The Reaction of British Jewry to Suez, 1956 / by Raphael Langham

in Suez increased to more than 80,000 men. This didn't stop the attacks which in fact grew much more severe when Nasser took over power in 1954.
Britain could no longer afford the continued maintenance of the garrison and Churchill, who was then Prime Minister sent his Foreign Secretary to Egypt to negotiate a settlement. The Foreign Secretary was Anthony Eden , who we last met in 1936 when he was also Foreign Secretary. Churchill considered that Eden was weak and had a tendency towards appeasement. He remarked that Eden never knew before that Munich was situated on the Nile. The talks were difficult and Churchill threatened that if we have anymore of Egyptian cheek we will set the Jews on them and drive them into the gutter from which they should never have emerged. It was not long after this that Churchill resigned as Prime Minister, he was over 80 and was becoming more and more impossible to deal with and more and more irascible.
Eden probably felt honour bound to stick to the terms of the 1936 treaty which he had negotiated and signed and which you will recall provided that British troops should withdraw after a 20 year period. Indeed an agreement with Egypt was signed on 19 October 1954 providing for British troops to leave the Canal Zone by 19 June 1956, 19 years and ten months after the 1936 treaty.
The last British troops actually left on 13 June 1956 six days early, and 43 days later on 26 July Nasser announced the nationalisation of the canal. The countdown to Suez 1956 had begun.

The Events

Three months later on 29 October 1956 Israeli forces invaded Egypt. The attack was in two prongs - a parachute assault at the Mitla pass about half way between the border and the Suez Canal, and a thrust across the border into the Sinai desert. The thrust into Sinai was led by a young colonel by the name of Ariel Sharon. On 30 October Britain and France demanded that both Israeli and Egyptian forces agree a ceasefire and issued a twelve-hour ultimatum to both sides. Israel accepted but Egypt refused and hostilities continued. On 31 October British and French planes attacked air bases in Egypt and on 5 November began to move troops into the Suez Canal zone at Port Said and Suez.
Under pressure from the United States and threats from the Soviet Union, Britain, France and Israel agreed to a cease-fire commencing at midnight on 7 November. By then Israeli forces had captured the Gaza strip, virtually the whole of Sinai and were a few miles from the Suez Canal. French and British troops occupied parts of the Canal Zone including Port Said. Negotiations at the United Nations continued for some time but on 12 November agreement was reached for a United Nations force to replace the British and French forces. The last of the British and French forces left Port Said on 22 December, and Israeli forces withdrew from all the territory they had captured by mid-March 1957.
The reasons for the Israeli attack on Egypt were many. From the 1948 War of Independence Egypt had refused to permit Israeli ships to use the Suez Canal and subsequently barred the canal to all vessels with cargoes bound for Israeli ports. This was in direct violation of an International Convention of 1888, which stated that the canal was to be open to all nations. This was also in contravention to a demand from the Security Council in 1951 that Egypt terminates this policy. In 1953 Egyptian coastguards closed the straits of Tiran to Israeli ships and in September 1955 this was extended to all vessels bound for Eilat. Apart from this, cross-border raids from Fedayeen had become intolerable and there was concern about Egypt's intentions with