez crisis had on British's role in the world. One of the most controversial issues is the suggestion that Suez was crucial in the “descent from power” of Britain after the Second World War. In fact, it seems that the Suez crisis was a turning point in that it reflected the truth that the Britain could not sustain a great power role without the support of the United States. [...]

[...] Finally, what can be said with certainty is that Britain was weaker after Suez precisely because the crisis revealed to all in a lightening flash” Britain's weakness. In a paper presented at the Middle East Institute in Washington in April 1961 Charles Issawi described the nationalization of the Canal as a “major landmark along the road towards Egyptianisation, industrialization, and state control”. From a short-term perspective, the consequences of the Suez crisis on the Egyptian economy were in a first time the compensation of the shareholders. [...]

[...] Lucas W. Scott, Divided we stand: Britain, the US and the Suez crisis (1956). Hansard december 1956. C. Frus, doc Donald Neff, Warriors at Suez : Eisenhower takes America into the Middle East (New York, 1981), pp. 438-9. Lloyd, Suez 1956, p Lloyd p. 36-37. [...]

[...] From an international point of view, the crisis seems to have weakened British influence in the Middle East and throughout the world. About this subject, the view of the American journalist Donald Neff is that Great Britain, France and Israel discredited themselves in the Suez Crisis and, as he claims, longer after Suez, could the West assert that it was uniquely to be trusted as the champion of man's aspiration for a just world”[3]. As regards to Britain's role in the world, we can notice that the decade following the Suez crisis saw the rapid decolonisation of Britain's Empire in Africa and the withdrawal from bases East of Suez. [...]

[...] Thus it settled a pattern followed from 1967 to 1973 which manifested itself by a struggle between Israel and the Arab states about the balance of power in the region more than about the interests of the Palestinians. In this case, the Suez crisis accelerated an existing trend, the one of refocusing the Palestine conflict into an Arab-Israeli dispute. But the crisis not only transformed the conflict, it also sparked off the resurgence of the Palestinian nationalism and thus reviving an older aspect of the conflict, the Palestinian-Israeli one. Finally, this fight over the canal laid the groundwork for the Six Day War in 1967 due to a lack of a peace settlement following the 1956 war. [...]