Israel not involved in Suez Crisis what other pretexts could be used

Say Israel doesn't get involved in the Suez crisis for whatever destroyed in 1948, peace deals go better , etc

What other pretexts could Britain and France use to seize the Suez Canal
 
They could claim that after nationalisation Nasser intended to increase the fees on the Canal for US ships and/or allow the Russians to take over the old RN facilities at Alexandria. How believable even the 1950's CIA would find that one is questionable.
 
They really wouldn't have that many other options especially since using Israel as a pretext was pretty underpants gnomes to begin with. The reason they tried to use Israel as a fig leaf was because they knew neither the US or the USSR would accept such blatant gunboat diplomacy as any even more transparent intervention would've been. Granted using Israel, who was widely known to not seek aggressive war at the time without an outside ally's support and blessing, was pretty stupid to begin with but that really shows where they were at. It's worth keeping in mind to the British the Suez Canal was the jugular vein of their crumbling empire and for the French they widely suspected (with good reason to) that Nasser was helping support the Algerian independence struggle and they were fighting to hang on to the only colony they considered to be an extension of mainland France. For two declining imperial powers doing nothing to stop the nationalization of the Suez Canal was unthinkable but they also knew actually doing it for those reasons would not be tolerated by the new superpowers.

Maybe they go for something more transparent (and stupid) with enough time and pressure but that's likely to end even worse than what they did in the first place.
 
Maybe they go for something more transparent (and stupid) with enough time and pressure but that's likely to end even worse than what they did in the first place.
Could they reject the payments and seize the canal based on that ?
 
Top