Suez 1956 and the Staged War: Israel Attacked as Britain and France Played Peacemakers

The war began on October 29, 1956, but its script had been completed five days earlier. As Israeli paratroopers descended over Sinai and armored columns advanced westward, the world watched the outbreak of another Arab-Israeli conflict. Britain and France, however, were not concerned powers that events would gradually draw into the crisis. They were waiting for their cue.

The following day, London and Paris issued what appeared to be a symmetrical ultimatum to Egypt and Israel. Both sides were ordered to stop fighting and withdraw their forces from the Suez Canal. But only Egypt was required to surrender key positions along the canal to British and French troops. The deadline was 12 hours. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was, of course, expected to refuse. His refusal was not a failure of diplomacy but its prearranged outcome.

The Canal, the Dam and the Humiliation of an Empire

To understand the audacity of the plan, it is necessary to go back several months. The last British troops had left the canal zone in June 1956, ending a military presence that had lasted nearly three-quarters of a century. Just six weeks later, Nasser nationalized the company that operated the canal. He promised compensation to its shareholders but also announced that revenue from shipping would be used to finance the Aswan High Dam after Washington and London withdrew their funding offer. To Egypt, this was an assertion of sovereignty. To Britain, it looked as though a former colonial possession had seized the treasury, a vital trade artery and a symbol of empire in a single stroke.

British Prime Minister Anthony Eden regarded Nasser as a kind of Middle Eastern Mussolini who had to be stopped before he grew even more powerful. The French had an additional reason to confront him. Egypt supported Algeria’s National Liberation Front, and Paris believed that bringing down Nasser would also weaken the uprising in Algeria. Israel had grievances of its own: Egypt’s military buildup, cross-border attacks and restrictions on navigation through the Straits of Tiran.

Thus emerged an alliance founded not on trust but on the convergence of three fears. Britain feared the loss of its imperial standing. France feared that Nasser’s anticolonialism would set North Africa ablaze. Israel feared a shift in the regional military balance. Their common denominator was Cairo.

The Secret Script Written in a Villa at Sèvres

Representatives of the three countries met from October 22 to 24 at a secluded villa in Sèvres, outside Paris. Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion insisted that the agreement be put in writing because he did not trust the British enough to rely on their word. The protocol was signed by Ben-Gurion, French Foreign Minister Christian Pineau and British diplomat Patrick Dean. Ben-Gurion reportedly folded his copy twice and slipped it into his pocket. The creases remained visible on a document that was never supposed to have a history.

The protocol was almost theatrical in its precision. Israel would attack Sinai on October 29 and advance toward the canal. The next day, Britain and France would issue an ultimatum to both sides and offer their forces as "impartial guardians of navigation." If Egypt refused to accept an Anglo-French occupation of positions along the canal, bombing would begin on October 31. One particular clause exposed the deception even more clearly: Israel would not have to comply with its side of the ultimatum if Egypt rejected it. Diplomatic neutrality was stage scenery, not policy.

The plan was then carried out almost exactly on schedule. Israel launched Operation Kadesh on October 29. The ultimatum followed on October 30. Nasser rejected it, just as its authors had expected. British and French aircraft began striking Egyptian targets on October 31, and an amphibious assault near Port Said followed in early November.

At the same time, London and Paris claimed that they were acting because the United Nations could not stop the war quickly enough. The awkward detail was that Britain and France themselves had used their vetoes to block a Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal. In the British Parliament, one MP asked how members could possibly debate a war when the government would not even tell them whether it had begun. The opposition had already recognized the obvious: the ultimatum had been designed so that no Egyptian government could accept it.

Eden later denied that Britain had known about the Israeli attack in advance. The British copy of the protocol was ordered destroyed, and the French were asked to do the same. The secret military operation thus became an operation to erase its own tracks. The document nevertheless survived thanks to the Israeli copy and the later testimony of those involved.

A Military Victory That Lost the Political War

Militarily, the attackers advanced rapidly. Politically, the plan began to collapse as soon as actors who had not been present at Sèvres entered the picture. US President Dwight Eisenhower was furious that his allies had presented him with a fait accompli. At the same time, the Soviet Union was crushing the uprising in Hungary, making it difficult for Washington to condemn Soviet intervention in Budapest while tolerating a colonial assault on Egypt.

The United States did not need to send troops against its own allies. It merely had to withhold financial support until London accepted a ceasefire. Britain still possessed aircraft carriers, bombers and paratroopers, but it could no longer defend the value of the pound with confidence without American assistance. Soviet threats heightened the danger, while the UN General Assembly called for an end to the fighting and created the organization’s first armed peacekeeping force.

The Birth of the Blue Helmets

Canadian Foreign Minister Lester B. Pearson proposed a solution that broke with the prevailing logic: an international force that would not fight the aggressors but position itself between the belligerents and oversee their withdrawal. UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld turned that political idea into the operational model of the first United Nations Emergency Force, known as UNEF.

Its mandate was carefully limited. UNEF was not a force authorized to impose peace under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and it could enter Egypt only with the consent of the Egyptian government. It included no troops from permanent members of the Security Council or from countries directly involved in the conflict. Soldiers from several neutral countries wore their own national uniforms, but blue helmets, berets and insignia transformed them into a recognizable international force.

The Suez Crisis therefore marked not only the decline of Europe’s empires but also the emergence of a model that would shape the following decades: peacekeepers would deploy with the host country’s consent, remain impartial between the parties and use force primarily in self-defense. Pearson received the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for his role, while the term "blue helmets" became a worldwide synonym for UN peacekeeping missions.

Britain and France were forced to halt their operation on November 6. Their forces withdrew from the canal zone by the end of December, and Israel pulled out of Sinai in March 1957. Nasser had suffered a military defeat but emerged politically stronger. He retained control of the canal and became a symbol of Arab resistance to the old European powers. Eden resigned in January.

A Plan for a World That No Longer Existed

Suez did not extinguish the British Empire in a single week, but it destroyed the last credible illusion that London could independently conduct a major military operation against Washington’s wishes. Nor did it represent a straightforward defeat for the West. Rather, it revealed that leadership within the Western alliance had changed hands.

The three countries succeeded in scripting the attack, the ultimatum and the justification for intervention. What they could not script was the reaction of the rest of the world.

Sèvres was therefore both a masterpiece of tactical ingenuity and a monument to strategic blindness. Great geopolitics is not simply the ability to devise a clever plan. It also requires recognizing, before it is too late, that the world in which that plan was supposed to succeed no longer exists.