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The Suez Canal was built in Egypt under the supervision of French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps. The man-made waterway opened in 1869 after ten years of construction and separates most of Egypt from the Sinai Peninsula. At 120 miles long, it connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean by way of the Red Sea, allowing goods to be shipped from Europe to Asia and back more directly. Its value to international trade made it a nearly instant source of conflict among Egypt's neighbors—and Cold War superpowers vying for dominance.
The catalyst for the joint Israeli-British-French attack on Egypt was the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in July 1956. The situation had been brewing for some time. Two years earlier, in the wake of World War II, the Egyptian military had begun pressuring the British to end their military presence (which had been granted in the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty) in the canal zone. Nasser's armed forces also engaged in sporadic battles with Israeli soldiers along the border between the two countries, and the Egyptian leader did nothing to conceal his antipathy toward the Zionist nation.
Supported by Soviet arms and money, and furious with the United States for reneging on a promise to provide funds for construction of the Aswan Dam on the Nile River, Nasser ordered the Suez Canal seized and nationalized, arguing tolls from the ships passing through the canal would pay for the Dam. The British were angered by the move and sought the support of the French (who believed that Nasser was supporting rebels in the French colony of Algeria) and neighboring Israel in an armed assault to retake the canal.