Israel in Search of War : The Sinai Campaign, 1955-1956

The Suez crisis, and the Sinai Campaign, was the final stage in a process rather than an autonomous episode. For at least a year prior to the erruption of the Suez crisis in July 1956, Israel had been looking for a pretext to launch a war against Egypt. As early as spring 1955 some highly placed individuals in Israel, led by officers in the army, tried to turn the issue of border security into a casus belli. They were blocked in their efforts by some Israeli politicians. Together with independent initiatives, the Israeli leadership formed an alliance with France, which was seeking to depose Nasser because of his intervention in the Algerian uprising. Before the Suez crisis broke out, Israel and France signed a series of agreements which, in effect committed the two countries to operate jointly against Egypt. The deal cut in Sevres in October 1956 called for an Israeli move to provide the western powers with a pretext to intervene. But this deal had to be kept secret. Thus both the Sinai War and Operation Musketeer took place under the constraints imposed by this combination of secrecy, mistrust, and operational logic turned upside down. Motti Golani, author of the THE GAZA RAID, and other books and articles on Israel's security, uses recently released secret papers to show that the operative military branches in Britain, France and Israel were deliberately fed misinformation by the political leadership.