 Nasser assumed power as President in June 1956.British forces completed their withdrawal from the occupied Suez Canal Zone on 13 June 1956.He nationalised the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956; his hostile approach towards Israel and economic nationalism prompted the beginning of the Second Arab-Israeli War (Suez Crisis), in which Israel (with support from France and the United Kingdom) occupied the Sinai peninsula and the Canal.