Suez Crisis

The Suez Crisis, also named the Tripartite Aggression and the Kadesh Operation, was an invasion of Egypt in late 1956 by Israel, followed by the United Kingdom and France. The aims were to regain Western control of the Suez Canal and to remove Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser from power. After the fighting had started, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Nations forced the three invaders to withdraw. The episode humiliated Great Britain and France and strengthened Nasser.

On October 29, Israel invaded the Egyptian Sinai. Britain and France issued a joint ultimatum to cease fire, which was ignored. On November 5, Britain and France landed paratroopers along the Suez Canal. The Egyptian forces were defeated, but they did block the canal to all shipping. It became clear that the Israeli invasion and the subsequent Anglo-French attack had been planned beforehand by the three countries.

The three allies had attained a number of their military objectives, but the Canal was now useless and heavy pressure from the United States and the USSR forced them to withdraw. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had strongly warned Britain not to invade; he now threatened serious damage to the British financial system. Historians conclude the crisis "signified the end of Great Britain's role as one of the world's major powers". Peden in 2012 states, "The Suez crisis is widely believed to have contributed significantly to Britain's decline as a world power." The Suez Canal was closed from October 1956 until March 1957. Israel fulfilled some of its objectives, such as attaining freedom of navigation through the Straits of Tiran.

Suez

Suez (Arabic: السويس‎ as-Suways ; Egyptian Arabic: es-Sewēs, el-Sewēs pronounced [esseˈweːs]) is a seaport city (population ca. 497,000) in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez (a branch of the Red Sea), near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal, having the same boundaries as Suez governorate. It has three harbors, Adabya, Ain Sukhna and Port Tawfiq, and extensive port facilities. Together they form a metropolitan area. Railway lines and highways connect the city with Cairo, Port Said, and Ismailia. Suez has a petrochemical plant, and its oil refineries have pipelines carrying the finished product to Cairo.

History

Early Islamic era

In the 7th century AD a town named "Kolzum" stood just north of the site of present-day Suez and served as eastern terminus of a canal built by Amr ibn al-'As linking the Nile River and the Red Sea. Kolzum's trade fell following the closure of the canal in 770 by the second Abbasid caliph al-Mansur to prevent his enemies in Arabia from accessing supplies from Egypt and the lands north of it. Nonetheless, the town benefited from the trade that remained between Egypt and Arabia. By 780 al-Mansur's successor al-Mahdi restored part of the canal. The Qarmatians led by Hasan ibn Ahmad defeated a Fatimid army headed by Gawhar al-Siqilli at Kolzum in 971 and thereby captured the town. Following his defeat in Cairo by al-Siqilli at the end of that year, Hasan and his forces retreated to Arabia via Kolzum. Suez was situated nearby and served as a source of drinking water for Kolzum according to Arab traveler al-Muqaddasi who visited in 986.

Suez (film)

Suez is an American film released on October 28, 1938 by 20th Century Fox, with Darryl F. Zanuck in charge of production, directed by Allan Dwan and starring Tyrone Power, Loretta Young and Annabella. It is very loosely based on events surrounding the construction, between 1859 and 1869, of the Suez Canal, planned and supervised by French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps. The screenplay is so highly fictionalized that, upon the film's release in France, de Lesseps' descendants sued (unsuccessfully) for libel.

It was nominated for three Academy Awards: Cinematography (Peverell Marley), Original Music Score (uncredited Louis Silvers) and Sound Recording (uncredited Edmund H. Hansen).

Plot

During a tennis match in Paris between Ferdinand de Lesseps (Tyrone Power) and his friend Vicomte Rene de Latour (Joseph Schildkraut), the enthusiastic admiration of Countess Eugenie de Montijo (Loretta Young) for de Lesseps attracts the attention of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (Leon Ames). Bonaparte sees to it that both she and de Lesseps are invited to his reception. At the party, a fortuneteller predicts that Eugenie will have a troubled life, but also wear a crown, and that de Lesseps will dig a ditch. Entranced by Eugenie's beauty, Bonaparte arranges for his romantic rival to be assigned to a diplomatic post in Egypt, joining his father, Count Mathieu de Lesseps (Henry Stephenson), the Consul-General. De Lesseps impulsively asks Eugenie to marry him immediately, but she turns him down.

Suez (disambiguation)

Suez is a seaport town in north-eastern Egypt. Suez can also describe the following:

See also