ABSTRACT
Until almost the last minute it was unclear whether Egypt would participate. Nokrashi Pasha maintained his opposition to the dispatch of troops to Palestine; and he had good reasons. The first had to do with Egypt’s efforts to terminate the 1936 agreement that constituted the contractual basis for the British military presence on Egyptian soil. The Egyptians sought tirelessly to dislodge the British, who for their part were set on maintaining their presence-and the influence that went with it-in Egypt. Imperialist thinking aside, Britain considered their bases in Egypt to be of prime importance in the reality of the emerging Cold War. One of the reasons cited by Egypt for declining to send forces to Palestine was that they might be needed in the struggle against Britain. This argument was, needless to say, baseless as the Egyptian government would not use its army to fight the British Army. Nor did Cairo neglect the diplomatic sphere: in 1947 it asked the United Nations to order Britain to leave Egypt. Egypt’s unwillingness to help scuttle the UN Partition Resolution thus stemmed both from its desire to concentrate its military efforts in one arena, and its reluctance to turn against the very institution whose support it had solicited.1
