Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt)

Gamal Abdel Nasser was one of the Free Officers who overthrew King Farouk in 1952. He pushed aside General Muhammad Naguib in 1954 and became President of Egypt in 1956. As a young officer he had been trapped with the Egyptian troops in the Faluja pocket in 1948. Under him Egypt sent fedayeen raiders into Israel from Gaza and kept the Straits of Tiran closed to Israeli ships; in January 1955 two Egyptian Jews caught in the failed Israeli sabotage plot known as the Lavon affair were hanged in Cairo. In July 1956 he nationalized the Suez Canal, which led to the Sinai War, and afterwards about 25,000 Jews were driven out of Egypt.

The hero of pan-Arabism led the Arab world into the crisis of May 1967: he expelled the UN force from Sinai, massed his army there and closed the Straits again. Israel's victory in the Six-Day War broke him. He offered to resign but stayed, fought the War of Attrition along the Suez Canal, and joined the Khartoum summit's "three no's": no peace, no recognition and no negotiations with Israel. He died of a heart attack on 28 September 1970.