Chapter 11, Part 9: The Suez War

Section Seven
The Suez War

I mentioned earlier that Syria and Egypt stood up to the foreign pacts and chose the path of neutrality between the two rival camps. It was a positive neutrality, different from Swiss neutrality, because it was confined to not joining either the Eastern or the Western bloc. But the Eastern camp showed us a degree of friendship of which we never received a fraction from the Western camp.

Our quarrel with the West was that it wanted to draw us into military pacts aimed at the Soviet Union.. whereas our national interest lay in preparing ourselves to resist Zionism.. which had become a deadly cancer in the heart of the Arab homeland, thanks to diplomatic support and financial aid, above all American.

The West refused to supply the Arabs with arms.. so Syria and Egypt bought them from the East in 1955, while Nuri al-Said was singing the praises of the Baghdad Pact.. which the two allied countries, Egypt and Syria, rejected. America's first reaction to the arms deal Egypt concluded with the Soviet Union was to decide to withdraw the promise it had made to help Egypt build its High Dam, which was meant to store huge quantities behind it until they were needed, and to prevent harmful floods in years of heavy rain.

The United States also lost patience with Abdel Nasser's regime when it recognized People's China on 16 May 1956.

The liberated Arab states, especially Egypt and Syria, had attended the Bandung Conference (in Indonesia) from 18 to 24 April 1955. At that conference the principle of positive neutrality between the two hostile blocs, the Atlantic Alliance and the socialist camp, was established.

The conference adopted ten principles, the most important of which were:

A. Respect for fundamental human rights.

B. Respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations.

C. Recognition of the equality of all races.

D. Respect for the right of every nation to defend itself.

E. Abstention from interference in the internal affairs of another country.

F. Avoidance of acts or threats of aggression.

G. Settlement of all international disputes by peaceful means.

America entered into a game of impossible demands with Egypt.. setting a new condition every day. The last condition put to Egypt was the right of the World Bank to review Egypt's foreign debt.. When the Egyptian ambassador went to the State Department to tell it that Egypt accepted this condition, the Secretary of State, Mr. John Foster Dulles, informed him that the United States had withdrawn its offer to contribute to financing the dam. The ambassador was thunderstruck, and he cabled Cairo what he had been told on 19 July 1956.

Abdel Nasser's answer to this American challenge was not long in coming.

At that time I was in Cairo on an official mission. A Syrian parliamentary delegation headed by Dr. Maarouf al-Dawalibi had arrived at the invitation of the Egyptian National Assembly. We were invited to Alexandria to meet President Gamal Abdel Nasser at the Ma'mura rest house on 26 July 1956.

I had met President Nasser the year before in his office in Cairo, when I went as Syria's delegate to the Council of the Arab League for the admission of the State of Sudan as a member. The Sudanese Foreign Minister, Mubarak Zarrouk, who won the admiration of the delegations with his poetic gift and wide culture, attended that meeting representing his country.

I asked for an appointment to see the President in order to deliver an oral message that President al-Quwatli had entrusted to me.. It had two parts: first, to affirm that Syria stood by its big sister and against the pacts, and second, to ease the entry of Syrian qamar al-din (apricot paste) into Egypt.. Egypt had banned it, along with other goods, because of its poor economic situation.. Abdel Nasser answered the request of his brother al-Quwatli and reopened Egypt's doors to the qamar al-din of the two Ghoutas, to the great joy of the apricot growers of Damascus.

That day I heard from Abdel Nasser the harshest kind of criticism of Nuri al-Said, whom he called the worst Arab renegade.

At the session held at Ma'mura with Abdel Nasser, Dr. al-Dawalibi, who headed the delegation, spoke of the close relations binding Syria and Egypt and reviewed the international situation in the region.

He recalled his famous statement that our enemy is Zionism and not communism, a statement that took on an international dimension at the time.. especially as it came from a man of al-Dawalibi's standing in religion and law.[1] Then, on behalf of the delegation, he offered President Abdel Nasser whatever form of union suited Egyptian conditions.

Naturally we were not surprised by al-Dawalibi's offer, because any one of us in his place would have spoken no other language. We are all Arab nationalists, and the idea of Arab unity runs in our bodies with our blood.. and this was an opportunity not to be missed. This was so even though al-Dawalibi was not an official representing the government.. and carried no official mandate.. Even so, he had the support of all the members of the delegation. But we were surprised by Abdel Nasser's position: he did not reject the idea outright, but he skirted around it and described it as a hasty step.. that would arouse the fears of the West at a time when we were not able to protect any Egyptian Syrian union.

Instead of union he proposed a series of economic and cultural measures.. alongside the military agreement, so that the people of the two countries could get to know one another after a long separation imposed by past international circumstances.

We were invited to lunch at his table.. and after that he asked us to accompany him to the main square of Alexandria, where he was to make a speech on international politics.

All along the great distance between Ma'mura and Alexandria I saw countless crowds of people cheering the President in his motorcade.. When we sat beside him on the huge platform set up in the middle of the square, and the people learned that a Syrian parliamentary delegation was there, they greeted us with applause, cheers and brotherly salutes of indescribable warmth.

The people's welcome grew warmer when the President stood up to welcome us in his turn.. He spoke about international politics, and the Arab region in particular.. and then he dropped his huge bomb: he announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal, to return it to those who had dug it with their blood and sweat, and to build the High Dam that the Western powers had refused to help finance.

Everyone who follows events knows that France and England conspired against Egypt with Israel, and the three states waged an unjust war on it.. Israel began it with an attack on Sinai on the morning of 29 October 1956. England and France followed on the 31st by landing their forces in the Canal Zone. When the aggression took place the Syrian government was headed by Sabri al-Asali, and I was Minister of Education in it.

On 7 November the United Nations condemned the Tripartite Aggression, and a ceasefire was declared.

Dr. Nazim al-Qudsi (Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies), who stood in for President al-Quwatli during the President's journey to Moscow on 30 October 1956, the second day of the fighting on the Canal, to rally support for Egypt, informed us that the Council of Ministers would be in permanent session. So we made the presidential palace our "headquarters" and did not leave it, night or day.

I record for history that the Council of Ministers was not of one mind on carrying out the terms of the military alliance with Egypt.. Some ministers wanted to "wait and see" before throwing the Syrian army into the battle, until the course of events became clear on the Sinai front and at the world level.

But there were others among them who wanted to enter the war at once: first, to honor the Syrian state's signature on its commitment to come to Egypt's aid, and second, because if Egypt fell, the real blow would fall on Syria, Israel's hostile neighbor.

I was one of those who held this view.. and held it with passion.

The Council of Ministers decided to summon the Chief of the General Staff to the session, and he came with some senior officers of his command. The ministers put a precise question to him about the army's readiness and how far it was able to fight. With sorrow plain on his face, he answered that we could resist for four hours only. We nearly fainted when this bomb burst over our heads. So this was the painful state the army had reached through the feuding of "its princes' fiefdoms?"[2]

The confusion was ended by the arrival at the presidential palace of Mr. Mahmoud Riad, Egypt's ambassador, with a telegram he had received from Egypt asking the government not to commit the Syrian army, because Egypt had decided to withdraw from Sinai, being unable to fight three states, and so the entry of Syrian forces into the battle would be a sacrifice with no return.

Even so, Syria took part in the battle by blowing up with explosives the stations of the Iraq Petroleum Company on its territory, on the personal orders of the head of the Deuxième Bureau, Lieutenant Colonel Abd al-Hamid al-Sarraj.

It was a splendid act of solidarity with our sister under attack.

The world was stunned when the news was broadcast on the day the explosions were carried out, the morning of the third of November 1956.

The Council of Ministers was called into urgent session under Dr. al-Qudsi, the Vice President of the Republic. Among those present were the People's Party ministers Ahmad Qanbar, Rashad Jabri and myself. The meeting was attended by the Chief of the General Staff, Major General Tawfiq Nizam al-Din, and Lieutenant Colonel Abd al-Hamid al-Sarraj, who sat beside the Minister of Defense, Abd al-Hasib Raslan.

Vice President al-Qudsi spoke. His agitation showed in the lines of his face and in the tone of his voice. He addressed his words to al-Sarraj.. and not to the Minister of Defense or the Chief of the General Staff.

In fact Dr. al-Qudsi knew where the center of gravity lay in the operation, so he turned to the man who had really been in command of carrying it out, al-Sarraj.

Writing about the Suez War is not among the subjects of this book, so I will be brief.. The Egyptian forces put up a heroic resistance in the city of Suez, and the Soviet Union issued its famous ultimatum of 5 November 1956 to the aggressor states, to stop their aggression on Egypt at once and hasten their withdrawal, and to know that London and Paris were not out of reach of Soviet missiles.. It followed this ultimatum by moving its forces toward the Middle East on 7 November.

The New York Times wrote in its issue of the 9th of the same month:

"These movements caused great alarm in the Western countries."[3]

Two years after this aggression, the leader Khrushchev told President Abdel Nasser "that the Soviets had been serious in issuing this ultimatum".[4]

Eisenhower believed it was serious too.. which is why he moved quickly to stop the aggression. America was certainly worried about the repercussions of the Suez War in other parts of the world. It appears from the minutes of a meeting between Dulles, the American Secretary of State, and Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, the British Foreign Secretary, on 10 December 1956, that Dulles said to Mr. Lloyd:

"The reaction of the United States to your move in Egypt was not due to any love for the Egyptians. But the United States does not see how world order could have held if it had closed its eyes. After what happened in Egypt, President Rhee and Chiang Kai-shek began working together to start a war in Asia..

Dulles said: it is not the policy of the United States government to appease Abdel Nasser, and it is ready to put pressure on him.."[5]

Two days later President Eisenhower wrote a memorandum to his Secretary of State (dated 12/12/1956), which said:

"I continue to believe that among the measures we must take is to build up an Arab rival to Nasser. The natural choice, it seems, is the man you and I have so often talked about.."[6]

The document does not show who the man was. But it is clear that the Western powers cook up in the kitchens of their policy whatever they see fit for striking us against one another.

And the strange thing is that we fall in with the game so easily.

Weak culture? Opportunism? Vanity? Weak faith? Perhaps it was all of these. By every accepted measure, it is right to say that Egypt was the victor in the Suez War. The Suez Canal became entirely its own property.. and the dues from the ships passing through it now come to Egypt.

The aggressor forces were forced to withdraw from Egypt.

Egypt won the collective support of the world.

Gamal Abdel Nasser's prestige rose in the Arab world.

The Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt.

The British Prime Minister, Mr. Anthony Eden, fell.

And the French Prime Minister, the socialist Guy Mollet, followed him.. the man who used to say that victory in the Algerian war ran through Cairo!

Nor may we belittle what Syria did and gave in support of Algeria; it did everything it could. What it did, modest as it was, was the fulfillment of its national duty.

The Algerian revolution profited from the shaken political situation in France, and it blazed more fiercely until it ended by wresting independence.. at the cost of sacrifices beyond imagining.[7]

Endnotes:

[1] See p. 251 of this book.

[2] I heard from a senior official in the Syrian presidential palace that shortly before the Suez War he attended a meeting in Cairo with al-Quwatli and Abdel Nasser at which the Chief of the General Staff, Shawkat Shuqayr, declared that the Syrian army could not hold out for more than 24 hours if war broke out with Israel. The two presidents were stunned too.
This senior official is a friend of mine, and I still see him to this day and we talk over those bitter memories, but he has not allowed me to mention his name.

[3] From Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, Sanawat al-Ghalayan (The Years of Upheaval), p. 67 ff.

[4] The same source.

[5] See the report Selwyn Lloyd sent his government about the meeting, dated 10/12/1956, in Mohamed Hassanein Heikal's book Sanawat al-Ghalayan, p. 781.

[6] From the same source, p. 824.

[7] For a study of the Suez War, see in particular the following sources:
Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, Qissat al-Suways: Akhir al-Ma'arik fi Asr al-Amaliqa (The Suez Story: The Last of the Battles in the Age of the Giants), Beirut 1983, and his other book "Milaffat al-Suways" (The Suez Files) 1986, which contains an important collection of documents.
Moshe Dayan, al-Fashiyya (Fascism), translated by Joseph Saghir, Dar al-Masira, Beirut. Among the things this terrorist wrote, he exposed the dirty role England and France played in the Suez War in order to destroy Abdel Nasser's regime in alliance with Israel, and he said: "We discussed it with the two states: ours was the part of the thief, and England and France had the part of the policeman; theirs was the part of the angel and ours the part of the devil", p. 201.
Eden's memoirs, translated by Khayri Hammad, Beirut, Part Two, undated.