Exactly 70 years ago, Britain, France, and Israel together launched a war on Egypt that would end with their apparent humiliation and defeat but would sow the seeds of one of the most brutal and devastating occupations in history.

In response to Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser’s July 1956 nationalisation of the Suez Canal, the three countries secretly conspired to attack Egypt, with Israel invading on 29 October 1956 and quickly overrunning the Gaza Strip - then under Egyptian control - and most of the Sinai Peninsula.

After issuing an ultimatum - supposedly to both sides - to vacate the area around the canal, British and French paratroopers stormed Port Said, destroying much of the city and killing hundreds of civilians.

Egyptian forces put up a determined resistance but, in the face of three powerful enemies, were no match.

A changing balance of power and an ill-judged intervention

The war initially looked like a military defeat for Egypt, but what followed was to change the entire balance of power in the Middle East, while arguably laying the groundwork for the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and in particular the occupation of the Gaza Strip.

Anne Irfan, an associate professor at University College London and author of 'A Short History of the Gaza Strip', told The New Arab that “1956 is the first time that Israel actually imposes and carries out an occupation and a lot of what is established during that period is put to use after 1967,” when Israel once again occupied the Gaza Strip and Sinai, as well as the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.

However, neither Israel nor Britain and France were allowed to keep their war gains at the time.

The intervention came as Britain and France were losing their status as global powers to the United States and the Soviet Union. The US saw their invasion of Egypt as dangerous adventurism that could drive Arab countries into the arms of the Soviet Union and demanded a ceasefire and withdrawal, applying severe economic pressure.

At the time, the Israeli-US alliance had yet to take shape, and the Cold War and containing the Soviet Union was far more of a priority for the US.

“Israel was less of a priority for the US in 1956. It was only eight years old as a country, and it had not yet become a regional military superpower in the way it would later on. The US did not really assess [at the time] that Israel was that important to its strategic interests. Later on, that obviously changed,” Irfan told The New Arab.

The Soviet Union, fresh from its own intervention in Hungary, also seized on the situation, threatening Britain and France with missile strikes which, in reality, it was unable to deliver at that time. The Soviet threats, however, arguably motivated the US to ramp up its own pressure on the two former colonial powers.

The UK and France withdrew their forces by December 1956, while the Israeli occupation of Sinai and Gaza lingered on until February.

Nasser's hubris

Despite Egypt’s military defeat in the war, the international pressure which forced the withdrawal of the three invading countries meant that Nasser came out of it apparently much stronger than before.

After the British and French withdrawal, he was in control of the Suez Canal and presented himself as a victor. His popularity soared in Egypt, and his proclaimed pan-Arabist ideology found receptive ears across the Arab world. Under his leadership, Egypt would go on to form the short-lived United Arab Republic with Syria and then disastrously intervened in North Yemen.

The Gaza Strip was taken over by Egypt in 1948 after the first Arab-Israeli war. Covering less than 1.5% of historic Palestine, its population swelled from around 60,000 before the Palestinian Nakba to over 200,000 afterwards as refugees came in from areas seized by Israel.

Before 1956, Egyptian rule in Gaza was authoritarian and unpopular with Palestinians. Independent political activity was suppressed, and Egyptian troops stopped Palestinians who wanted access to their former lands from crossing the border.

However, when Israel’s first occupation of Gaza ended in March 1957, Nasser was hailed as a hero and the Egyptian authorities were welcomed back by Palestinians. Part of this was due to the Egyptian leader’s perceived success in standing up to Britain and France as well as Israel, but much of it could also be explained by the brutality of Israeli rule.

A 'laboratory' for future occupation

After the 1948 Nakba, Palestinians who had been displaced by Israel to Gaza and the West Bank would regularly try to cross the armistice lines into what was now Israel. Some of them were armed fighters, known as the fedayeen, who were intent on launching attacks on Israel. Most, however, were civilians trying to access their land and their former homes and belongings.

Israel had the same policy for both armed and unarmed Palestinian “infiltrators” - to shoot them on sight.

Irfan said that Israel’s policies towards Gaza were based on transfer, depopulation, and settlement and in many ways its policies resembled those of today.

“You had Israeli politicians back then saying very explicitly that Gaza is part of Israel… [Israel’s first Prime Minister David] Ben-Gurion first wanted to annex Gaza in 1949.”

When Israel’s first occupation of Gaza began in November 1956, it was accompanied by searches for and executions of fedayeen fighters. Israel conducted “screening” operations, which meant that all males aged between 15 and 60 were subject to arrest by Israeli forces. These very often were preludes to massacres.

At least 275 people were massacred by Israel in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the first weeks of the occupation, with the Israeli army lining up men and boys and summarily executing them. Around 177 more were killed in other camps. An estimated 1,500 people in the Gaza Strip were killed throughout the four-month occupation.

In 'A Short History of the Gaza Strip', Irfan describes this brief occupation as a “laboratory” for Israel’s post-1967 occupation of the Gaza Strip.

“A lot of what they put in place in 1956 in Gaza ended very abruptly because the US intervened and forced Israel to withdraw, but when 1967 happened, its plans were resurrected quite quickly,” she told The New Arab, adding that the plans included the depopulation of Gaza, the imposition of Israeli currency, and the destruction of connections to Egypt.

“Even in 1956 there were conversations about establishing settlements there,” she added.

One of the most important pieces of infrastructure destroyed by Israel was the railway line connecting Gaza to Egypt across Sinai.

Defeat and occupation from 'victory'

Egyptian authorities returned triumphantly to Gaza and Sinai after the Israeli withdrawal in 1957, but the military and political circumstances were very different. As part of UN efforts to resolve the crisis, a United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was established to patrol the borders of the Gaza Strip and Sinai, but only on the Egyptian side.

In May 1967, Nasser ordered UNEF’s withdrawal in order to deploy Egyptian troops along the border with Israel, after receiving false reports from the Soviet Union that Israel was preparing to launch a war against Syria.

This was taken as a casus belli by Israel and led to Egypt’s humiliating defeat in 1967 and the second occupation of the Gaza Strip and Sinai. 

This time there was no serious pressure from the US for an Israeli withdrawal. Nasser had lost influence both in the Arab world and on the world stage, and the US was increasingly seeing the value of Israel as an ally. Israel’s occupation of Arab territory in fact helped cement the alliance.

The late British historian D.R. Thorpe pointed out that the 1956 war helped Nasser to establish his position as the “leader of Arab nationalism”, but it gave him an “inflated view of his own power”.

“In his mind, he had ‘defeated’ the combined forces of Great Britain, France and Israel, whereas in fact Britain had been ‘defeated’ by America,” Thorpe wrote in The Telegraph in 2006, adding that the 1967 war would never have happened if the 1956 crisis hadn’t ended in the way it did.

Israel’s current crimes in Gaza dwarf those it committed in 1956-1957, but arguably the seeds of occupation were sown then, with present-day Israeli plans for the annexation of Gaza, the “voluntary emigration” of its population, and its settlement by Israelis closely resembling those floated at that time.

What has changed, however, is the geopolitical situation which enabled Nasser to proclaim his “victory” over Israel, Britain, and France and be recognised as a leader of the Arab world.

The world today is very different, with Arab countries unwilling or unable to provide any support to Palestinians in Gaza and the US continuing to support Israel unconditionally.

Israel is therefore able to inflict far more damage on the Gaza Strip - and the rest of the region - than it could in 1956.

Amr Salahi is a senior journalist and news editor with The New Arab

Edited by Charlie Hoyle