There were 3 wars with Egypt, but in the first two (1956 and 1967)
The Israelis commenced the land war, but the Egytians commenced the acts of aggression by blockading the Straits of Tiran, cutting off Eilat, Israel's only southern port, from access to the Red Sea.
That's an act of war.
adl.org
In the early 1950s, Egypt violated the terms of the Egyptian-Israeli armistice agreement and blocked Israeli ships from passing through the Suez Canal, a major international waterway. It also began to block traffic through the Straits of Tiran, a narrow passage of water linking the Israeli port of Eilat to the Red Sea. This action effectively cut off the port of Eilat -- Israel's sole outlet to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Closure of the Suez Canal and the Tiran Straits damaged Israel's trade with Asia, for it meant that foreign ships carrying goods bound for Israel and Israeli ships carrying goods bound for the Far East had to travel a long and costly circuitous route to the Atlantic and Israel's Mediterranean ports.
us-israel.org
On 23 May, as he was flying to Cairo, he heard that Egypt had re-imposed the naval blockade on the Straits of Tiran (see Section XI).
And Nasser's actual comments about blockading Eilat:
... Yesterday the armed forces [of Egypt] occupied Sharm el-Sheikh. What does this mean? It is an affirmation of our rights, of our sovereignty over the Gulf of Aqaba, which constitutes Egyptian territorial waters. Under no circumstances can we permit the Israeli flag to pass through the Gulf of Aqaba. The Jews threaten war. We say that they are welcome to war, we are ready for war, our armed forces, our people, all of us are ready for war, but under no circumstances shall we abandon our rights. These are our waters ...
And that's not even including the constant state of cross-border attacks launched against Israel.
Hawk |
