The Gulf Crisis and New World Order — Page 219
The Gulf Crisis & The New World Order The background of this decision was that the Americans reneged on their agreement with Egypt to provide promised financial help for the construction of the Aswan Dam. Realizing that President Nasser had a tendency of leaning towards the Soviet Union, and because of his disregard of U. S. warnings to moderate and soften his attitude towards Israel, the U. S. government backed out of its commitment to teach him a lesson. At that time the Aswan Dam had become to be recognized as a vital source of the economic well-being of Egypt, and was expected to perform a major role in boosting Egypt's economy and upgrading its agricultural development, without which Egypt could not have become self sufficient in food or experience economic growth. By that time the construction of the Dam had reached a stage where Egypt could not afford to stop the work. Therefore, in order to finance this project, and to meet other expenses, Egypt had no choice but to raise its revenues by nationalizing the Suez Canal. Up until then, the Canal was operated under the joint control of Britain and France because they held the controlling shares in the company that looked after this concern. Britain engineered a plot to punish President Nasser of Egypt for working against their interests. This plot was very crude and immature in character, but still it was recklessly dangerous. In pursuit of this plan, Israel was incited by Britain to attack Egypt and occupy the Suez Canal. This attack was designed to achieve the element of complete surprise, and since Egypt lacked an effective defence force to repel such a sudden thrust, it was hoped that the attack was bound to succeed. It was planned that after having achieved this goal, on the threat of their intervention for the sake of 'peace', Britain and France would order Israel and Egypt to withdraw their forces from the sector of the Suez Canal. It all happened in the same sequence in which the conspirators had it designed. The Israeli forces were mobilized very quickly to the banks of the Suez Canal and the next day an ultimatum was issued by the British and French governments, ordering the two countries to withdraw their forces from the Canal because this war threatened world peace. Israel immediately started to comply with this command as planned, but Egypt took a firm stand that this was illogical for it to withdraw its forces from its own territory because the Suez Canal belonged to Egypt. Israel, the aggressor, should withdraw and that should be enough. Upon receiving this reply, the joint forces of Britain and France attacked 219