Following Nasser's July nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, Western powers proposed placing the canal under an international users' association. Egypt's rejection of the scheme on October 9 hardened positions on both sides, feeding into the secret Anglo-French-Israeli planning that culminated in the Suez Crisis invasion later that month, a conflict that exposed the decline of British and French global power.
The Suez Canal had been effectively controlled by British and French shareholders since its 1869 opening, a lifeline for oil shipments and imperial trade routes to Asia. When Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company on July 26, 1956, to fund the Aswan High Dam after Western financing fell through, it was read in London and Paris as an existential threat to their strategic interests, and to their pride.
Diplomatic efforts through the autumn tried to find a face-saving arrangement, including proposals for a Suez Canal Users' Association that would have retained substantial Western influence over the waterway's operation. Nasser, having just wrested a symbol of national sovereignty from foreign hands, refused to accept any scheme resembling continued colonial control, and Egypt's October rejection effectively closed the door on negotiated settlement.
Within weeks, Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula in coordination with a secret Anglo-French plan, followed by British and French bombing and invasion, ostensibly to separate the combatants but actually to reclaim canal control. American and Soviet pressure, arriving with unusual unity during the Cold War, forced a humiliating withdrawal of British, French, and Israeli forces, hastening the end of European colonial pretensions in the Middle East and marking the moment Washington eclipsed London as the West's dominant power broker in the region.
Key people: Gamal Abdel Nasser