The Origins of the Arab Israeli Wars by Ritchie Ovendale

Author:Ritchie Ovendale [Ovendale, Ritchie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History, General, Asia
ISBN: 9781317867678
Google: 7c7MCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-10-23T20:41:40+00:00

The American reaction

Dulles was angry over the Anglo-French ultimatum. At a time when Russia was taking repressive action against Hungary he denounced Britain and France in the United Nations. The uniting for peace resolution was used to overcome the veto. But Dulles then entered hospital for a cancer operation. Perhaps he was annoyed as well about London’s ignoring his warnings over the importance of the presidential election. In the middle of November he protested from his hospital bed to Eisenhower and Lloyd about Britain’s not going through with the venture and dispensing with Nasser. The Secretary of State later attributed his stand in the United Nations to his illness. Throughout Britain and the United States had the same objective: to dispose of Nasser. The only difference was in the timing.35

But that timing was crucial for Eisenhower. Few doubted that he would be re-elected, but Eisenhower felt that the least Eden owed him for arranging the summit conference in 1955 to help his general election was to hold off the Suez operation until after the presidential election. Shortly after the Anglo-French invasion Eisenhower confessed to Air Chief Marshal William Elliot that he had known that Britain intended to strike at Nasser, but had thought that it would be after the American elections.36 London adhered to Dulles’s wishes that no official information be passed about the military operation: both Eisenhower and Dulles were worried that Adlai Stevenson could use that against them in the election campaign if he found out. But Washington knew through unofficial contacts. By 2 November Eisenhower was aware of the Sèvres discussions; Dulles knew of the impending Israeli attack by 28 October.37

Before the election results came through in which the Republicans, Eisenhower’s party, lost both Houses of Congress (though Eisenhower himself was returned as President), Eisenhower seemed open to Eden’s reasoning. The President’s secretary, Mrs Ann Whitman, recorded that on 30 October at the time of the Israeli invasion of Sinai Eisenhower was in ‘remarkably good humor’ while drafting a message to Eden, and that the President that day spent all his free moments reading his own book on the Second World War, Crusade in Europe. Eisenhower, however, did write to Alfred M. Gruenther on 2 November about Eden’s reaction in the Victorian manner, and the pointlessness of entering into a fight to which there could be no satisfactory outcome, and one in which the rest of the world viewed Britain as the bully, and even the British population as a whole was not able to back. The following day Eisenhower confided to his friend, Lew W. Douglas, that he thought that the British had been stupid, and that the leaders had allowed their hatred of Nasser to warp their judgement and that they were trying to deflate the Egyptian leader in the wrong way. The President wrote that it was clear that France and Israel had concocted the crisis, but the evidence of Britain’s involvement in the hoax was less persuasive. Although Eisenhower felt that Britain must

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