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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