On November 5, 1956, British and French forces began to land at Port Said at the northern end of the Suez Canal, after a week of bombing from the air, and the operation was meant to take back the canal that President Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalised in July. The landing followed an Israeli invasion of the Sinai at the end of October, which Britain and France had allowed as a step toward their own entry. The plan was hidden. The two governments had agreed with Israel in secret, and they told their publics that they were separating the two sides.
The crisis had begun in July, when Nasser took the canal company into Egyptian ownership after the United States and Britain withdrew an offer to pay for a dam at Aswan, and the shares belonged to Britain and France, and the waterway was the shortest route between Europe and Asia and carried much of the oil. The move was popular in Egypt. The stakes were high. The two governments saw it as a blow to their standing, and they waited for a reason to act.
The fighting went well for the invaders and badly for their standing. The canal was blocked by sunken ships, and oil supplies to Europe were cut, and the United States refused to support the operation and put pressure on the pound, and the Soviet Union threatened to send forces and spoke of rockets. The advance stopped. A United Nations force was created to take the place of the armies, and the British and French troops were withdrawn by the end of the year, and the canal stayed in Egyptian hands.
The episode marked the end of Britain and France as powers able to act alone in the region. It showed that the two countries could not carry out a war against the wishes of Washington, and that the Soviet Union and the United States now decided such questions between them, and it made Nasser a figure of standing across the Arab world. The shift was clear. The canal was cleared in 1957, and the lesson was drawn in every European capital.