Escalation to Suez

The Egypt-Israel Border War, 1949-56

Bibliographic Data

ID10074936
AuthorsMichael B Oren (corresponding author)
Year1989
Volume24
Issue2
Pages347-375
Publication date1989-04-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/002200948902400208
OpenAlexW1986405739
LanguageEN
Citations received4

The thirtieth anniversary of the 1956 Suez crisis has sparked renewed scholarly interest in this milestone in twentieth-century history. Current research on the subject has been spurred by the recent declassification of American, British and Israeli diplomatic papers from the period which provide unprecedented insight into the many questions still surrounding the crisis.1 Among these is the central issue of Egypt-Israel relations in the period leading up to Suez. Events arising from the Egypt-Israel conflict helped precipitate the political crisis (e.g. the influence of Egypt's continuing purchase of Soviet arms and resistance to Western peace initiatives on America's decision to withdraw financial support for the Aswan Dam), and provided a pretext for its military conclusion, the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt. The second Arab-Israeli war signified the culmination of over seven years of growing tensions on the Egypt-Israel border. The basis for this escalation lay in a subjective factor: conflicting Egyptian and Israeli interpretations of the Armistice Agreement, and two objective factors: deficiencies in the Armistice and the inherent instability of the Egypt-Israel border. The deleterious impact of these constant factors was increasingly exacerbated by changing circumstances on the domestic, regional and international levels: internal developments in Egypt and Israel, inter-Arab competition for regional domination, and Great Power rivalries and policies in the Middle East. The border war had its primary origin in the conflicting interpretations of the Egypt-Israel Armistice Agreement (EIAA), signed in Rhodes in February 1949. Egypt, together with the other Arab states, held to the strict definition of an armistice according to international law, viz. that such an agreement did not end a state of war but was merely a declaration of truce. This position, repeatedly

Ancient history · Political science · Agricultural and Environmental Management · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies

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