Summary
The arms agreement between Czechoslovakia and Egypt signed in September 1955 and announced by Gamal Abd al-Nasser on 27 September 1955, which Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace treats as a political death-blow to the Tripartite Declaration (1950) and the Western monopoly on arms supply in the Middle East, set in motion in part by the Israeli Gaza raid (1955) of 28/2/55 (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.208-209, p.214).
Details
- Nasser said Israel’s 1955 Gaza raid, in which 38 of his soldiers were killed, was “the turning point”, after which he had to have more arms (Time, 27 August 1956, quoted PDF p.208).
- The USA had conditioned its own supply (9/3/55; Byroade’s meeting with Nasser, 12/3/55) on Egypt joining the Baghdad Pact; Nasser’s Radio Cairo announcement (27/9/55) stressed that Czechoslovakia supplied on a commercial basis, payable in Egyptian products such as cotton, without conditions: an agreement “not wrapped in conditions and restrictions, is not the beginning of Russian penetration but of the end of the influence that controlled us for a long time” (PDF p.208-209).
- The New York Herald Tribune (29 September 1955) called it a serious setback for US Middle East strategy; a new actor had appeared in a region thought an exclusive Western sphere, setting a precedent for other Arab states (PDF p.209).
- In Israel the unveiling produced an indescribable uproar, a “Defence Fund” to which ordinary citizens contributed (later converted into a regular tax), calls for preventive war, and Ben-Gurion’s claim that Czechoslovakia knew Egypt bought the arms with “one single purpose: to eradicate the State of Israel and its people” (Knesset Records 19/232, 2/11/55; PDF p.210).
- Knesset speakers across the spectrum — Begin, Rimalt, Argov, Sneh — exposed the asymmetry: the Czech consignment was valued at about 100 million of arms to Iraq, and the Western powers’ response was to compensate Israel by giving more arms to Iraq (PDF p.211-212).
- The book’s analysis: the deal was a hard political, not military, blow — the Soviet Union had never recognized the “status quo”, and with a different actor supplying arms on opposing considerations the Tripartite Declaration “became an insignificant piece of paper”, returning Israeli policy to the 1947 UN Resolution as the only internationally approved document on Palestine (PDF p.213-214).
Related pages
Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, Czechoslovak arms deal, Baghdad Pact, Gaza raid (1955), Gamal Abd al-Nasser, Tripartite Declaration (1950)