Great Speeches of Abba Eban

IN JULY 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, which was owned by the British and French, and closed the Straits of Tiran (at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula) to Israel, blocking Israel's only southern seaport—the gateway to trade with East Africa and Asia. These acts followed years of Palestinian terrorist incursions against Israel—emanating from Egyptian territory and fully supported by the government in Cairo—which took the lives of 241 men, women, and children in 1955 alone. United by a common enemy, the British, French, and Israelis joined forces and, although they had different war aims, developed a plan to thwart Nasser and recover the Canal.

The Sinai Campaign was led by Israel, whose forces within one hundred hours captured the Gaza Strip and Sinai, stopping short of the Canal at the request of its allies but taking Sharm el-Sheik in order to reopen the Straits of Tiran. Britain and France landed their forces and captured most of the Canal. The United States and the Soviet Union stayed out of the conflict but applied great pressure on the three countries to withdraw.

This speech was given at an emergency meeting of the General Assembly called to address the Suez Crisis. Eban argued that Israel's actions were an act of self-defense, "a point of explosion after seven years of illicit belligerency." Despite the enthusiastic reception of Eban's case, the General Assembly voted for a pullback.

The British and French were forced to withdraw, turning over their positions to the United Nations. For Britain and France, the war marked, as Eban has written, "their last appearance as great powers in history." Reluctantly, Israel also withdrew its forces but gained two important principles: the right for its ships to pass through the Straits of Tiran, which would now be protected by UN troops, and the pledge of the world body to station soldiers in the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula in order to prevent future terrorist attacks against Israel. But these guarantees would last little more than decade.