ABSTRACT
In addition to the strong anti-colonialist currents sweeping the Middle East during this period, the Arab-Israeli conflict may be singled out as the major obstacle to Allied contingency planning for the Middle East. The Allies believed that their own agenda of mobilizing the indigenous states of the region against the Soviet Union was foiled more than anything by this problem. A typical expression of this belief appears in a secret British Intelligence report written at the end of 1954: ‘There is insufficient comprehension of the Soviet or Communist threat, and the Arab States are far more concerned with the threat from Israel . . . [which] dominates all Arab political thinking about their policy towards the West.’2
