Gamal Abdel Nasser on the Nationalization of the Suez Canal

About the Author

Gamal Abdel Nasser was born in Alexandria, Egypt, on January 15, 1918. As a child, he moved frequently because of his father's employment with the postal service. As a high school student, he was politically active and was already asserting the anti-British, pro-nationalist viewpoints that would define his career. He began his career as a military officer; his first battlefield service was during the Arab-Israeli War in 1948. In 1949 he was part of the delegation that negotiated the cease-fire agreement with Israel, but he regarded the terms of the agreement as a humiliation for Egypt. After the war, he was deeply involved in the Free Officers Movement, a small group consisting of just fourteen military officers whose ultimate aim was to overthrow Egypt's monarchy and establish a republic. The Free Officers Movement accomplished its goal in 1952 with the removal of King Farouk I, Egypt's ruler. Nasser's colleague Muhammad Neguib was named president of new Egyptian republic. Nasser, however, disagreed with Neguib on several important points of policy and was able to neutralize his influence. Nasser himself became president on June 23, 1956, a position he held until his death on September 28, 1970. In July 1956 he nationalized the Suez Canal.

Nasser was a cautious but forceful leader. In October 1954 he was the target of an assassination attempt. In response, he ordered a crackdown against a wide range of politically disaffected groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Communists, and members of dissident political parties. Some twenty thousand people were arrested. Yet in 1955, when Israel attacked the Gaza Strip, territory held by the Egyptians, Nasser responded with extreme caution, believing that the Egyptian military was not strong enough to repel the assault. He was frequently the target of criticism, but he was a skillful politician who was able to win the support of the Egyptian people. In the years following the nationalization of the canal, he jockeyed himself into the position of leader of a pan-Arabist movement—a movement to unite Arab countries into a single political entity. He started to achieve this goal when the United Arab Republic, a union of Egypt and Syria, was formed on February 1, 1958, with himself as president. Syria withdrew in 1961, but Egypt retained the name United Arab Republic until 1971.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Nasser strengthened the Egyptian military and presided over a period of rapid industrialization, including the Aswan Dam project. Pan-Arabists and pan-Islamists throughout the Middle East looked to him for leadership. Nasser was also a key leader in opposition to Israel and was instrumental in the formation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964. In 1967 he received a false warning from the Soviets that the Israelis were planning a surprise attack. Accordingly, he massed troops near the Israeli border, but before he could strike, the Israelis launched a preemptive attack, starting the Six-Day War on June 5. In the wake of Egypt's defeat in the Six-Day War, Nasser announced his resignation as president, but he rescinded his resignation after an outpouring of support from Egyptians. He then launched a campaign of harassment of Israel in the Sinai Peninsula, the so-called War of Attrition, which included skirmishes, air strikes, and missile attacks. He continued this strategy until his death. Nasser's successor was his former military aide who had become Egypt's vice-president, Anwar Sadat.