| The Sinai campaign
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The armistice agreements concluded in 1949 did not pave the way to permanent peace, as originally hoped for. The reverse was true. The security situation deteriorated, and the whole armistice regime began to disintegrate. From 1954 on, Egypt, led by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, assumed the leadership in the campaign against Israel. Nasser's political successes, the evacuation of the Suez Canal Zone by Great Britain, his arms deals with Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, the nationalisation of the Suez Canal - all this enhanced his status as leader of the Arab world and intensified his aggressive designs against Israel. The blockade of Israeli and Israel-bound shipping in the Suez Canal went on intermittently, in utter disregard of the Security Council's ruling. The blockade of the Straits of Tiran was accentuated, the entrance to the Gulf was heavily fortified, incursions of fidayun squads into Israel for murder and sabotage became more frequent and impudent. The Sinai Peninsula was converted into a huge military base for the invasion of Israel. Nasser did not conceal his ambitions. He repeatedly declared that the armistice agreement did not terminate the state of war between Egypt and Israel. He boasted publicly that Egypt would "quiet Israel forever and grind it to the dust." On the signature of the tripartite military alliance with Syria and Jordan in October 1956, he exalted the tightening of the noose around Israel's neck.
The Government of Israel was driven to the conclusion that it must act in self-defence before Egypt could complete its absorption of the vast new Soviet weaponry and consolidate the Egyptian-led unified command of the triple alliance. The Anglo-French attack that was launched against Egypt at the same time had other reasons and aims. Israel's objectives were: destruction of the fidayun bases in the Gaza Strip and on the Sinai border, forestalling an Egyptian onslaught by wiping out Egypt's bases and airfields in Sinai, and the opening of the Gulf of Eilat to undisturbed Israeli navigation. For some months, Israel had been receiving supplies of arms from France, including aircraft and armour. France promised Israel to provide air cover if needed.
On October 29, 1956, Israel struck its pre-emptive blow. In a daring campaign, lasting eight days, the Israel Defence Forces occupied the Sinai peninsula, halting ten miles east of the Suez Canal in compliance with an Anglo-French demand, captured the western shore of the Gulf of Eilat and the entrance to the straits of Sharm a-Sheikh, occupied the Gaza Strip, seized great quantities of armour, guns and other military equipment, and took over 6,000 prisoners. Israel's losses were 171 dead and several hundred wounded.
The United Nations, so utterly powerless when Egypt and other Arab States had attacked and invaded Israel in 1948 and had threatened with total annihilation the new state that had come into being in accordance with the General Assembly's decision, was now swift to help Egypt and hinder an Israel which had resorted to self-defence. On October 30, a US-sponsored draft resolution in the Security Council, calling for immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops, was vetoed by Great Britain and France. On November 1, the General Assembly met in an emergency special session and on the following day called for an immediate cease-fire and withdrawal of forces. Israel agreed to the cease-fire on the basis of reciprocity. On the international scene, there was a reversal of the constellation of 1947/48. The United States and the Soviet Union, then the major champions of the establishment of a Jewish state, were now the chief protagonists in calling for Israel's withdrawal, both in the United Nations forum and in direct communications. The Soviet premier threatened that the very existence of the State of Israel might be at stake if it did not comply. Under this weighty pressure by the two Great Powers and by the General Assembly, Israel agreed on November 8 to withdraw its forces from Egypt immediately upon the conclusion of satisfactory arrangements with the United Nations emergency international force established by the General Assembly on November 5.
Withdrawal of Israeli forces from Sinai was carried out in stages between November 1956 and January 1957. Israel remained in control of the Straits of Tiran and a road leading to them and of the Gaza Strip. It fought stubbornly all along for effective guarantees of free navigation in the Gulf of Eilat, and for a change in the administration of the Gaza Strip into a joint Israel-United Nations one, in return for the withdrawal. After lengthy negotiations with the United States and the United Nations Secretary-General, Israel agreed to withdraw its forces from Sharm a-Sheikh and the Gaza Strip also, on the strength of the stationing of a UNEF there, declarations by most Maritime Powers acknowledging Israel's right to unmolested passage in the Straits, and an assurance by President Eisenhower that the United States would see to it that Israel's "hopes and expectations" did not prove to be in vain. The withdrawal from Sharm a-Sheikh was completed on March 10, and from the Gaza Strip on March 4. Freedom of navigation through the Straits had been achieved, and was maintained for the next ten years, but Israel's expectations with regard to the Gaza Strip were flagrantly disappointed within a few days.
Knowledge of Israel's political struggle for effective safeguards of its security and its basic rights and that struggle's successes and failures, is essential for the understanding of Israel's attitude prior to, during and after the Six Day War of 1967.
Meron Medzini, 1976
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