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The Protocol of Sevres, 1956: Anatomy of a War Plot
Avi Shlaim
 International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-)
, Vol. 73, No. 3, Globalizationand International Relations. (Jul., 1997), pp. 509-530.
Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0020-5850%28199707%2973%3A3%3C509%3ATPOS1A%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X
 International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-)
is currently published by Royal Institute of InternationalAffairs.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/riia.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.http://www.jstor.orgMon Jun 25 18:45:27 2007
 
The Pvotocol
of
Sevves,
1956:
anatomy
of
a
wav plot
AVI SHLAIM
The tripartite aaression against Egypt in 1956 involved an extraordinary reversal
of
Britain's position in the Middle East. The French were the matchmakers in bringingBritain and Israel into a military pact whose principal aim was the overthrow
of
GamalAbdel Nasseu. The warplot against Egypt was hatched towards the end
of
October 1956in a secret meeting at Sdvres, near Paris. The discussions lasted three days and culminat-ed in the signing
of
the Protocol
of
Sdvres. British, French and Israeli sources are usedhere to reconstruct the sequence ofevents that produced the mostfamous warplot in mod-ern history.
Secrecy
and
the sources
on
Shvres
On
24
October
1956,
in a private villa in S2vres on the outslurts of Paris, rep-resentatives of the British, French, and Israeli governments, at the end of athree-day meeting which was concealed behind a thick veil of secrecy, signeda most curious document which later came to be known as the Protocol ofS2vres. The document set out in precise detail the plan of the three govern-ments to attack Egypt.The plan, in a nutshell, was that Israel would attack theEgyptian army near the Suez Canal, and that this attack would serve as the pre-text for an Anglo-French military intervention.Written in French and typed inthree copies, this
Protocole
was signed by Patrick Dean, an Assistant Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office for Britain, by foreign minister ChristianPineau for France, and by prime minister David Ben-Gurion for Israel. To theend of his days Sir Anthony Eden, the driving force on the British side on theroad to war, denied that there had been any collusion with Israel or even fore-knowledge that Israel would attack Egypt.The Protocol of Shres tells a differ-ent story The British copy was in fact destroyed on Eden's orders, the Frenchcopy was lost, and the Israeli copy was kept under lock and key in the Ben-
*
Avi Shlaim was awarded a British Academy Research Readership in 19957 for a project on 50 years ofIsraeli foreign policy. He would like to thank the British Academy for its support. He would also like tothank Dr Michael Thornhill for research assistance and Dr Mordechai Bar-On, Mr Keith Kyle, SirDonald Logan and Sir Anthony Nutting for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.
Ittternatiottal Affairs
73,
3 (1997) $05-530
5
09
 
Avi
Shlaim
Gurion Archives in Sede-Boker. In 1996 permission was given to photocopythe protocol for a BBC documentary shown on the fortieth anniversary of theSuez war.' With the release of the protocol, the tripartite meeting at SZvresbecame not only the most famous but also the best-documented war plot inmodern history.Rumours and accusations of collusion started flying around as soon as theSuez war broke out but no hard evidence was produced at the time, and cer-tainly no smohng gun. Over the years, however, a great deal of information hascome to light about the meeting at SZvres at which the war plot was hatched.A number of participants have written about the meeting in their memoirs. SirAnthony Nutting was not a participant at this particular meeting, but he wasthe first insider to publish the story of the collu~ion.~hristian Pineau spilledthe beans on the twentieth anniversary of Suez, and even gave an annotatedversion of the Protocol of SZvres.3 Moshe Dayan gave a much more accurateand more detailed account of this meeting in his autobiography4 Selwyn Lloydwrote
a
whole book on Suez which includes a vivid description of his embar-rassment at the encounter with the Israelis at SZvres.5 Abel Thomas wrote anaccount which is not always accurate on the details and wholly unconvincingin its central claim that France got involved in the Suez affair out of concernfor the security of I~rael.~himon Peres was the principal source for a book onSuez published in Hebrew in 1965.7 More recently, Peres shed interesting newlight in his memoirs on the background of the conference of SZvres, and par-ticularly on his own private lscussions with the Fren~h.~en-Gurion's diaryis governed by Israel's thirty-year rule and the main entries on Suez have beentranslated and published in English.9But the principal, most prolific, and most reliable chronicler of the proceed-ings of the SZvres conference is Colonel Mordechai Bar-On, chief of bureau ofthe Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) chief of staff, who served as the secretary ofthe Israeli delegation and took copious notes throughout. In
1957,
at Dayan's
'
'The Suez Crisis-BBCVersion' was shown on BBC
I
on
22
Oct. 1996.Jeremy Bennett was the produc-er, Keith Kyle and I were the historical consultants. Shimon Peres, who was foreign minister at the time,gave us permission to photocopy the Protocol of Skvres after protracted negotiations and only after weproduced letters from the British and French governments saying that they had no objection to ourrequest.The Protocol is now available at the Ben-Gurion Archives in Sede-Boker and in the Israel StateArchives in Jerusalem. Selwyn Ilan Troen, The Protocol of Skvres: British/French/Israeli collusionagainst Egypt, 1956',
Israel Studies
I: 2, Fall 1996, pp. 122-39, reproduced the original French text of theprotocol, a translation into English, the annex to the Protocol, and the letters of ratification.Anthony Nutting,
No end ofa lesson: the story of Suez
(London: Constable, 1967).
3
Christian Pineau,
Suer
1956 (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1976).
4
Moshe Dayan,
Story ofrny 1%
(London:Weidenfeld
&
Nicolson, 1976).
5
Selwyn Lloyd,
Suez
1956:
a persorral account
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1978).Abel Thomas,
Corritnerrt Israelfut sauvk: les secrets de I'expkdition de Suez
(Paris:Albin Michel, 1978).7Yosef Evron,
Beyorr~sagrir: Su'etr me'ahorei hakla'ini
(In stormy days: Suez behind the scenes) (Tel Aviv: OtPaz, 1965).Shimon Peres,
Battlitrgfor peace: trietnoirs
(London:Weidenfeld
&
Nicolson, 1995).
9
Ben-Gurion's Diary-the Suez-Sinai Campaign', edited and introduced by Selwyn Ilan Troen in SelwynIlan Troen and Moshe Shemesh, eds,
Tile Suer-Sinai Campaigtr: retrospectit~e rid reappraisal
(London: FrankCass, ~ggo),p. 289-332.
of 00

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