Dwight eisenhower and the suez canal crisis of 1956

Abstract

On October 24, representatives of the governments of Israel, France, and Great Britain held a secret meeting in Paris, where they decided to attack Egypt to reverse President Gamal Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal Company. At the meeting, the three parties agreed that Israeli forces would advance toward the Suez Canal Zone, after which France and Britain would issue an ultimatum demanding that Israel and Egypt stop fighting and accept the occupation of the canal zone by forces from the two European countries. Certain that Cairo would reject the demand, Britain and France would then launch an air attack on Egypt, followed by an invasion. On that same day, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan decided that, if one of them were to be attacked, it would be understood as an attack upon all three. Were such a situation to unfold, the three would form a unified command to repulse the attack. As these two separate covenants were being settled, the Soviet Union ordered tens of thousands of its troops to march into Budapest to end the student demonstrations that had started the day before against the Hungarian government and its Moscow-imposed policies.