APPENDIX
# 3
THE FREE
OFFICERS
Most
of the Free Officers had entered the military academy after the
treaty of 1936 had made this possible. Most were members of the
same graduating class, had served together in military posts and were friends
as well as companions in arms. They had organized early in their careers,
while they were still lieutenants, and had deliberately joined every political
grouping available so as to learn their techniques and their goals. Thus
`Abd
al-Nasir and 'Anwar al-Sadat
joined the Muslim Brotherhood, while some joined Misr al-Fatah,
and others joined left-wing groups. With only a few exceptions, the
members of the original thirteen man central planning organization, the
Revolutionary Command Council, came from the same social milieu the
lower middle and lower classes.
The
Free
Officers Committee began work in earnest during World War II, when
the young men frankly hoped the Axis armies at Egypt's doors
would break through to victory over the Allies. This was not because of
admiration for Italy and Germany, but simply because
of the old Arab saying that "An enemy of my enemy is my friend."
In allying themselves with the Axis powers, the Free Officers saw
an opportunity to crush the British and free Egypt from foreign
occupation. Toward this end, the young men made many plans during the war.
Many of them posed as simple agents, working along with many others
in the name of a vaguely-identified, high-ranking officer "close to the
palace," who would trigger the revolution in good time. For many
years until General Muhammad Nagiyb was recruited in
the movement, this high-ranking leader did not exist at all.
There
were contacts with German agents. There were proposals that certain Egyptian
divisions should mutiny, turn against the British, and occupy Cairo.
One of `Abd al-Nasir 's intimates presented a plan
to blow up the British Embassy and kill all its occupants. Any one
of these moves would have backfired, of course, and would have meant the
end of the Free Officers. `Abd al-Nasir
held his young men in check and bided his time, and the war ended with
Egypt
and
the Sudan still under British occupation.
After
the war, Egypt's young nationalists became preoccupied with another
intrusion of foreigners Zionism. Palestine became a paramount
Egyptian issue, and on Balfour Declaration Day. To these young
Egyptians, Zionism looked like the ultimate in Western arrogance. A segment
of the Arab world was to be taken away, its Arab inhabitants dispersed,
and Western colonizers who took the land would form a permanent beachhead
for Western imperialism in the Arab motherland. Resistance to Zionism
in Egypt was based more on anti Western than on anti Jewish
feeling. Hence the Zionist issue fanned the flames of movements like the
Muslim Brotherhood.
More
important, Palestine offered a likely battlefield, where young Egypt
at last could fight. They had never had the military strength to
take the field against the British or any other European power, but when
the British gave up their Palestine Mandate in May, 1948, Egypt's
nationalists saw the newly created State of Israel as an enemy
with whom they could cope in a straight military conflict. Enthusiasm ran
high. The Muslim Brothers volunteered in huge numbers for a
jihad, and Free Officers asked leaves of absence
so that they might join Arab irregulars in Palestine
By
now the Palestine fever gripped youthful King Faruwq.
Seizing the chance to shore up his fading popularity, the dissipated
monarch ordered the Egyptian army into Palestine and persuaded the
six other countries of the Arab League also to enter the war. The
Arabs thought they were on the march at last in a Jihad and
were sublimely confident of victory. King Faruwq ordered
the building of a new boulevard between Cairo and Heliopolis
for
the victory parade planned for the day his army should defeat the
Israelis.
What
actually happened was one of the saddest, most frustrating chapters of
modern Arab nationalism. No Arab army had any idea what the other was doing.
The Egyptian army had few heavy equipment, mostly outdated and was
shockingly deficient in transport, communications, and supply, elements
so vital in modern war. Egyptian politicians had gotten rich buying
defective arms cheap and selling them to the army, and now the soldiers
on the Palestine front paid the price. At the height of the
fighting, the Engineer Corps was ordered to build a villa for King Faruwq
in Gaza. The Egyptian forces were steadily driven back in the southern
of al-Nagab region, until at the end they salvaged only the
narrow Gaza coastal strip of what was to have been Arab Palestine.
Despite
all adversities, there were many examples of Egyptian heroism in
this war. One of them was the siege of Falluwgah, where a small
Egyptian unit led by a Sudanese Amiyr Allay Al-Sayyid Taha,
was isolated and refused to give up. The stubborn Egyptian defenders
of Falluwgah gained heart when a force of 150 men, led by
another husky officer fought their way through enemy lines
to bring relief. Thus encouraged, the Falluwgah defenders hung on
till the Israeli-Egyptian armistice was signed. The officer who
led the relief force, himself twice wounded in the siege, was Gamal
`Abd al-Nasir.
During
the dark days of Falluwgah, Gamal `Abd al- Nasir
had time to think. His Free Officers had been unable to fight
the British and now they had failed to conquer the Israelis. With defeat
rankling in his heart, Gamal `Abd al- Nasir and his
fellow army officers brooded over the defective arms, the villa at Gaza,
the general mismanagement of the war.. At Falluwgah,
the Free Officers made their decision. There was no need fighting
foreign armies until the original foreign occupation was rooted out. They
realized then they must follow the example of `Urabiy and strike
at the dynasty of Muhammad `Aliy. And so it was that
King
Faruwq became the target of the Free Officers Committee.
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