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Egypt On the Threshold of Revolution, 1945-52
In 1945 a Labour Party government with anti-imperialist
leanings was elected in Britain. This election encouraged
Egyptians to believe that Britain would change its policy. The
end of the war in Europe and the Pacific, however, saw the
beginning of a new kind of global war, the Cold War, in which
Egypt found itself embroiled against its will. Concerned by the
possibility of expansion by the Soviet Union, the West would come
to see the Middle East as a vital element in its postwar strategy
of "containment." In addition, pro-imperialist British
Conservatives like Winston Churchill spoke of Britain's "rightful
position" in the Suez Canal Zone. He and Anthony Eden, the
Conservative Party spokesman on foreign affairs, stressed the
vital importance of the Suez Canal as an imperial lifeline and
claimed international security would be threatened by British
withdrawal.
In December 1945, Egyptian prime minister Mahmud Nuqrashi,
sent a note to the British demanding that they renegotiate the
1936 treaty and evacuate British troops from the country. Britain
refused. Riots and demonstrations by students and workers broke
out in Cairo and Alexandria, accompanied by attacks on British
property and personnel.
The new Egyptian prime minister, Ismail Sidqi, a driving
force behind Egyptian politics in the 1930s and now seventy-one
and in poor health, took over negotiations with the British. The
British Labour Party prime minister, Clement Atlee, agreed to
remove British troops from Egyptian cities and bases by September
1949. The British had withdrawn their troops to the Suez Canal
Zone when negotiations foundered over the issue of Sudan. Britain
said Sudan was ready for self-government while Egyptian
nationalists were proclaiming "the unity of the Nile Valley,"
that is, that Sudan should be part of Egypt. Sidqi resigned in
December 1946 and was succeeded by Nuqrashi, who referred the
question of Sudan to the newly created United Nations (UN) during
the following year. The Brotherhood called for strikes and a
jihad (holy war) against the British, and newspapers called for a
guerrilla war.
In 1948 another event strengthened the Egyptian desire to rid
the country of imperial domination. This event was the
Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel by David
Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv. The Egyptians, like most Arabs,
considered the State of Israel a creation of Western,
specifically British, imperialism and an alien entity in the Arab
homeland. In September 1947, the League of Arab States (Arab
League) had decided to resist by force the UN plan for partition
of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. Thus, when Israel
announced its independence in 1948, the armies of the various
Arab states, including Egypt, entered Palestine to save the
country for the Arabs against what they considered Zionist
aggression. The Arabs were defeated by Israel, although the Arab
Legion of Transjordan held onto the Old City of Jerusalem and the
West Bank (see Glossary),
and Egypt saved a strip of territory
around Gaza that became known as the Gaza Strip.
When the war began, the Egyptian army was poorly prepared and
had no plan for coordination with the other Arab states. Although
there were individual heroic acts of resistance, the army did not
perform well, and nothing could disguise the defeat or mitigate
the intense feeling of shame. After the war, there were scandals
over the inferior equipment issued to the military, and the king
and government were blamed for treacherously abandoning the army.
One of the men who served in the war was Gamal Abdul Nasser, who
commanded an army unit in Palestine and was wounded in the chest.
Nasser was dismayed by the inefficiency and lack of preparation
of the army. In the battle for the Negev Desert in October 1948,
Nasser and his unit were trapped at Falluja, near Beersheba. The
unit held out and was eventually able to counterattack. This
event assumed great importance for Nasser, who saw it as a symbol
of his country's determination to free Egypt from all forms of
oppression, internal and external.
Nasser organized a clandestine group inside the army called
the Free Officers. After the war against Israel, the Free
Officers began to plan for a revolutionary overthrow of the
government. In 1949 nine of the Free Officers formed the
Committee of the Free Officers' Movement; in 1950 Nasser was
elected chairman.
The Muslim Brotherhood, whose volunteer squads had fought
well against Israel, gained in popularity and membership. Before
the war, the Brotherhood was responsible for numerous attacks on
British personnel and property. With the outbreak of the war
against Israel, martial law was declared in Egypt, and the
Brotherhood was ordered to dissolve. In retaliation, a member of
the Brotherhood murdered Nuqrashi, the prime minister. His
successor, Ibrahim Abdul Hadi, detained in concentration camps
thousands of Brotherhood members as well as members of Young
Egypt and communists. In February 1949, Brotherhood founder
Hassan al Banna was assassinated, probably by agents of the
security branch of the government.
In January 1950, the Wafd returned to power with Nahhas as
prime minister. In October 1951, Nahhas introduced, and
Parliament approved, decrees abrogating unilaterally the AngloEgyptian Treaty of 1936 and proclaiming Faruk king of Egypt and
Sudan. Egypt exulted, with newspapers proclaiming that Egypt had
broken "the fetters of British imperialism." The Wafd government
gave way to pressure from the Brotherhood and leftist groups for
militant opposition to the British. "Liberation battalions" were
formed, and the Brotherhood and auxiliary police were armed. Food
supplies to the Suez Canal Zone were blocked, and Egyptian
workers were withdrawn from the base. A guerrilla war against the
British in the Suez Canal Zone was undertaken by students and the
Brotherhood.
In December British bulldozers and Centurion tanks demolished
fifty Egyptian mud houses to open a road to a water supply for
the British army. This incident and one that followed on January
25 provoked intense Egyptian anger. On January 25, 1952, the
British attacked an Egyptian police barracks at Ismailiya (Al
Ismailiyah) when its occupants refused to surrender to British
troops. Fifty Egyptians were killed and 100 wounded.
The January incident led directly to "Black Saturday,"
January 26, 1952, which began with a mutiny by police in Cairo in
protest against the death of their colleagues. Concurrently,
groups of people in Cairo went on a rampage. British property and
other symbols of the Western presence were attacked. By the end
of the day, 750 establishments valued at £50 million had been
burned or destroyed. Thirty persons were killed, including eleven
British and other foreigners; hundreds were injured.
The British believed there was official connivance in the
rioting. Wafdist interior minister Fuad Siraj ad Din (also seen
as Serag al Din) was accused of negligence by an Egyptian
government report and dismissed. The king dismissed Nahhas, and
four prime ministers held office in the next six months. It
became clear that the Egyptian ruling class had become unable to
rule, and none of the radical nationalist groups was strong
enough to take power. This power vacuum gave the Free Officers
their opportunity.
On July 22, the Free Officers realized that the king might be
preparing to move against them. They decided to strike and seize
power the next morning. On July 26, King Faruk, forced to
abdicate in favor of his infant son, sailed into exile on the
same yacht on which his grandfather, Ismail, had left for exile
about seventy years earlier.
Data as of December 1990
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