スエズ運河Ⅱ

This week in Masanori and Mikako’s class we continued the Suez Canal wonder. We read about the Suez Canal crisis and the Arab-Israeli wars. The Egyptian president nationalized the canal in 1956 and provoked the crisis. During the crisis Israel planned to invade Egypt and take control of the canal with the support of the United Kingdom and France. Lester Pearson, Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs, saw this move as a disaster and proposed the first ever United Nations peacekeeping force to quell the conflict. The United States backed the UN resolution and the pressure on The United Kingdom was too great. The conflict soon ended and some say the turning point for The United Kingdom as a world power was finished at this point.
Regarding the Arab-Israeli wars we learned about the cause. After the Suez Canal conflict, Israel was not permitted to use the Straights of Tiran as a shipping route. Israel ended up using a pre-emptive strike on Egypt and took land all the way up to the Suez Canal. At the time there were fourteen cargo ships in the canal and they were stuck there for eight years due to the short war that was not really resolved for that length of time until the ships were released.
Next week we will finish off the Suez Canal and begin work on the Sydney Opera house.