"Nasser's fate lay in the hands of the Soviets, who had halted the tripartite offensive of 1956 following the nationalization of the Suez Canal." - Nonsense: President Eisenhower of the USA stopped the invasion of Egypt by threatening Britain's finances while the Russians invaded Hungary with tanks killing civilans in the streets of Budapest

Nasser - From Dream to Disaster

God is the Greatest! God is the Greatest! Nasser was the spokesman for every cause of the Arab peoples. From Cairo to Beirut, Damascus to Jerusalem, they felt orphaned and wept as much for Nasser as for their own fate during that period of disarray in the Arab world.

I feel nostalgic for that period because we lived such a beautiful period of hope.

Nasser was, at that time, excuse me, the god of the Arab world. He was the true leader, the only leader, if you will, of the Arab world. He was a hero, he was a man who, at some point in history, was a beacon for the Arab world.

Nasser came to power in 1952 following a coup d'etat. He was the leader of a group of nationalist officers who ousted King Farouk, a corrupt monarch and heir of a dynasty first protected by the Ottoman Empire. The Free Officers' Movement brought an end to several centuries of foreign domination and instituted a republic.

These officers were unknown to the Egyptian public. Their standard-bearer was General Mohamed Naguib, a popular and highly respected man. There was a struggle for power between him and Nasser, between him and the Free Officers.

It was a struggle to find out what kind of political regime we were going to build, whether we were going to build a multiparty regime or a regime like Nasser wanted, that is, a one-party regime. Naguib wanted to establish a parliamentary democracy, but Nasser was against it. To counter his opponent's plans, Nasser strengthened his hold over the military.

He encouraged the forming of new organizations for the youth and for women, who gave him their allegiance. The confrontation between General Naguib, now president of the Fledgling Republic, and Colonel Nasser, his vice-president, would continue until autumn 1954. On October 19, Nasser negotiated the withdrawal of the last British soldiers from the Suez Canal with the government in London.

It earned him the reputation of being the guardian of Egyptian sovereignty. A few days after the signing of the agreement, Nasser chose Alexandria to deliver one of his lengthy speeches, the secret of which only he knew. Nasser began by reminding the crowd of the origins of his commitment to the freedom and dignity of the Egyptian people when a man stepped out of the crowd and fired a gun at him.

Gamal Abdel Nasser was unharmed. Eight bullets were fired. None of them hit him.

On his return to Cairo, Nasser was greeted as a miraculous survivor, the protégé of Allah, an untouchable. He became the hero of an Egypt in search of a leader, a ra'is. From then on, Nasser stopped treating those who crossed his path with kid gloves.

The Muslim Brotherhood was the largest and most structured opposition party. This religious, political and social movement which wanted to establish an Islamic government was an ally of Nasser before the coup d'état. The perpetrator of the failed assassination attempt on Nasser, Mohamed Abdel Latif, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

He was sentenced to death and executed. The lack of an independent inquiry left doubts about the circumstances of this attempted assassination, which still exists today. Historically speaking, as someone who looks into history, I cannot find conclusive evidence as to what actually happened.

According to Nasser, the Muslim Brotherhood, after thinking of the 15-2 coup as a coup that would create the kind of state they had in mind, felt betrayed by Nasser and decided to take decisive action against him. The Brotherhood, of course, have a different narrative, which is that it was Nasser that originated or fabricated this assassination attempt in order to profit from it by detaining them. Nasser had over 1,000 Muslim brothers arrested, including their leader.

Six of them would be executed. He proceeded with a cleansing of the Egyptian political class. He imprisoned all of his opponents that he could, communists and supporters of General Naguib, and sent them to detention camps.

Accused of being behind the assassination attempt in Alexandria, Naguib was ousted and confined to house arrest. He acts as an absolute dictator. He will erase all forms of opposition and he will create the first camps, camps that we would not dare call concentration camps, let's call them prisoners' camps.

He would naturally believe that he needs a series of security organs, a long chain of security agencies, to keep all of these opponents in check under surveillance or in detention camps. As the absolute master of Egypt, Nasser set out to establish social justice throughout the land, his only declared political programme. From a humble background, he had first-hand knowledge of the terrible poverty suffered by the peasants who made up the majority of the population.

He confiscated land from the big landowners and redistributed it to the fellahs, the peasants of the Nile. He imposed reforms on his country that weren't always in line with Islam, like birth control and the prohibition of polygamy. But he didn't want to be seen as a communist or an atheist in the eyes of a deeply religious people, so he openly carried out religious duties and made several pilgrimages to Mecca.

Nasser's main preoccupation was the development of his country until neighbouring Israel attacked in February 1955. Following a series of Palestinian fedayeen raids from the Gaza Strip, then under Egypt's control, reprisals by the Israeli army left dozens of Egyptians dead. The popular doctrine in Israel at the time was that nothing was left unresolved because Israel's dissolution was imminent.

Why? Because the country was very small, it was surrounded by enemies. That's why the fedayeen raids responded with violent actions. The Israeli factor wasn't very important in internal politics in Egypt.

But when the Israelis attacked Gaza, which was under Egypt's control, they found it very difficult for a military regime to accept such a humiliating defeat. Nasser had hoped to avoid a conflict with Israel, but he had to prepare himself for the possibility of war and began to better equip his army. During the Bandung Conference in Indonesia for Non-Aligned Countries, he sought the advice of Chinese Prime Minister Xuan Lai, who recommended he talk to the Soviets.

During this Cold War period, Nasser knew the Middle East was in the United States' sphere of influence. So he first held talks with the Americans. In exchange for any help, they wanted him to sign the Baghdad Pact, a cooperation and defence agreement formed jointly by the United Kingdom, Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Pakistan.

Nasser refused to sign the Pact, because he was a fervent defender of non-alignment, neither East nor West. They wanted to impose the Pact on him. He didn't want to sign it.

They wanted to force him to make peace with Israel. There was an agreement between the British ambassador and the American ambassador in Egypt that the Americans would not give Egypt weapons unless they made peace with Israel. Nasser refused to sign any peace agreement with Israel.

He had no other choice than to turn to the Soviet Union. Moscow agreed with no conditions, as it was an opportunity to gain a foothold in the Middle East, until then the preserve of the West. So as not to anger the Americans, Egypt officially brought arms from Czechoslovakia, but the real supplier was the Soviet Union.

Nasser could at last provide modern equipment to his army, at the head of which he appointed his loyal friend, Abdel Hakim Amer, who thus held both positions of Chief of Staff and Minister of Defence. Nasser, the military man, wanted to give his regime a civilian appearance. In 1956 he had himself elected as president with almost 100% of the vote.

To regulate the flooding of the Nile and form a reservoir to irrigate farmland which fed the vast majority of Egyptians, Nasser dreamt of a huge dam at Aswan. He knew that he needed money to launch the Egyptian economy. At first, the Americans doubted him.

They made him believe that they would help him. America thought, it would not lend money to Egypt. He lived this humiliation very badly.

Egypt was in agony. Where would the money come from? Suez Canal. That's when he thought of the Suez Canal, when all the doors were closed.

When he gave his speech, he told us exactly why he nationalized us, how we humiliated him, how he knocked on the door of America, how he begged England and that we sent him back like a beggar, like a nobody. It was the first time in the history of the Arab world that a politician tapped his foot and said, you don't want to help me? It doesn't matter, I can manage. You can imagine the rest of the Arab world when they hear this kind of speech.

We are proud. At least someone who says no. Now it's enough, we take our destiny in our hands.

I was at the head of our party. He had a radio. I think he was the only one in the neighborhood who had a radio.

We were at his house, and since we were against Abdel Nasser, we considered Abdel Nasser an American spy. When Abdel Nasser started his speech, we continued to insult him, to accuse him of being an agent. Then when he said, the decision of the President of the Republic to nationalize the Suez Canal, I was moved, and the tears really came to my eyes and covered the radio with my joy.

By nationalizing the Suez Canal, Nasser went from being a race, a leader, to a zaim, a chief, traveling on the magic carpet of huge popularity throughout the Arab world. His defiance of the Western world was lauded by the majority of countries in the Third World. In the UK and France, the owners of the Suez Canal Company, the reaction towards Nasser was without nuance.

If the Egyptian dictator had won a success on the occasion of the Suez Canal, it would be an opportunity for a large number of Arab countries to follow him. We are right to say no to Nasser, and if we had said no to Hitler in 1936, we might not have had the war of 1939-1945. The British and French press supported its political leaders as hysterically as the propaganda in the Egyptian press.

Don't get me wrong, this is not a reincarnation, it's just a bad imitation. They are convinced that this guy is a madman. Listen, we have to go back to the spirit of this colonial era.

How can a slave revolt against his master? That was the shock. What Nasser had done was not particularly shocking. He had not done a hold-up.

He had nationalized an Egyptian property that would have been returned to the Egyptian escarcelle 10 years later. In 1968, the canal would have returned to Egypt anyway. Secondly, De Gaulle had nationalized the French coal.

England had also nationalized it. It was not an absurd act insofar as it was damaging the shareholders. For the British and French, it was a chance not to be missed to curb the rise of an enemy who was interfering with their interests in the Arab world.

The UK was yet to accept its own departure from Egypt and also feared the expansion of Nasser's influence in the Gulf states where it still maintained a foothold. In the same year of 1956, France faced Algerian rebels who were supported by Egypt. Paris thought that by eliminating Nasser, it could bring an end to the war of decolonization.

The French and British put together a secret plan with the Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to attack Egypt. David Ben-Gurion was truly afraid that Egypt would become a military power with which it would be difficult to measure itself once it had digested these huge quantities of weapons. On October 29, 1956, troops under General Moshe Dayan crossed the Sinai heading for the Suez Canal, secretly backed up by French aviation.

The Israelis met with little resistance from the Egyptian army. In line with the plan formulated before the operation, London and Paris sent an ultimatum to Egypt and Israel to withdraw from the canal. Nasser refused.

The British and French were then able to officially join the conflict to stand between Egypt and Israel. On November 5, French paratroopers from Algeria landed near the canal. Then Royal Marine Commandos landed on the beaches and headed to Port Said.

Both banks of the canal were occupied and the three Allied armies were only two hours from Cairo. With his army facing defeat, Nasser sought to organize popular resistance. He addressed his people from the famous religious institution Al-Azhar to mobilize them.

If Britain and France consider themselves a great power, we, the people, are believers. Our slogan will always be, God is great! I started to feel that my father was in power when the conflict started in 1956. Because when the conflict started, it started suddenly.

Because my father said, I won't leave Cairo and my children won't leave Cairo. Because at the time, there were people who went to the villages and the countryside to escape the raids. Nasser's religious-based core wasn't enough to prevent an Egyptian defeat.

Popular resistance was insufficient and the army under Abdel Hakim Amer was crushed. Nasser was threatened. An ultimatum from the Soviet Union and the United States saved Egypt.

The two superpowers forced the three Allied armies to withdraw. The Americans wanted to show that they were the masters in the Middle East, just as the Soviets were threatening an intervention in support of its only protégé in the region, Egypt. The Soviet threat of launching missiles on London and Paris was not taken seriously.

But what was taken seriously was the possibility of the presence of Soviet troops in the Middle East. And I think the United States didn't want that prospect. The only one who had a clear interest and the only one who was going to gain something was Israel.

The others were going to come back after Nasser was reinforced. Paradoxically, man was formidable to turn military defeats into political victories. As compensation for its withdrawal from the Sinai, Israel was granted authorization for its ships to take the Straits of Tiran in Egyptian waters and its only access to the Red Sea.

UN troops would guarantee Egyptian compliance in maintaining freedom of navigation as well as guarding international borders by standing between the armies of Israel and Egypt. The Egyptian people weren't informed of the concession made to Israel. The withdrawal of France, Great Britain and Israel was presented to them as a victory due to Nasser's political nous.

French and British nationals who had lived there for several decades were expelled from Egypt. The Jewish community, present in the country for several centuries, was accused of being Israel's fifth column. Thousands of Jews left Egypt for France, for the US and Israel, which welcomed almost half of them.

It wasn't the expulsion of all Jews, but it marked the beginning of a Jewish emigration that would be completed in the early 1960s. Egypt lost a lot, culturally and economically, from the emigration of foreigners. The Egyptian equation was different.

There is an Egyptian cultural equation. This equation is that everyone in Egypt is an Egyptian. Egypt, which for centuries had integrated numerous cultural and religious diversities, changed under Nasser's impetus.

The country's Arab identity was glorified. Nasser presented himself as the leader of Pan-Arabism, an ideology that advocated the union of all Arabs. He who promised the Arab peoples an end to past humiliations appeared as the heir to Saladin, the Arab Muslim hero, victor of the Christians during the Crusades.

His speech speaks to the people. People want to hear it. They dreamed of hearing a man say, the Arab nation, the Arab world, will rise up.

We will become a power. Abdel Nasser's idea was to create this myth in the Arab world, because he believed that the Arab world believed in the Arab unity, the Arab people, and therefore he would open the door to any Arab citizen in any Arab country to be considered his leader. He would not consider himself an Egyptian leader.

He would consider himself an Arab leader. The Pan-Arab myth existed before Nasser. In Syria, the main proponent of this ideology was a Christian, Michel Aflak, who called for a union of his country with Egypt.

Political leaders in Damascus believed such a union would provide stability for their fledgling nation, whose borders had been traced by the former French and British colonialists. To them, Pan-Arabism would cement Syria's various religious and cultural communities. It did make sense that Syria, very close to Egypt historically and culturally, and really the cradle of Arab nationalism as an ideology, would be the first state in that union.

Nasser had the general idea that if the Arab world united, this would make them a strong bloc in international politics. The union between Egypt and Syria was sealed in Cairo early in 1958 by Gamal Abdel Nasser and Shukri al-Khwatili, the Syrian president, to form a single nation, the United Arab Republic. The event caused euphoria among other Arab peoples who longed to join the union.

In Damascus, a human tide greeted Nasser. Syrians came from every region of the country to welcome him. Arabs in neighboring countries joined the Syrians in saluting the hero of the great Arab nation.

The most beautiful welcome was that of the Lebanese who crossed the borders and went to Damascus and waited for him on the street for two days. More than 300,000 Lebanese traveled from Lebanon to Damascus to call for this union. The Muslims of Lebanon immediately wanted to join this union and we thought that Lebanon could also join this community.

The agitation of Lebanese Muslims caused fear among Maronite Christians who rejected close ties with the new United Arab Republic. Already weakened by an institutional crisis, Lebanon witnessed the outbreak of civil war. President Camille Chamoun asked the United States to intervene.

American marines landed in Beirut and occupied the country for several months, the time to dampen any hopes of joining the United Arab Republic. Meanwhile, Great Britain sent in paratroopers to protect King Hussein of Jordan who feared a Nasser-inspired coup d'etat. He didn't want to suffer the same fate as his cousin, the King of Iraq, who had been assassinated by the Free Officers Movement.

Calls by Nasser for a great Arab nation spread fear among the monarchies of the region. Saudi Arabia, a close ally of the US, was intent on curbing Nasser's growing influence. It was a historical battle against modern Arabism and an ideology, a traditional, conservative government that was Islamist.

Nasser, the leader of the Arab world, was feted by people in all Arab countries and feared by their leaders. He exercised unmitigated power as leader of this new United Arab Republic. Just like he had done in Egypt, he banned all political parties in Syria, now known as the Northern Province.

Nasser appointed his Minister of Defence, Abdel Hakim Amer, as his representative in the province, which was now under the authority of Cairo. It's not a union, it's a de facto annexation of Syria by Egypt with the importation of police methods from the Nasser regime, i.e. the arrest of opponents, torture, etc., and a kind of plundering of the country that created the conditions for a coup d'état in 1961 between Syria and Egypt. The experimental United Arab Republic came to an end in late September 1961.

A coup d'état by the Syrian army returned power to the bourgeoisie, which had been ousted by Nasser two years previously. The Syrian crowds which had greeted Nasser in 1958 now greeted their new leaders. The symbols of the former United Arab Republic were destroyed.

Egyptians living in Syria were considered undesirable. Many of them were forced to flee to avoid reprisals from an ill-treated population. They flocked to Beirut before sailing for Egypt, taking the pan-Arab dream with them in their baggage.

In the face of failure, there was a race forward towards more radical measures, a second phase of agrarian reform, the nationalization of the industry, many foreign or Egyptian companies. This madness of nationalization to the extreme, where he gave people 48 hours to pack their bags, was a colossal mistake. He completely decapitated the Egyptian intelligentsia.

He destroyed a cultural link which was the source of life in Egypt. I think this madness was born because there is no other word for it, a paranoiac madness. It was born after the rupture with Syria.

He was afraid that the great Egyptian families would try the same thing in Egypt as in Syria. Despite the nationalization of all sectors, the economic model of Egypt resembled that of the Soviet bloc. The Soviet Union was Egypt's principal ally and supplier of various types of machinery and equipment.

For Nasser, social justice meant Arab socialism, a socialism compatible with Islam. Our way of seeing things, our way of imposing certain economic and cultural conditions, while also preserving our Arabo-Muslim culture. Islam does not leave Nasser's mind.

Nasser knew that the majority of the Egyptian people were attached to the traditional values of Islam. But society was also subject to other influences, that of the Soviet Union, on a financial and cultural level, and that of the West, which attracted part of the urban youth. Nasser was caught between two stalls.

He encouraged a modern lifestyle due to his own beliefs, but in a calculated way also made concessions to traditional Islam. He authorized finance for the expansion of the Great Mosque, Al-Azhar, in return for its submission. The result? Al-Azhar lost all religious credibility in the eyes of the public.

Egyptians began to turn to a stricter form of Islam as advocated by the Muslim Brotherhood, which continued to spread its ideas underground. Nasser sought to counter this growing influence, often mocking them in his speeches. In 1965, he told of a meeting, 12 years earlier, with the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, who wanted to impose the veil on all Egyptian women.

I entered the mosque in 1962-1963. There was no woman wearing a veil in the mosque. Even the girls who came from the countryside did not cover their heads, not at all.

It was a modern country, we were all like that. Nasser's home movies resemble those of many families in the West. His wife and daughters were never veiled.

And when he wasn't playing chess with his eldest son or a friend, he watched American movies in his home cinema. Nasser never hid his admiration for a certain kind of Western lifestyle. The young Egyptians who got good grades in their university studies were sent to continue their higher studies in the United States, in Great Britain, in France.

I thought there was no problem with Western culture. Nasser was rejected to the Eastern Bloc, and he was sent to the United States, because he hated the Communists. He was a notorious anti-Communist, and he found himself in the hands of the Communists.

Nasser's fate lay in the hands of the Soviets, who had halted the tripartite offensive of 1956 following the nationalization of the Suez Canal. Since then, the Soviet Union had become a major ally of Egypt. When the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visited Egypt, Nasser welcomed him with open arms.

For two weeks, he was greeted in triumph wherever he went. Egyptians were indebted to him for the construction of the Aswan Dam, inaugurated in Great Pompe, a dam that would improve the lives of millions of peasants in the Nile Valley. Khrushchev didn't approve of Nasser, who had imprisoned thousands of Communists, but at the height of the Cold War, Egypt was the Soviet Union's only chance of gaining a foothold in the Middle East.

Nasser's feelings towards Khrushchev were no warmer, but Soviet financial and military aid were vital to Egypt, especially at a time when the country found itself involved in a civil war in Yemen. A civil war into which two major Middle Eastern countries had been drawn, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Egypt backed the Republican officers who had overturned the King of Yemen, who were supported by his Saudi neighbour.

Nasser, who was seeking to establish himself as the leader of the Arab world, saw an opportunity to weaken Saudi Arabia, which was disputing his pan-Arab leadership. Nasser believed that the Republican force was gaining momentum, on its way to consolidate victory. He also believed that the Arab world was a force and he also believed that he would be required to send a few instructors, very minor military aid, to push them to the final victory.

Nasser saw Saudi Arabia as his stronghold. He always believed that if he could overcome this Saudi obstacle, the Arab world would completely fall into his hands. The monarchists proved to be stronger than he expected.

The Saudis saw Yemen, which was directly on their borders, as a threat they could not live with, and they devoted substantial sums of money to hiring European mercenaries and other factions to support the monarchist camp. Yemen will very soon become the Egyptian Vietnam. Thousands of people, thousands of children will go to war there, and we can really compare that to the Vietnam War.

That was the beginning of Nasser's descent into hell. Egypt became embroiled in the civil war in Yemen, taking place some 2,000 kilometres away. The Egyptian army deployed massive means and sent elite troops to fight alongside Republican forces.

In a Middle East coveted by the superpowers, Yemen had become a theatre of the Cold War. The Soviets backed Egypt and the Yemenite Republicans, whereas the Royalists and Saudi Arabia were aided by the United States and the UK. The British military presence, still considerable in the region, would be directly threatened if such a war should spread to other emirates in the Gulf.

This far-off civil war weighed heavily on the already fragile Egyptian economy. Despite the economic difficulties in his own country, Nasser remained the leader of the Arab world, and the Arab peoples turned to him to find a solution to the Palestine issue. The Palestine Liberation Organisation, the PLO, headed by Ahmed Shoukeri, established itself in Cairo.

In its heated meetings, calls were made for war on Israel. Shoukeri stated that Jews who came on ships to settle in Palestine should leave on ships. Israel was involved in constant skirmishes with its neighbour.

Attacks by Palestinian fedayens were riposted with fierce reprisals. The diverting of the waters of the Jordan River by Israel created new tensions with three affected countries, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Once again, the Arab world looked to Nasser to counter Israel.

To force him into action, the press of several Arab nations treated him as a coward and a puppet of the West. What can you do? How can you let them bomb? How can you let them kill Palestinians? How can you let them kill Jordanians? You are the champion of the Palestinian cause, the champion of the Arab world. You can't keep your arms crossed.

And the pressure was getting stronger and stronger. Presenting himself as the leader of the Arab world, he had to offer a solution to the Palestinian issue. He was taken by his own speech, it's true, and by his Arab nationalist rhetoric of defending the Arab world against Israel, against imperialism.

What makes the difference between a politician and a great man is that the great man resists pressure. He doesn't let himself get on board, as Nasser did. Nasser consulted his friend, the Minister of Defence, Abdel Hakim Amer.

He guaranteed victory should Egypt engage in war with Israel. Nasser then asked the UN to withdraw its troops which stood between the Egyptian and Israeli armies on the border between the two countries. He also decided to ban access to the Straits of Tiran to Israeli vessels, thus reneging on the concession made to the Hebrew state in 1956.

Abdel Hakim Amer, who needed to re-boost his image after the bloody defeat at Suez, deployed his troops in the Sinai to impress the enemy. Amer never intended for the escalation to actually lead to war with Israel, but he thought that this show of force would intimidate Israel enough to present concessions. What we didn't know was how badly the Egyptian army was prepared for this war.

On June 5, 1967, at dawn, Israel attacked Egypt, but also Syria and Jordan. In a matter of hours, Arab aviation was destroyed on the ground before it had even taken off. Without air cover, the Egyptian troops deployed in the Sinai were annihilated.

In six days, the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan were defeated. Israel had conquered all of historical Palestine, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. The defeat was both total and humiliating.

Thousands of Egyptian soldiers, abandoned by their officers, were left wandering the Sinai desert. Meanwhile, Egyptian TV and radio were broadcasting claims of victory. When I saw the Egyptian troops coming back from the front, I was surprised.

I asked my friends, what do we see in front of us? They couldn't have imagined that it was a retreat of Egyptian troops. It wasn't until June 9 that the Egyptian people learned of the defeat. When their great guide addressed them on TV, Egyptians were hoping to hear that a reversal of the situation would save their country.

Having denounced a colonialist plot and accused the United States and Britain of aiding Israel, Nasser accepted responsibility for the defeat and announced his resignation. The Zaim, brave and strong in the eyes of his people, ended his speech fighting back tears. Peace be upon you and God's mercy.

My father came back. We were sitting at home with a group of our relatives and we started hearing voices. People, people, people.

Suddenly, we found this house full of people. They started singing, national songs. And... It was nightfall.

The people spent the night around the house until the next morning. Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians descended on Cairo in support of their race. For almost 48 hours, all over the country, there were the same scenes of anger and grief.

Men and women of all ages pleaded with Nasser to go back on his decision. Despite the disastrous defeat, the people acclaimed him like no other leader had ever been acclaimed before. Nasser had managed to turn failure into triumph.

Nasser's admission of defeat in a very emotional address on national television was, whether he intended it or not, a stroke of genius, because the image he presented was an embodiment of Egypt, strong, optimistic, powerful, that was defeated by an overwhelmingly global conspiracy supported by the US, supported by many world powers, that did not wish to see Egypt strong once more. They saw that by sticking with Nasser, by allowing Nasser to raise his head up again, would be a symbolic act of defiance, saying that we have not been defeated, we are still standing. Nasser's return was announced by Anwar Sadat, the Speaker of the National Assembly.

The next day, Nasser dismissed Abel Hakim Amer, held responsible for the defeat, and placed him under house arrest. A few weeks later, the government would announce his suicide. To maintain his power, Nasser embarked on a widespread purge of the army and the state apparatus.

Pressurized by other Arab nations, he refused all peace treaties with Israel and launched a war of attrition. From then on, the object of confrontation with Israel was the recovery of the Sinai and no longer the Palestinian cause. The 1967 war worsened the fate of the Palestinians, who were forced into a new exodus.

Tens of thousands of them crossed the Jordan River, swelling refugee camps set up in Jordan. The fate of the Palestinians gave rise to a feeling of humiliation throughout the Arab world. It was an opportunity for fundamental Islamists, who saw the defeat of the Arab armies as divine punishment.

They accused Arab leaders of having distanced their countries from Islam, the only true source of power. It was one of the reasons for the emergence of political Islam. In addition, political Islam is a failure because it does not acknowledge that it is like you.

It is sent from God. It is sent from God, from God, to establish the word of God. So if you were against him, you became against God.

Therefore, he has the right to do whatever he wants with you. The Muslim Brothers, as the most prominent group within the Islamist camp, saw 1967 as the vindication of their ideology, as a proof of the failure of Arab nationalism and Nasser's own leadership, and saw this as the time for them to come back. Nasser's regime was discredited.

The Islamist movement, developed underground before 1967, came out into the open. Weakened by his failures, Nasser was forced into making numerous concessions to conservative Islam, backed by Saudi Arabia. Nasser, the leader of modern pan-Arabism, laid down his arms to the advocate of traditional pan-Islamism, King Faisal.

Nasser needed Saudi petrodollars to rebuild his country. The adversaries of the past had become allies. They brought an end to the war in Yemen, which had opposed them since 1962.

Together in Cairo, they also reconciled the new PLO president, Yasser Arafat, and King Hussein of Jordan, following a bloody clash between Palestinians and Jordanians in September 1970. It was Nasser's final political act that very night, after the signature of the peace treaty, he died of a heart attack. At his funeral procession, millions of Egyptians followed his body through the streets of Cairo, chanting, There is no god but Allah, and Nasser is his beloved.

He was buried in the Nasra Mosque, later named after him. With Nasser dead, there are no more leaders capable of addressing the Arab world. Since Nasser, there has not been a single leader that the Western world could have listened to.

I think that Nasser is an Arab tragedy, but also an Israeli one. And his failure, which is largely unpunishable, his failure means the failure of the pan-Arab nationalism that is two and a half kilometers from us. If Abdel Nasser had created a democratic regime, a party, and a real democracy, he would have won as well, because he had a very strong population.

The problem in Egypt is that Abdel Nasser, who founded the press machine, was the most sincere, honorable, honest, and brave ruler. Then came the rulers, and they found a press machine ready to work. It was the end of the dream of a modern Egypt, symbolized for a short time by this peasant woman with one hand unveiled, the other resting on the sphinx of eternal Egypt.

Nasser's pan-Arabism was a distant memory. Throughout the Arab-Muslim world,