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of it.  Burrows did not believe that there was any evidence to prove that the idea was

                   approved by Al-Bakir. 297


                          Plans to reach a peace settlement in the Middle East between the Arabs and


                   Israelis suffered a serious setback on 28 February.  Ongoing border tensions

                   between the Egyptians and Israelis were reported on that date, only days following


                   David Ben-Gurion’s (a known hawk in his dealings with the Egyptians) re-

                   appointment as the Israeli Minister of Defence.  This was a so-called ‘reprisal’ raid


                   by the Israelis against Egyptian military units in Gaza resulting in the deaths of

                   forty-two Egyptian soldiers. 298   In Nutting’s perspective the Egyptians saw the raid


                   as part of a plot by the West to undermine their revolution. 299   Dr Murad Ghaleb, a

                   former Egyptian diplomat to the USSR, took a similar approach to Nutting’s, as he


                   claimed that the then Egyptian leadership saw it as a message to persuade Egypt

                   into a defensive pact with the West.  But, if this was the case, it backfired because


                   the event triggered Nasser to shop for arms outside of the Western sphere.  300

                   Nasser had earlier promised the army new American-made arms.  But they never


                   arrived.  Heikal blamed Churchill for blocking the Americans from arming Egypt out

                   of fear that they might be used against the British in the Suez Canal Zone. 301   In the


                   summer of 1954 and during the Suez Canal Zone evacuation talks, Churchill thanked

                   President Eisenhower for withholding, ‘arms and money from the Egyptian








                   297  TNA, FO 1016/386, Residency Minutes of E. Skinner, 28 February 1955.
                   298  J.B. Glubb, A Soldier with the Arabs (London: 1957), 381.
                   299  A. Nutting, Nasser (London: 1972), 90.
                   300  ‘Interview with Murad Ghaleb’, Shahid ala Al-Asar [Witness onto an Era], Al-Jazeera, 2008.  Part 2.
                   301  M.H. Heikal, Nasser: The Cairo Documents (London: 1972), 47-48.


                   © Hamad E. Abdulla                       100
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