ABSTRACT
For the Middle East, the 1950s was a period of profound changes: the emergence of new ideas and identities, the introduction of modern technology, the discovery of untapped sources of political and economic power. Such changes transformed the Middle East, altering the traditional relationship between the individual and the state, between states themselves, and between the region and the rest of the world. Invariably, changes of this magnitude generate instability and, in the Middle East, produced an almost unbroken series of revolutions, inter-state tensions and, ultimately, war. This was the dynamic context in which Egypt and Israel conducted their relations between 1952 and 1956.
