Summary
In Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, the name given first to the Egyptian suicide squadrons that waged guerrilla war against the British army in the Suez Canal Zone, and then, in Ben-Gurion’s account as quoted, to the Egyptian-organized groups transferred to the Gaza Strip after the Suez conflict ended; the book’s chronology stresses that their first large-scale penetration of Israel came only at the end of August 1955, after the major Israeli raids they were invoked to justify (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.183-184, p.200, p.204).
Details
- Ben-Gurion’s infiltration figures (Knesset, 2 January 1956): of 258 Israeli casualties in 1955, 192 were caused by Egyptian groups “especially organized by the Egyptian tyrant, under the name of “Fedayeen,””, whose role at the beginning was to fight the English in the Suez Canal conflict and who were transferred to the Gaza Strip when that conflict ended (PDF p.183-184).
- The Canal Zone squadrons “fulfilled that role with notable success” in Egypt’s popular struggle to eject the British army, one of the main factors that engendered the Egyptian Revolution of 23/7/52 (PDF p.200).
- The government’s 1960 Hasbara pamphlet lists IDF reprisal actions as striking “at centres from which the Fedayeen were sent, or from which fire was opened on Israel” — the sentence that contradicts Ben-Gurion’s 1953 denial over Qibya (PDF p.193).
- Fedayeen units penetrated deep into Israel a few days after the 22/8/55 border incident and carried out “appalling acts of murder and sabotage”, preceding the Khan-Younis raid of 31 August 1955 (PDF p.206); their April 1956 infiltrations, after the Gaza market-square shelling, are described through I. F. Stone as atrocities that, in Stone’s word as the book marks it, “fortunately” worked in Israel’s favour in world opinion — a description the authors call a special innovation (PDF p.225-227).
Related pages
Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, Gaza raid (1955), Qibya, Gaza