Suez Crisis
| Suez Crisis | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Cold War and the Arab–Israeli conflict | |||||||||
Smoke rising from oil tanks beside the Suez Canal hit during the initial Anglo-French assault on Port Said | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
|
Israel United Kingdom France | Egypt | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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| Strength | |||||||||
|
175,000 45,000 34,000 | 90,000 | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
Israel:
|
| ||||||||
| 1,000 civilians killed | |||||||||
The Suez Crisis, also known as the second Arab–Israeli war, the Tripartite Aggression in the Arab world and the Sinai War in Israel, was a British–French–Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956. Israel invaded on 29 October, with the primary objective of re-opening the Straits of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as the recent tightening of the eight-year-long Egyptian blockade further prevented Israeli passage. After issuing a joint ultimatum for a ceasefire, the United Kingdom and France joined the Israelis on 31 October, seeking to depose Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and regain control of the Suez Canal, which Nasser had nationalised earlier in the year.
Shortly after the invasion began, the three countries came under heavy political pressure from both the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as from the United Nations, eventually prompting their withdrawal from Egypt.
The crisis demonstrated that the United Kingdom and France could no longer pursue their independent foreign policy without consent from the United States. Israel's four-month-long occupation of the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula enabled it to attain freedom of navigation through the Straits of Tiran, but the Suez Canal was closed from October 1956 to March 1957.
The crisis strengthened Nasser's standing and led to international humiliation for the British—with historians arguing that it signified the end of its role as a superpower—as well as the French amid the Cold War. As a result of the conflict, the UN established an emergency force to police and patrol the Egypt–Israel border. For his diplomatic efforts in resolving the conflict through UN initiatives, Canadian external affairs minister Lester B. Pearson received a Nobel Peace Prize.
Analysts have argued that the crisis may have emboldened the USSR, prompting the Soviet invasion of Hungary.