Hey, I’m Noam Weissman and you’re listening to Unpacking Israeli History, the podcast that takes a deep dive into some of the most intense, historically fascinating, and often misunderstood events and stories linked to Israeli history.
This episode is generously sponsored by Jody and Ari Storch.
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Okay. Yalla. Let’s do this.
One of my favorite things about being an educator is hearing from my former students.
Sometimes they share triumphs. Like, hey, I just graduated from med school! Or hey, look, I got married or just had my first kid! Or hey, I just moved to Israel and am impressing slash annoying everyone with my intimate knowledge of obscure moments in Israeli history!
OK, that last one has yet to happen. But hope springs eternal, right?
Hearing from my former students always reminds me why I got into education in the first place – even when the stuff they share is, as one of the characters in today’s episode would say, le bummer.
So roughly 10 million years ago, if we’re measuring by how much has changed since – I was with a former student of mine who shared a dilemma that reminded me why I started hosting this podcast in the first place.
This guy had just started his second year of law school when Hamas attacked Israel. So instead of talking about torts and Latin and jurisdiction – that’s what you learn about in law school, right? – his professor decided that what every 2L actually needed was a rousing debate or ten on Israel-Palestine.
My former student never backs down from a debate and he is wicked smart. So he’s going back and forth with his classmates and professor about the Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, because that’s the best and most pleasant use of everyone’s time, when his professor drops the following bomb. Israel is and has always been an imperialist force, this professor declares. I mean, hello, remember the Sinai campaign of 1956, when Israel teamed up with two major European empires to fight and oppress a much weaker Arab power?
And my student was like, uh, actually, no, I don’t remember it, because Noam never mentioned that on his podcast and for some reason I’ve never heard about this. What you’re talking about. I’ve heard of 1948. I’ve heard of 1967. I’ve heard of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. You can say a few things about the first intifada. You can say a few things about the second Intifada.
To be fair, very few people have heard so much about 1956 and the Sinai campaign.
I mean, sure, you’ve probably heard the words Suez Canal Crisis. And even if you’re not a budding lawyer, you’ve probably deduced that this crisis took place around the Suez Canal, i.e., in Egypt.
That might be where your knowledge begins and ends.
And that’s not your fault, because for some reason, this incredibly important and influential war, which shaped the Middle East as we know it, is tragically and criminally underrated. It’s the Toy Story 2 of Israeli wars – the forgotten middle child between the much better known wars of 1948 and 1967.
It’s the war equivalent of Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical In the Heights, which scored 13 Tony nominations in 2008, but was eclipsed by the stunning success of Hamilton a few years later. For the history buffs, it’s Israel’s version of the Korean War, sandwiched between WWII and Vietnam and more or less forgotten. It’s the War of 1812.
Ok, you got it.
Insert your version of world-changing-but-criminally-underrated moment here.
On the surface, I guess that makes sense. This brief war did not change Israel’s borders or shape Israeli society. In fact, for a very long time, one of the major players denied they were ever even involved! (We see you, Britain. You’re not fooling anyone.) And yet, this brief interlude in the fall of 1956 actually laid the foundation for much of modern Israeli history, leading to the much-better-known Six Day War 11 years later, and forging the great geopolitical love affair of our times: the special, albeit sometimes stormy, relationship between Israel and the US. That one will be dedicated to Tucker Carlson. Maybe he’ll learn something!
It’s just a really, really good story of Cold War intrigue, collusion, backdoor deals, astonishing military feats, and a wacky cast of characters. That’s what this story is.
The basic rundown goes something like this:
In 1956, major Western powers were ticked off at Egypt for cozying up to the USSR. (Remember, this is the Cold War. The USSR is basically Enemy Numero Uno for the West.) The US was too busy/diplomatic to put Egypt in its place, but Britain and France were ticked off enough to reach out to one of Egypt’s enemies. Israel, which was, as usual, under existential threat from its much larger southwestern neighbor, was only too happy to have the backing of global superpowers in its fight against Egypt’s constant threats.
Israel’s aims were humble: stop Egypt from messing with us. And it did a pretty good job of achieving those aims. But everything went sideways when the Europeans got involved. And that secret tripartite alliance resulted in a geopolitical quagmire whose consequences reverberate to this day, even making their way to law school classrooms in 2023.
It may be too late for my former student to use this episode to win a debate against his law school professor (again, what a great use of everyone’s time!) I’m sorry it took nearly 2 years for me to get here. But I’m not trying to win a debate here. Sure, debates have their place. But that’s not what we do. I’m not interested in winning. I’m interested in learning, in reflecting, and listening. I hope this three-part series helps you do just that. In this first episode, we’ll set the scene, unpicking the hellish tangle of alliances, loyalties, and interests at the heart of this story. We’ll talk about the rise of Egyptian pan-Arabism, the decline of British and French hegemony in the region, and the constant struggle of a tiny Jewish state in a very hostile neighborhood. We’re going to introduce most of our players, from the ruthlessly ambitious Egyptian President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, to the colorful cast of characters in the Israeli Knesset, to the hapless Hashemites just trying to keep up with the neighbors. And we’ll discuss all the factors that led to three unlikely allies shaking hands on a secret deal that would change the course of history.
Welcome to our three-part deep dive into Israel’s most underrated war. Before we start, I just want to give a shoutout to one of the many books we consulted in our research, a joint effort by the three brilliant scholars Abdel Monem Said Aly, Kalil Shikaki, and Shai Feldman. Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East is THE book you read when you want a long, thorough, erudite, and diverse set of perspectives on the past 120 years of the Arab-Israeli relationship. Big shoutout to that book – though of course, we’ll also list the rest of our (many) sources in the show notes.
Part I: Powder Keg
Remember March of 2021? Me neither. Except for the six days that the world seemed to stop because a ship got stuck in the Suez Canal. One giant container vessel, wedged sideways in a narrow ditch of water, paralyzing 12% of global trade.
That ship was the Ever Given, and it was hilarious, according to the internet. If Helen of Troy was the face that launched a thousand ships, the Ever Given was the ship that launched a thousand memes.
Major supply chains ground to a halt, reminding us how much the Suez Canal still matters. Still matters. But many people had no idea that this wasn’t the first time this skinny stretch of water had held the world hostage. And back in 1956, the stakes were much higher than a trapped ship, though admittedly, the memes left something to be desired…
By 1954, Egypt had seen its fair share of turmoil and spectacular incompetence, but now, there was a new sheriff in town. Lieutenant Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser had grown up under King Farouk – the gluttonous, corrupt, and clueless playboy king more interested in gambling and gallivanting than, you know, actually leading his country.
Farouk’s military hated him for many, many reasons – chief among them Egypt’s performance in the war of 1948. Instead of wiping Israel off the map, Egypt had retreated with a whimper, the first Arab country to sign an armistice agreement. Nasser, a military man, never forgave Farouk for that humiliation. Along with other dissatisfied soldiers, he formed a secret society of anti-government revolutionaries that called themselves the Free Officers.
Their goal was simple: get rid of the king.
Farouk offered no real resistance. Within days of the Free Officers’ coup, he was on his way to exile in Italy in his royal yacht. (Honestly, goals.) Shortly thereafter, Egypt abolished its monarchy and officially became a republic, and by 1954, the 36-year-old Nasser was in charge.
Nasser’s goal? A total transformation for Egypt. Egypt’s economy was healthy enough, but Nasser dreamed of turning his country into the regional economic powerhouse. And he did everything he could to pursue that goal: invest in education, build up the country’s industrial capacity, assert state control over resources, and reduce foreign influences as much as possible. (This is what we call foreshadowing. Pay attention, we’re gonna come back to this very, very soon.)
But Nasser didn’t just want to modernize Egypt. He wanted to unify the Arab world under his leadership, of course. Egypt was ancient and glorious, and it was time for the country to take its rightful place as the region’s military, cultural, and economic powerhouse. Which meant kicking out colonial powers, building infrastructure, and uniting Arab states under a single flag. All Arab countries spoke the same language and shared the same rich history, right? Why shouldn’t they unite as one big, happy Arab family?
Pan-Arabism had found its poster boy.
But uniting 22 countries on the basis of language and culture and often religion takes a lot more than just idealism and vibes. If he really wanted to build an empire, Nasser needed a common cause. Something that would bring Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Amman to the same table. And nothing unites people like a shared enemy.
Guess who he chose? (That was a rhetorical question. You already know the answer.)
In 1954, Israel was 48 times smaller than its neighbor, with a population of under two million. Sometimes we forget that, and when I say “we,” I mean “I.” Israel is a little little place now, around the 90th largest country in the world in terms of population, but then? It was teensy weensy, which made Egypt’s loss in 1948 all the more bitter. The little baby Jewish state had embarrassed 24 million Egyptians, and it had to pay.
To Nasser, Israel was the ultimate symbol of colonialism, an unwelcome implant on Arab soil, artificially created by the West to divide and conquer the region. But he wasn’t gonna let that happen. And so he promised the Arab world, quote:
“My task is to deliver the Arab world from destruction through Zionist intrigues which have their roots in the United States, and which receives aid from Britain and France… The hatred of the Arabs against the Zionists is very strong and there is no sense in talking about peace with Israel. There is not even the smallest place for negotiations between the Arabs and Israel.”
His rhetoric resonated far beyond Egypt. His charisma, so much charisma by the way, so much, and his defiance electrified Arabs everywhere… Across the Middle East, millions tuned in to Radio Cairo to hear Nasser thunder about Arab dignity and the end of imperial servitude, his voice ringing out in coffee shops and bazaars, his poster hanging on walls and streetlamps. Nasser – and his mustache – had the Arab street. And he knew how to weaponize it.
While Nasser soared, Israel simmered.
[NEWSREEL]
The turbulent Arab world has seen eight violent changes of government in the past 13 years. Out of this bewildering political maelstrom, there has emerged one dominant leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Nasser claims that Israel, populated now primarily by people of European Jewish origin, is nothing less than a form of Western neo-colonialism.
He’s particularly resentful of United States support of Israel.
The Jewish State was just a few years old. A “baby nation,” founded in trauma, populated by refugees, and still haunted by war. The 1948 War of Independence had cost 6,000 lives, or 1% of the population at the time. “Victory,” which in this case simply meant “figuring out a way to survive as a people,” came at a steep price. In today’s terms, that would be like 267,000 Australians, if it happened now!
The country was barely out of its austerity period, with a flailing economy, no known natural resources, and no strong allies. It had stretched its resources to the limit absorbing over a million refugees, mostly Holocaust survivors or Mizrahi Jews expelled from North African and Middle Eastern Arab countries. Most of the time, these immigrants arrived with nothing, starting over in a desert with little more than grit and hope. Many were resettled in frontier towns and farming villages, hastily near restless borders, quiet outposts that would soon become flashpoints.
Throughout the 1950s, border communities found themselves under siege. Cross-border infiltrations were regular and deadly. What began as isolated skirmishes grew into a grinding, terrifying reality for the people living on the edges of the new state, as hundreds of civilians were murdered without mercy.
Their attackers were called fedayeen – literally, “those who sacrifice themselves” – who slipped across the border from Gaza or the West Bank, then under Egyptian and Jordanian control respectively. Some of them were desperate villagers looking to return to abandoned homes or harvest crops. Some of them were opportunistic looters. But many of them came to kill.
We’ve talked about the fedayeen before, in our episode on Qibye way back in the day (check it out), detailing some of the worst stories from this dark period. But we recorded that episode well before October 7th. Now, in the aftermath of that Black Shabbat, reading about those infiltrations hits differently. And I have more sympathy than ever for the people of 1950s Israel, who just wanted to live in peace without worrying that someone would lob a grenade through their window at night as they slept next to their children. This is so important, what I was about to say. This was pre-1967. There was no “occupation.” No “settlements.” No Israeli rule in Judea or Samaria or East Jerusalem or Gaza. None of it, none of it. Just hardscrabble immigrants and refugees doing their best to stay alive.
Israeli leaders feared that if fedayeen attacks continued unchecked, those vulnerable frontier communities might simply collapse or flee. So the government adopted a strategy of deterrence, and by deterrence, I mean “making any fedayeen think twice about slipping through the border to kill Israelis.” Which meant swift, deadly, and sometimes “disproportionate” retaliation raids. I know, I know, disproportionate is a loaded word in this conflict. But here’s what I mean in this case.
If the fedayeen attacked an Israeli village, the IDF wouldn’t just try to get the attackers, who usually melted away. Instead, the army would hit the community where the attack had originated, on the other side of the border. To quote Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East, quote: “The purpose was not to locate and apprehend the infiltrators… it was to persuade the whole populace to stop harboring terrorists by demonstrating that such acts would be associated with a heavy price tag.” Stop it. Or, to quote Sean Connery in the Untouchables, “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.”
Israelis called this strategy “escalation dominance,” a form of deterrence through toughness. But that’s more or less a way of saying disproportionate. And that’s not a criticism – that was the strategy. So, when I say that word, I don’t mean it legally. I mean it descriptively.
The fedayeen sneaking over the border were Palestinian Arabs, but they were at the mercy of the countries where they’d taken refuge, like Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. Hitting them back meant crossing the border of a sovereign country, and Israel hoped that after enough reprisals, these countries would actually crack down on the infiltrators. In some places, it worked. King Hussein of Jordan, for example, had no interest in regular visits from a ticked-off, trigger-happy neighbor, and he went to great pains to rein in the fedayeen.
But he was walking a very precarious tightrope.
Hussein’s father, Abdullah the First, had always been a pragmatist. Even as his army fought the Jewish State in 1948, he maintained secret contacts with Israel. And though his country was no great superpower, he was not afraid to go against the grain, even when other Arab countries disapproved. And they deeply disapproved of Abdullah’s controversial decision in 1950, for Jordan to annex the West Bank.
But Abdullah didn’t care. He even formally renamed the area, stripping the term “Palestine” from official records and labeling it simply the “West Bank.” That is a good Nerd corner alert: it was Jordan that got rid of the name Palestine. This wasn’t a minor semantic change, but part of a broader effort to eliminate Palestinian national identity. With hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees now flooding his country, Abdullah feared a politically mobilized Palestinian population.
By the way, he was right.
Just a year after he annexed the West Bank, Abdullah was assassinated, shot in the head and chest as he and his grandson Hussein attended Friday prayers at al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The Palestinian nationalist who killed him was a devoted follower of the exiled Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini – which meant that he was an ideological extremist, bitterly opposed to Israel’s existence and ready to fight with anyone who seemed even remotely tolerant of the Jewish state.
Unsurprisingly, the assassination plunged Jordan into turmoil.
Abdullah’s son, Talal, was the obvious successor. But Talal wasn’t in the best mental state, and after a year on the throne, he was pushed out, passing the position to his 17-year-old son, Hussein. Teenage Hussein was in an impossible position for multiple reasons.
A, he was a kid.
B, he was now the king of a highly fractious country, forced to walk a tightrope between his Western allies and the region’s rising power, Egypt, all without bothering the Palestinian nationalist camp that had assassinated his grandpa.
And C, the pan-Arabs and nationalists were already primed to be super frustrated with Hussein. After all, he owed his power to the Brits, who had installed his grandpa, Abdullah, as king of Jordan, and his great-uncle, Faisal, as king of Iraq. So the monarchy tended to be pretty pro-Western.
But as we’ve said, pro-Western sympathies were out and pan-Arabism was in, and Hussein couldn’t afford to look like a Western puppet. Pan-Arab nationalism had engulfed his country, helped along by a steady stream of Nasserist propaganda that promised dignity, unity, independence, and freedom from Western control. The more Nasser called for resistance and revolution, the more restive Jordanians became. Parliamentarians pushed for closer ties with Egypt. Anti-British riots broke out. In the refugee camps of the West Bank, Palestinians were listening closely, radicalized to infiltrate Israel to steal and kill.
And that was a headache the teenage king really didn’t need. So by the mid-50s, Hussein had really clamped down on these raids, even sealing the border and jailing many would-be fedayeen. In Jordan, at least, Israeli escalation dominance had paid off. It worked, it worked.
But the Egyptian front was a whole different ball game.
And after the break, we’ll tell you why.
Welcome back. We left off with Hussein’s precarious high-wire act as the newly-crowned king of Jordan. Nasser, on the other hand, had no such issues. First of all, he was nearly twice the king’s age, powerful, self-assured, with a military career and a successful coup under his belt. Where Jordan was fractious, Egypt was the most powerful country in the region, united under the banner of pan-Arab nationalism. Nasser had no concerns about holding on to his power. At this time, at least, he was beloved.
The Jewish state had held behind-the-scenes talks with Egypt since before it was even a state. As soon as Nasser seized power, Ben Gurion sent out feelers, hoping to establish a peace treaty. (Nerd corner alert: at one point, the Israelis turned to Albert Einstein – yes, that Albert Einstein – in hopes he would act as a mediator between Egypt and the Jewish state. He declined – but he did try a few times to reach Nasser with a message of peace.)
Nasser rebuffed or ignored most of these attempts, but did eventually agree to hold talks with the Israelis. For three years, the two countries maintained a covert relationship – but all that came to an end in 1954, when the Egyptians discovered an Israeli plot to destabilize their relationship to the British. The Israeli agents involved were caught and publicly hanged, destroying any hope of reconciliation. One day, we’ll do a whole episode on the infamous Lavon Affair, because it is wild.
But for now, suffice it to say that if the relationship between the two countries was complicated before 1954, it was downright frosty afterwards. At first, Egypt tried to stop the fedayeen from sneaking into Israel from Gaza, which was under Egyptian military occupation. The Egyptians even formed a Palestinian border police force, supervised by Egyptian officers, to patrol the Gaza boundary. Which is a little like putting a fox in charge of patrolling a henhouse, but points for trying? Maybe?
In February 1955, the Israelis caught three Arab infiltrators stealing documents from a government building – after they’d already murdered a civilian. This was unusual. The fedayeen’s MO was more “shoot and run,” less “steal secret documents for unknown purposes,” and this whole operation smelled a lot like espionage. Those suspicions were confirmed when the Israelis discovered that one of those infiltrators was linked to the Egyptian intelligence apparatus. And that was unacceptable.
So Israel hit back in an operation known as Black Arrow. For three hours, Israeli platoons under the command of Ariel Sharon attacked multiple targets throughout Gaza – again, which was part of Egypt at this point – killing 36 Egyptian soldiers and 2 Egyptian civilians. The raid was designed to send Nasser a message, something along the lines of hey, stop, seriously.” Or, as I would say, “Don’t be dumb.”
Instead, it did the opposite.
Where Jordan had buckled under Israeli reprisals, Nasser thumbed his nose, actively organizing fedayeen raids from Gaza. Far from cracking down, Egypt was now training, arming, and coordinating Palestinian infiltrators. The regular infiltrations had been bad enough. But now they were professional.
To go back to our October 7th analogy, this was the difference between an angry civilian and a Hamas nukhba commando. And it was all bankrolled by an Arab superpower – which made the raids feel almost existential.
Meanwhile, the Knesset was split on how to respond to Nasser’s raids.
On one side were the deterrence guys, led by PM Ben-Gurion, Defense Minister Shimon Peres, and the popular and photogenic and telegenic IDF Chief of Staff, Moshe Dayan.
They argued that Israel couldn’t afford to appear weak. It was the Jewish state that would set the price of Jewish blood, not the outside world. And that price would be steep. If the enemy hit, Israel would hit back as hard and as much as it needed to, until the enemy eventually cried uncle! It had worked in Jordan, did it not??!
Meanwhile, the diplomats – led by Moshe Sharett, Israel’s dovish Foreign Minister, and Abba Eban, Israel’s voice at the United Nations – favored a different approach. Understandably, the people in charge of dealing with the outside world were a little more concerned about optics. Sharett and Eban worried that constant retaliation would isolate Israel diplomatically, eventually turning international opinion against the Jewish state, particularly in the UN. (Hm. Sounds familiar.)
Sharett in particular believed that Israel’s long-term security would depend not just on military might, but on its moral standing in the eyes of the world.
But Ben Gurion, who was world-famous for his stubbornness, merely sniffed oom, shmoom. (Oom is the Hebrew acronym for the UN.) Winston Churchill had once called him “a little obstinate man,” and, ya know what, the shoe fit. He was obstinate, particularly when it came to his favorite slogan: It doesn’t matter what the gentiles say. It matters what the Jews will do. And the Jews were tired of being threatened, invaded, and shot at by their neighbors.
And in addition to Egypt and Jordan, their neighbor to the northeast was really getting on their nerves.
If you’ve ever wondered what political chaos looks like, study Syria in the early ‘50s. Three revolutions in a year. Coups, counter-coups, counter-counter-coups. Generals barely had time to hang their portraits before they were torn down.
The only constant was hostility towards Israel. And most of the friction was concentrated in the DMZ, which sounds like a late 90s rapper but is actually the DeMilitarized Zone, or buffer area, established by the armistice agreement that had ended the war of 1948.
Israel made it through the war with more territory than the UN offered in the 1947 partition plan. In fact, it gained territory on all sides… except the Syrian front. And Syria was holding on to land that the UN had promised to the Jewish state.
The 1949 Armistice forced the Syrians to pull back, leaving behind three demilitarized zones that Israel claimed rightfully belonged to the Jewish state. But the Syrians didn’t actually recognize the Jewish state. And they were very annoyed about leaving behind these DMZs, which soon became 65 square miles of pure, bristling tension.
One of the flashpoints was the Hula Valley, an agriculturally rich region in northern Israel, just south of Lebanon and west of the Golan Heights. Technically, it was inside Israeli territory, bordering Syria. But border communities in Israel tend to turn hot at a moment’s notice, and the Hula Valley was no exception.
Israeli farmers wanted to cultivate the land. They tried to drain swamps, build irrigation canals, and expand settlements. But Syria’s government, dominated by ultra-nationalist officers, saw every tractor and shovel as an act of creeping annexation.
The area quickly became a battleground. Syrian forces began shooting and then shelling Israeli farmers working land within the DMZs. Armed guards started accompanying Israeli tractors, and the people of the Hula Valley reinforced their bomb shelters and made their kids practice evacuation drills.
But Israel wasn’t just playing defense. Remember, the name of the game was escalation dominance, and if Syria wanted to start a fight, then by golly, the Israelis were gonna give them one. They retaliated with deadly airstrikes, renewing the tit-for-tat cycle of violence and leaving scores of soldiers and civilians dead on both sides. Anyone who had hoped for a detente between the two would be waiting a long, long time.
And that is the background you need to understand the wild geopolitical circus slash dumpster fire that was about to unfold.
But before we continue, let’s recap, because I know this is a lot. Here’s the quickest summary I can muster:
It’s the first half of the 1950s. Israel is getting hit hard by fedayeen infiltrations from Jordan and Egypt and shelling from Syria. They establish a policy of escalation dominance, i.e. hitting back hard enough to make the enemy think twice. For complicated political reasons, it works okay in Jordan. It doesn’t work at all in Egypt or Syria. And though all three Arab countries are highly chaotic, one thing unites the common people: pan-Arab idealism mixed with hatred for Israel, which Nasser has presented to the world as yet another colonial outpost established by European imperialists.
OK, recap over. Back to the story.
Despite his hatred of European imperialism, Nasser was surprisingly cozy with one Eurasian empire: the USSR. But this was a marriage of convenience. Nasser wanted weapons. The USSR wanted regional influence. A real I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine kind of arrangement. In September of 1955, both parties got what they wanted. Egypt signed a massive weapons deal with Czechoslovakia, acting on behalf of the Soviet Union.
The $320 million agreement was staggering in scale. It included state-of-the-art tanks, MiG fighters, naval destroyers, minesweepers, and submarines that made Egypt’s prior weapons look like toys.
Nasser, of course, was delighted. He’d found a way to break the Western monopoly on arms and build an army that could wipe out the Jewish state. The Soviet Union was equally pleased with itself, having gained an important and influential foothold into the region. But Washington, London, and Paris were decidedly less pleased. The deal confirmed their fears that Nasser was sliding into the Soviet camp.
The Cold War had officially arrived on Israel’s doorstep. And it was not looking good for the Jewish state.
For Israel, this deal felt like an existential threat – an indication that Egypt was gearing up to redress the humiliation of 1948. And this time, they were far better equipped. The Egyptian army was slowly becoming a Soviet army, trained by Soviet experts and equipped with Soviet weapons.
Until this point, Israel’s military advantage rested on quality over quantity: better tactics, better training, better use of limited resources. Back in 1948, when they were desperate for weapons, the USSR had stepped in, brokering a deal through Czechoslovakia. But the relationship between the Jewish state and the Communist empire had long since soured, and now the Soviets had leveled the technological playing field by flooding Egypt with advanced weapons.
If Israel had felt pressured and isolated before, it was desperate now.
But Nasser’s deal had an unexpected upside. A pair of unlikely allies emerged from the shadows, suddenly united by a common interest. And these were no bit players, but empires with serious influence.
Since late 1954, France had been bogged down in a nasty war with one of its colonies. The Algerian Liberation Front knew they had no hope of defeating France on the battlefield. But they could make life in Algeria so hellish for the French that eventually, they’d just pack up and go back to Europe. And which Arab strongman do you think was funding and arming the Algerian rebels against France?
You got it: the same guy funding and arming fedayeen against Israel: Egyptian president, Lieutenant Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser. France’s Foreign Minister, Christian Pineau, was crystal clear: Egypt had to be contained. And if that meant France had to step up weapons shipments to Israel, then that’s exactly what France would do.
Meanwhile, Britain was growing increasingly alarmed by Nasser’s rhetoric. If they weren’t careful, they’d have a powerful anti-Western pro-Soviet folk hero whipping up the entire Middle East and threatening Western interests.
Only the Americans seemed to tiptoe around Nasser. President Eisenhower feared alienating Arab states, especially oil-rich allies like Saudi Arabia. He had no intention of fueling an arms race between Israel and the Arab world. Plus, unlike Britain and France, he still harbored hopes of wooing Nasser back from the cold embrace of the Soviet Union.
But Israel had no time for tiptoeing. If Nasser continued, unchallenged, the very existence of the Jewish state would be at stake. So they sought out their natural allies and slowly, an unexpected tripartite alliance began to take shape. Israel, France, and Britain had shared interests that they needed to protect.
They got their opportunity in July of 1956. But that is a story for next week. Don’t miss part 2 of our epic three-part series on the Suez Canal Crisis.
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Unpacking Israeli History is a production of Unpacked, an OpenDor Media Brand. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend who you think will appreciate it – and leave us a rating on Apple or Spotify – it really helps other people find our podcast. And one last thing – I LOVE hearing from listeners so email me on noam@unpacked.media to share your thoughts!
This episode was produced by Rivky Stern. Our team for this episode includes Simon Apfel, Hona Dodge, Adi Elbaz, and Rob Pera. I’m your host, Noam Weissman. Thanks for listening, see you next week for Part 2!