The
first builder of a canal able to connect the Mediterranean with the Red Sea was
Darius I, a Persian emperor who lived around 500 BC. He built a waterway that
connected the Nile to Amers Lake and this was connected with the Red Sea. Queen
Cleopatra, who intended to use it to transfer her imposing fleet from the
Mediterranean to the Red Sea after the defeat of Actium against Octavian, found
it largely unnavigable. The canal fell completely out of use.
Napoleon Bonaparte, after the conquest of Egypt in 1799, commissioned his
engineers to verify the possibility of building a canal through the isthmus of
Suez. Incorrect calculations made the project abandon. Luigi Negrelli, an
engineer of Trento (Italy), prepared a project for the construction of the
canal that was adopted by the French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps. He obtained
a 99-year concession from the Khedive of Egypt for the construction and
ownership of the canal. The Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez,
whose shareholders were the Egyptian government and French private, founded by
the same de Lesseps, took care of the construction of the waterway.
The construction, begun in 1859, ended in 1869. The inauguration was done with
great pomp; it saw the participation of the French empress Eugenia de Montijo,
consort of Napoleon III. The Khedivè commissioned Giuseppe Verdi to compose a
sing opera at the ceremony. The composer directed the premiere of Aida two
years after the inauguration, in the Cairo Opera House, on December 24, 1871.
In 1875 the Egyptian government, in order to cope with its public debt, was
forced to sell its quota of ownership in the Canal Company. The quota was
bought from England that became the main shareholder of the company, ensuring,
together with France, the control of the waterway. In this way he facilitated
the connections between India, which was part of his empire, and Great Britain.
During the First World War Germany, aware of the strategic importance of the
waterway of connection through the isthmus of Suez, used by British civil and
military ships, tried, in vain, the conquest of the canal, with the
intervention of the army of the empire Ottoman, its ally, led by the German
general von Kressenstein. During the Second World War Erwin Rommel, the German
general known as the desert fox, tried to block the waterway, without success.
In the early fifties the figure of Nasser was established in Egypt. He had
participated in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 as an officer, where he had
witnessed the poor military preparation of the Egyptian army. He was of
republican ideas, adhered to the secret association of “Free
Officials”. In 1952, supported by the army, he expelled King Faruq,
becoming the first president of the Egyptian Republic.
The construction of the Aswan dam was vital for the
economic development of Egypt. It was a mighty work to which the United States
had promised to participate financially. Because of Nasser’s approach to the
USSR, the Americans withdrew their willingness to intervene in the construction
of the dam. In 1956 Nasser, to find funds replacing the American ones,
nationalized the Suez Canal that could have contributed with the tolls paid by
the ships that crossed it. The Canal had lost some of the importance it
represented for the United Kingdom as India had, in the meantime, become
independent. In those years, however, the nascent trade in oil products between
the Middle East and Europe had given the Canal new economic vitality.
The construction of the port of Eilat by Israel constituted the only access of
that country on the Red Sea. Eilat was located over the Strait of Tiran, a
straight spit of sea controlled by Egypt. Egypt prevented free access to
merchant ships headed for that port. After a few years of fighting between the
military of the two countries, resulting from the difficulty of a free landing
in Eilat and the encroachment of small armed groups of Palestinian Fedayn in
Israeli territory, the hawk Moshe Dayan, head of the armed forces with the star
of David, had the upper hand on the doves of his country. The desire of Moshe
Dayan to put an end to the Palestinian raids who had their base in the Sinai
Peninsula and Gaza found allies France and England who had badly suffered the
coup d’état of Egypt on the Canal Company.
France and England, not resigned to the loss of ownership of the Canal Company,
encouraged Israel to attack Egypt to seize control of the Sinai and the Gaza
Strip, resolving the problem of the Fedayn invasions and free movement in
Strict of Tiran. In 1956, with the secret agreements of Sevres among Israel,
France and the United Kingdom, the armed intervention of the Jewish country
against Egypt was agreed. The armed forces of France and the United Kingdom
would intervene immediately in support of Israel.
The clear objective of the two European countries was to regain control of the
Canal, which was about to become a strategic passage for oil tankers coming
from the Arabic peninsula, headed for Europe. The second objective was to limit
the growing influence of the Soviet Union in the region and to downsize the
figure of Nasser who aspired to become the reference point of all Arab
countries.
Moshe Dayan moved his troops on October 29, 1956. The Israeli military invaded
the Gaza strip to the north, and the peninsula of Sinai by crossing the Negev
desert with their armored means. The French and the British officially offered
to Egypt for a massive military intervention with the declared intention of
separating the forces in the field and protecting the Canal. In reality
everything was already agreed with the Israelis on the basis of Sevres secret
agreements. Nasser, aware of the trap set off in order to recover the Canal,
refused the aid. France and England, despite the Egyptian refusal, decide to
intervene with the excuse of keeping the waterway open to navigation.
England had three aircraft carriers and two
helicopter carriers available in the sea in front of Egypt. Numerous air forces
were deployed by RAF and French in Cyprus and Malta. Furthermore, France had
two aircraft carriers near to the Egyptian coasts. On 31 October the
Franco-English attack began with the naval bombing of Porto Said. Nasser had 40
ships loaded with cement sinking into the Channel as a retaliation, blocking its
navigation. On November 5th, Englishmen invaded the Porto Said airport,
providing a safe base for troop transport aircraft. The following day the
troops disembarked on the beaches around the city, protected by a shelling
bombing from ships. 425 British soldiers, transported by helicopters, began the
invasion of the city of Porto Said.
The Egyptian reaction was fast and perhaps unexpected. The Arab military,
assisted by the civilian population, fought house by house slowing down the
Franco-English invasion. There were numerous victims among the Arab defenders
and among the attacking forces. However, the Franco-English operation was
successful. The European military succeeded in constituting an effective
bridgehead on the Canal.
The military intervention against the Egyptians, carried out by the Israelis
and the Franco-English alliance, did not find international consensus. The
United States was facing the Hungarian crisis, where Soviet tanks had invaded
the small country to bring back its political action under the control of the
Soviet bloc. The Americans had vividly protested about the invasion. But the
situation that was taking place in Egypt, with the Israeli occupation of Sinai
and with the French-British military intervention, removed credibility from the
United States grievances against the invasion of Hungary.
The Soviet Union, allied to Nasser and with widespread interests in the Arab
world reacted vigorously, threatening France and the United Kingdom to use
every kind of weapon, with the implication not to exclude the nuclear ones, to
attack the European states involved in the operation Suez, if they had not
given up the military occupation of part of Egypt.
Fearing a catastrophic enlargement of the conflict, the United States
intervened against France and England to withdraw their troops. US President
Eisenhower did not hesitate to threaten the United Kingdom to act on the
financial situation of the pound sterling, causing it to collapse in value. The
British Prime Minister Eden, also criticized by major Commonwealth countries:
India, Australia and Canada, was forced to resign. Canadian Foreign Minister
Lester Pearson proposed to the United Nations Assembly to send a peacekeeping
force interposing between the belligerents and taking control of the Suez
Canal. It was the first operation of “Peacekeeping” of the United
Nations, which succeeded in trying to stop the fire.
Nasser emerging from a military defeat, could boast a great political victory that determined the withdrawal of France and England from the conflict and the retreat of the Israelis in their original borders. Nasser became the first personality of the Arab world, taking further steps in his policy of creating a united Arab nation (pan-Arabism), even if the same did not have the expected developments. France and England had to verify that their military power had no outlets beyond NATO’s Atlantic alliance. The United States and the Soviet Union were credited as the real two world superpowers with which all countries had to confront each other. The Suez crisis also marked the beginning of the decline of the British Empire and Commonwealth.
The expulsion from Egypt of a large part of western residents in that country was a further consequence of this war. Many of the fifty thousand Italian residents of Alexandria and Cairo returned to Italy after the Second World War and after the Suez conflict. A large number of Egyptian Jews, who considered themselves westernized like European residents, were expelled from the country.
At June 5 until 10, 1967, the six-day war which broke out among Israel and Egypt, Jordan and Syria again led to the conquest of Sinai by Israeli forces. The battle in the passes of Gidda and Mitla, previously occupied by Israeli forces, prevented the Egyptian army, retreating towards the Suez Canal, to continue. The Egyptian military suffered heavy losses. On June 8, Nasser accepted the cease-fire imposed by the UN to avoid a new Israeli occupation of the Canal. This second defeat determined, for Egypt, the definitive loss of the Gaza strip and the occupation of Sinai in favor of Israel. The Sinai Peninsula returned to Egypt only in 1978 following the Camp David Accords.
(Image at the top: Mappa Sinai 1956 U.S. Army)
