Abstract
The Suez Crisis of 1956 has been commonly seen as a turning point in post war world history, the moment when Britain's pretension to world power status was stripped away, and when Egypt became the leader of the Arab world, an event which triggered a radical change in the relations between Israel and its Arab neighbours. The impacts of the Suez crisis are, however, perhaps more ambiguous than would appear at first sight, especially when one examine the background of the crisis. Indeed, since the Second World War, we can notice that the British Empire weakened, the United States developed new global interests, in Egypt, and in the Middle East, the forces of nationalism were emerging and that the tensions of Arab-Israeli conflicts were already strong. After such examinations, we are lead to wonder whether the Suez Crisis really triggered changes in Britain, Egypt and Israel or if the crisis only reflected a former trend and accelerated these transformations. We will thus examine for each country what the impacts of the crisis were, and if these were really caused by the Suez Canal crisis.
