Egypt

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Egypt Under Nasser

When Naguib voiced support for the old parties and the Muslim Brotherhood, most of the Free Officers, under the leadership of Nasser, opposed him. In early 1954 Nasser became prime minister, while Naguib retained the presidency. A failed attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood to assassinate Nasser in late 1954 gave him a reason to clamp down on the Brotherhood and on other groups thought to favor Naguib, who subsequently was dismissed from the presidency and placed under house arrest. Nasser became acting head of state. He was formally elected president in 1956.

The revolutionaries gave precedence to domestic reforms, but they soon turned their attention to foreign affairs. They secured an agreement by which the British would evacuate the Suez Canal bases by June 1956. They also agreed to let the people of Sudan choose between union with Egypt and independence. The Egyptian government fiercely opposed attempts by the Western powers, especially the United States and Britain, to create a Middle Eastern alliance against Communism. In particular, the Egyptians condemned the British-sponsored Baghdād Pact, which brought together Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan against the USSR. An Israeli raid into the Egyptian-administered Gaza Strip in early 1955 underscored Egypt’s military vulnerability and hence its need to buy arms from abroad. Unable to purchase any weapons from the West without conditions, Nasser looked to the Communist countries. In September 1955 he concluded a $200 million deal to buy weapons from Czechoslovakia.

One of the new government’s most ambitious domestic projects, construction of the Aswān High Dam across the Nile, soon had a tremendous impact on foreign affairs. Egypt initiated the project in order to increase cultivable land and generate hydroelectric power. Initially, the World Bank, Britain, and the United States offered to lend money for the project. However, in 1956 the United States withdrew its offer, and Britain and the World Bank followed suit. The U.S. government claimed that Egypt would not be able to repay the loans, but it was widely believed that the Americans were punishing Nasser for recognizing the Communist-led People’s Republic of China. Nasser responded a week later by nationalizing the Suez Canal Company, which operated the canal and was owned by the British and French governments and private investors. In 1958 the Soviet government agreed to help finance the dam project.

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Suez Crisis

The takeover of the canal company infuriated the British, for whom the Suez Canal was a vital waterway. It also angered the French, who had built and managed the canal. Both governments threatened to force Nasser to relinquish the canal, despite the U.S. government’s opposition to military action. After diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis failed, Britain and France entered into a secret alliance with Israel, which was already considering military action against Egypt. Egypt had refused to allow Israel to use the Suez Canal and since 1951 had blocked Israel’s access to the Red Sea from its port of Elat through the Egyptian-controlled Strait of Tiran, which lies at the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba. Furthermore, Egypt was sponsoring Palestinian raids into Israeli territory.

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Israel attacked Egypt in October 1956 and soon captured the Gaza Strip and most of the Sinai Peninsula, while Britain and France invaded Port Said and began occupying the canal zone. Within a week, however, the United Nations, at the urging of both the USSR and the United States, demanded a cease-fire, forcing Britain, France, and Israel to withdraw from the lands they had captured.

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United Arab Republic

The Suez Crisis enhanced the prestige of Egypt. The canal remained nationalized, Egypt was at last free from British control, and Israel was obliged for the first time to withdraw from Arab territory. The United States and other maritime nations gave Israel an informal guarantee of access to the Gulf of Aqaba. Syria sought to unite with Egypt, and Nasser agreed to the formation of the United Arab Republic (UAR) in 1958. Syrian enthusiasm cooled, however, as it became apparent that Egypt would dominate the UAR. The UAR suffered a further blow when a new regime in Iraq, which had just overthrown the pro-Western monarchy there in July 1958, chose not to enter the union. Newly independent Sudan also chose not to join the UAR. In July 1961, when the Egyptian government moved toward an openly socialist policy, Syria’s business leaders turned against the union. Syria seceded from the UAR soon thereafter.

Nasser was chagrined at the breakup of the union with Syria. Nevertheless, he retained the name of the UAR for his country and looked for other allies in the Arab world. In 1962 he set up a one-party political system in the UAR, with his Arab Socialist Union the sole party. When Algeria gained independence from France in 1962, the UAR hailed its new regime. When a military coup ousted the ruler of Yemen and established the Yemen Arab Republic in 1962, the UAR recognized the republican regime and sent troops to aid it against royalist forces, which Saudi Arabia supported. This action led to a prolonged proxy war with Saudi Arabia that tied up thousands of the best UAR troops. In 1963, coups in Iraq and Syria led by army officers in the Arab socialist Baath Party installed pro-UAR governments, but talks to bring these countries into the UAR broke down.

Although his attempts to create a political union failed, Nasser promoted Arab unity in other ways. When Israel threatened to draw water from the Jordan River for its national irrigation project, Nasser convened the Arab heads of state to develop a common policy against Israel. In 1964 he facilitated the birth of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), created to provide an organized channel for Palestinian nationalism. In 1966 Nasser made a mutual defense pact with Syria, hoping to moderate the stance of the radical wing of the Syrian Baath Party that had taken power. Instead, the pact emboldened Syria to engage Israel in aerial clashes in April 1967. Israel shot down six Syrian fighter jets and warned Syria against future attacks.

The Soviet government warned the UAR that Israel was concentrating its troops for an invasion of Syria. The Israelis denied the warning, which later proved false. Nevertheless, Nasser responded by sending troops into the Sinai Peninsula, which had been demilitarized after the 1956 war. He called for the removal of UN forces from the Gaza Strip and the Red Sea port of Sharm al-Sheikh, where they had been stationed since the end of the 1956 war. After reoccupying these buffer zones, the UAR announced that it would reimpose its blockade of the Strait of Tiran, preventing Israeli ships from entering or leaving the Gulf of Aqaba. The UAR press and radio also made threats against Israel.

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War with Israel

In June 1967 Israel, unable to secure military assistance from the United States or any European nations, launched surprise air attacks against its Arab enemies, virtually destroying the air forces of the UAR, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. In the ensuing Six-Day War, Israel captured the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from the UAR. Nasser retaliated by breaking diplomatic relations with the United States, which he accused of aiding Israel, and again closing the Suez Canal. Jordan and Syria likewise suffered defeat and lost territory to the Israelis.

In the wake of its defeat, the UAR sought more weapons and military advisers from the USSR. It also began to make peace with Saudi Arabia, on whom it had to rely for economic assistance. Under the terms of a peace plan for Yemen, Egyptian troops were at last withdrawn from Yemen in December 1967. As Saudi influence increased, the Egyptian government began, imperceptibly at first, moving from Arab socialism toward a more Islamic orientation.

In November 1967 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 242, a peace proposal that called for Israel’s withdrawal from lands taken in the recent fighting. In 1968 UAR and Israeli forces began firing regularly at each other across the Suez Canal, leading Nasser in March 1969 to declare a War of Attrition against Israel. Israel responded with air and land attacks on the UAR. Nasser, in turn, requested more Soviet military assistance.

In 1970 U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers proposed a peace plan that would have extended Resolution 242 by requiring Israel to give back almost all the land it had taken in 1967 in return for peace treaties with its Arab neighbors. Israel rejected the plan, while Nasser decided to join Jordan in accepting the plan. Palestinian commandos who opposed the plan challenged Jordan’s King Hussein. Nasser called another Arab summit in Cairo and managed to reconcile the two sides. He died of a heart attack within hours after the meeting ended. Nasser’s death and funeral led to an outpouring of grief throughout the Arab world.

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Egypt Under Sadat

Anwar al-Sadat, who had been vice president under Nasser, became president upon Nasser’s death. Sadat was generally assumed to be too weak to hold power for long. He surprised everyone in May 1971 by removing Nasser’s most trusted lieutenants from key leadership positions. Sadat quickly gained popular support by repealing many censorship policies, calling for a new constitution, and changing the country’s name to the Arab Republic of Egypt.

Sadat’s early initiatives in foreign policy were less successful. He proposed peace with Israel, calling for an Israeli pullback from the Suez Canal in exchange for Egypt’s renunciation of war. His proposal fell on deaf ears. Libya desired union with Egypt, and in 1971 there was hope for a broader federation including Syria and Sudan, but no union ever occurred. In 1971 Sadat signed a friendship treaty with the USSR, but it did not enable him to buy from Moscow the weapons he wanted. Frustrated that the USSR was not providing Egypt with enough weapons, Sadat asked in 1972 that most of the Soviet military advisers in Egypt leave the country.

Sadat came under increasing domestic pressure to initiate a new war against Israel to recapture the territories lost in 1967. He had hoped that the expulsion of most Soviet military advisers in 1972 would prompt the United States, now Israel’s chief ally, to seek reconciliation with Egypt, but there was no such move on the part of the United States. Meanwhile, the leaders of Israel believed that the Soviet exodus would reduce Egypt's war-making potential, and so they discounted the possibility of an Egyptian attack. In September 1973, during an Israeli election campaign in which the leading candidates favored keeping the captured territories, Sadat made a secret agreement with Syria to attack Israeli positions in the Sinai and in the Golan Heights, Syrian territory that Israel had captured in the 1967 war.

The joint attack, begun on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur and during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, broke through the Israeli defenses. Egyptian forces advanced into the Sinai as Syrian forces retook part of the Golan Heights. Neither Egypt nor Syria fully capitalized on their initial gains, however, and soon the Israelis, completely mobilized and rearmed by the United States, went on the offensive. After 18 days of fighting, Israel broke through the Egyptian lines, crossed the Suez Canal, and seized portions of the canal’s west bank down to Suez City. The UN Security Council passed resolutions calling for immediate negotiations between the warring parties. A Soviet threat to attack Israel and a U.S. threat of nuclear war finally ended the conflict. After the fighting ended, Egyptian and Israeli officers met in an attempt to disengage their troops. See Arab-Israeli War of 1973.

Following negotiations by U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger with Sadat and Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, the Egyptian and Israeli governments agreed to a peace conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in December 1973. The meeting adjourned after one day and was not reconvened. In January 1974 Kissinger began traveling between Egypt and Israel, negotiating with the countries’ leaders in a technique known as shuttle diplomacy. His efforts produced a disengagement agreement that allowed Egypt to keep territory it had recaptured east of the Suez Canal and established a buffer zone separating the Egyptian and Israeli forces in the Sinai. Sadat agreed to reopen the Suez Canal and to allow the passage of ships to and from Israel. The two governments reached an interim agreement whereby Israel withdrew from additional Egyptian territory in return for a pledge by Egypt not to go to war with Israel.

As Egypt edged toward better relations with Israel, Sadat began a domestic economic policy, known as infitah (meaning 'opening'), that encouraged private investment in Egypt. He hoped to stimulate Egypt’s economy, which had stagnated under Nasser’s brand of socialism and the effects of two wars with Israel. In the mid-1970s Sadat drew away from the USSR, terminating the 1971 friendship treaty between the two nations, and moved closer to the United States. Continued economic troubles and the election of a conservative government in Israel prompted him to take drastic action to end the costly conflict with Israel. In 1977 Sadat made a historic visit to Israel’s parliament in Jerusalem to offer a peace settlement.

Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem produced no immediate progress, but his initiative led to further meetings and negotiations between Egypt and Israel. In September 1978 U.S. president Jimmy Carter invited Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland, to continue negotiations. Although the Palestinians and almost all the other Arab governments opposed Sadat’s actions, Sadat signed the Camp David Accords, a framework for peace that provided for Israel’s phased withdrawal from the Sinai in return for full diplomatic ties with Egypt. Further negotiations led to a comprehensive peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1979.

Most Egyptians hailed Sadat’s peace policy, mainly because they hoped that it would improve economic conditions. Instead, the economy suffered further from a boycott by Arab nations that opposed Egypt’s separate peace with Israel. Egypt also became politically isolated from the Arab world. It was expelled from the Arab League, and the league’s headquarters was moved from Cairo to Tunis, Tunisia.

In 1978 Sadat tried to promote political freedom by replacing the one-party political system under the Arab Socialist Union with a multiparty system. However, he tolerated no criticism of his peace with Israel and continued to suppress socialist and Islamist groups that he deemed subversive. In September 1981 he ordered the arrest of more than 1,500 dissident political and intellectual leaders, thereby alienating most educated Egyptians. In addition, he imposed a state of emergency to prevent the Islamist groups from gaining power. On October 6, 1981, while reviewing a military parade in Cairo commemorating Egypt’s victory in the 1973 war, Sadat was assassinated by a group of Islamist officers. Egyptian security forces unearthed a widespread conspiracy of terrorists alienated by Sadat’s peace with Israel and the socioeconomic problems caused by his infitah policies. Few Egyptians or other Arabs mourned Sadat’s death.

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