Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order

Michael N. Barnett

Columbia University Press

Fall 1998

3. The Creation of “Arab” Politics, 1920–1945

 

Arab politics emerged during the tumultuous twenty-five-year period between the imposition of the mandate system in 1920 and the establishment of the League of Arab States in 1945. In this relatively brief span Arab nationalism sprang from the pan-Arab clubs and its standing as a rather minor and politically inconsequential movement to become a dominant force in formal politics and to tower over the political landscape. Many factors contributed to this rapid rise, but foremost were a series of seismic shocks surrounding the death of the Ottoman Empire, and World War I, that caused the region’s inhabitants to reconsider the boundaries of the political community and the political organization of the region. Arab nationalism surfaced from the debris of these geopolitical changes, as political elites, urban notables and masses, and the intelligentsia slowly converged on the language of Arabism to frame the events surrounding them, organize political action, secure their various interests, and contemplate the emergent regional order.

At the outset Arabism was better understood as a sentimental movement than as a political project with well-defined objectives. “Arabism was a romantic notion,” wrote Kamal Salibi, “whose full implications had not been worked out.” ₁ For some, Arab nationalism meant cultural revival, for others it meant political autonomy for those in different Arab lands, and for others still it meant one state for one nation. The ambiguity inherent in the concept had a decided virtue because it allowed for multiple meanings and thus helped to mobilize those who held conflicting interests. Arab societies were increasingly mobilized around the cause of Arab nationalism even before it had a meaning that was reasonably consistent across the Arab world.

By the late 1930s, however, Arabism slowly yielded to more specific sets of meanings that revolved around the quest for independence, the cause of Palestine, and the search for unity. That Arabism came to be defined by these issues owed not to abstract debates but to the practical, daily, and ongoing challenges posed by colonialism and Zionism. This chapter explores the construction of Arab politics by examining the dynamic and reciprocal relationship between the growth of the Arab identity; how Arab political elites responded to the growth of Arabism among the masses by cultivating these new symbols of political expression to further the elites’ domestic and regional aspirations; how independence, Palestine, and unity came to be connected to Arabism; and the increasingly transnational character and institutionalization of Arab politics. The outcome of these historical processes was truly transformational: whereas at the turn of the century Arab was not a highly consequential category of political identity and action, within a half-century there emerged Arab states with a set of interests that flowed from the Arab identity. These states became mutually vulnerable to the symbols of Arab nationalism, and Arab leaders tried to accumulate these symbols and deploy them against their rivals in the pursuit of their domestic and foreign policy objectives.

 

Arab Nationalism

Until the late nineteenth century the inhabitants of the region existed within a variety of overlapping authority and political structures. The Ottoman Empire, Islam, and local tribal and village structures all held sway over various features of peoples’ lives and consequently gave shape to their political identities. ₂ Arabism was hardly heard on such matters. Yet within a few short decades Arabism became increasingly popular in the discourse of political protest and the politics of identification and association. Arabism’s impressive rise is a testimony to a series of historical shocks that began at the turn of the twentieth century and continued for the next several decades. These shocks caused the region’s inhabitants to rethink the nature of the political community, their political loyalties, and their political projects.

The central forces spurring the development of Arab nationalism can be described briefly. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, various Westernized elites, many members of which were educated at the American University of Beirut, in Constantinople, and in Europe, began to borrow from intellectual developments in European thought that concerned the development and desirability of the nation-state. Mostly influenced by German and French theorists who argued that language was the wellspring of a national identity, a number of Arab intellectuals, including luminaries like Sati al-Husri, began to expound that all those who spoke Arabic had a common mentality and shared a past, present, and future. Such claims, however, were not at all intuitive. Most individuals identified themselves according to familial and tribal affiliations, local residence, or religion, and the idea that these political, geographic, and religious divisions could be and should be superseded by the Arabic language they shared was radical. Arab nationalism could scarcely be heard in formal political settings in the late 1800s and was largely limited to the growing number of pan-Arab clubs of Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad, and Cairo.

Arab nationalism first became part of the language of political protest and cultural renaissance as a consequence of a series of reforms planned by the Ottoman Empire. ₃ The Young Turk Movement of 1908 proposed a Turkification program in the Fertile Crescent that many Arab elites saw as a potential political, economic, and cultural challenge. In response, they called for full instruction in the Arabic language, greater local autonomy and the protection of Arab rights within the Ottoman Empire, and the promotion of Arab unity and with it a sense of its historic past and a restoration of its glory. Yet absent from the list of demands was statehood or sovereignty; most political elites were content to remain within the Ottoman Empire so long as these other goals were met. ₄ But the episode stimulated greater interest in Arab history, generally known as al-nahda [the Arab revival], a growth in pan-Arab clubs and associations, and a heightened sensitivity to a common identity based on language and ethnicity. ₅ Arab nationalism now entered the lexicon of identity and protest.

World War I unleashed several tremors that forever changed the political and territorial landscape, nurtured the Arab identity, and boosted the Arab nationalist movement. The first was the death of the Ottoman Empire. Even before World War I many Arab elites began debating what political arrangements should emerge once the “sick man” of Europe succumbed to its widely anticipated death. Such conversations took on an air of urgency as the Ottoman Empire’s status went from critical to fatal because of the war, and its rather hasty demise resulted in a political vacuum that many political movements hoped to fill. As Albert Hourani wrote:

The political structure within which most Arabs had lived for four centuries had disintegrated. . . . These changes had a deep effect on the way in which politically conscious Arabs thought of themselves, and tried to define their political identity. It posed questions about the way in which they should live together in political community. Wars are catalysts, bringing to consciousness feelings hitherto inarticulate and creating expectations of change. 6

War caused the region’s inhabitants to reconsider their political identity and what sorts of political arrangements would be most meaningful and desirable.

The Great Arab Revolt of 1916 offered one answer to the question of what life would be like after the Ottoman Empire. In an attempt to enlist the Arabs in its campaign against the Triple Alliance, the British approached Sharif Husayn of the Hijaz (a semiautonomous region on the Arabian Peninsula that was controlled by the Ottoman Empire) to determine whether and at what price he would be willing to join the fight. To side with Christians in a rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, the holder of the caliphate, would require a non-Ottoman identity, a grand narrative, and a cause that might silence critics. Although not an Arab nationalist of outstanding credentials (a few years before Sharif Husayn had sided with the Ottomans against the cause of Arabism), he offered himself as the leader of the Arabs and demanded their independence; his price of entry into the war was that he be acknowledged as ruler of the Arabs. ₇ These negotiations, an exchange of eight letters between July 1915 and January 1916 commonly known as the McMahon-Husayn correspondence, led the “Arabs” to declare war on the Ottomans in return for certain guarantees, some of which the British kept (independence for much of the Arabian Peninsula), some of which remained under a hail of controversy (whether Palestine was promised independence), and some of which the British undeniably broke (independence for the rest of the Fertile Crescent). By waging a war against the Ottomans and in the name of independence for the Arabs, Sharif Husayn triggered tremendous excitement and captured the imaginations of many in the Fertile Crescent. ₈ In a few short decades Arab nationalism had grown from a minor intellectual movement to become associated with the demand for political independence and statehood.

Britain made two subsequent pledges during the war that countered the spirit and completely abrogated the other promises of the McMahon-Husayn Agreement, resulting in a boost to Arabism. The first concerned the future of Palestine. In November 1917 British foreign minister Lord Balfour announced that his government would look favorably on the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Subsequently known as the Balfour Declaration, it had the illustrious distinction of angering both the Zionists and the Arabs. The Zionists, though pleased that their aspirations had gained a measure of legitimacy from a Great Power, were disappointed that the declaration sanctioned only a “homeland” rather than their sought-after sovereignty and statehood. The Arabs protested that the declaration was inconsistent with the McMahon-Husayn Agreement, which they believed promised Palestine independence, and objected to the idea of a foreign power’s handing an Arab territory over to an alien and minority population. Although whether McMahon-Husayn pledged independence for Palestine remains a matter of historical controversy, Arab political elites of the time quickly concluded that a promise by Britain had been broken. Accusations of betrayal by the Arabs spilled over into increasing suspicions of the West. Their suspicions were well-founded.

The second pledge, an unambiguous break with McMahon-Husayn, was the secret agreement concluded between Britain and France in 1916 that concerned the division of the spoils of the Middle East. Known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the two imperial powers conspired that after the war France would inherit Syria and Lebanon, and Britain the remainder of the region (Iraq, Palestine, and the soon to be created territory of Transjordan). Britain was well aware that Sykes-Picot violated its earlier promises to Husayn, but such sacrifices were necessary to maintain its strategic goals and to satisfy France, its wartime ally. The Sykes-Picot Agreement obtained the luster of legitimacy at the San Remo conference of April 1920 and then was absorbed into the mandate system of the League of Nations; Britain and France now became colonialists with a mission—they were to instruct these territories in the art of self-rule, that is, to ensure that their eventual independence would maintain the interests of the Great Powers. ₉ The period surrounding World War I introduced two external elements that favored Arab nationalism: a duplicitous Western diplomacy that betrayed the cause of Arab independence and imposed the mandate system and then legitimated the Zionist movement with Britain as its nominal guardian. Arab nationalism now possessed what all nationalisms thrive on—a threat.

Arabism began to emerge as an important political movement because of the massive political and social upheavals that accompanied World War I and the death of the Ottoman Empire. I want to stress three related points, the first two brief and the other occupying the remainder of the chapter. The first is the relationship between Islam and Arabism. Arabism was intertwined with Islam in many respects. Although many early champions of Arabism were Christians who stressed Arabism’s ethnic and secular content, Arabism’s symbols often drew from Islam, and its rapid rise can be partially attributed to its piggybacking on an existing Islamic identity. Whether Arabism and Islam were so intertwined that they were indistinguishable to the region’s inhabitants is a matter of historical and scholarly dispute. Less controversial, however, is that over time the religious content of Islam lost out to the secular and statist tenets of Arabism. ₁₀ Arabism quickly gained greater currency as the guiding force behind the independence campaigns and nearly all of the most consequential proposals for considering the desired regional order. Arabism rather than Islam became the language of protest and politics for many reasons, but chief among them was that Arab leaders found Arabism to be a better instrument for political survival. For instance, the caliphate disappeared with the Ottoman Empire, which meant that no “political or religious figure could claim allegiance from anyone outside his own country’s boundaries. To win such status—which also carried enhanced domestic prestige—Arab leaders became avid participants in the search for a new source of authority.” ₁₁ This search led them to Arabism.

Second, Arabism’s rise was attributable to more than external shocks and threats. The region’s inhabitants and political elites began to contemplate their response to these challenges through the lens of Arabism because this Arab identity was being nurtured by an expanding transnational network. Arab nationalism benefited from new means of communication, transportation, and education. Newspapers multiplied, and Arabs began to travel more frequently throughout the region, to be educated in each other’s schools, and later saw the Egyptian films that were shown throughout the Arab world. Such transnational and cultural movements “helped to create a shared world of taste and ideas.” ₁₂ Social movements and political elites, capitalizing on a political and intellectual vacuum and on the inability of the political institutions to confront the challenges of the day, began to nurture and promote an Arab identity.

Third, Arab nationalism’s emergent meaning was contingent on its relationship to wider sociopolitical forces. Arab nationalism began as a romantic movement that stressed the singularity of an Arab identity but was generally unattached to any concrete political programs. To be sure, some championed a single Arab state for a single Arab nation, but Arabism’s political popularity grew, and its political projects came into focus in response to daily practicalities, not because of abstract debates. Arab nationalism’s inaugural political moment came in response to the Turkification programs and with the demand for autonomy. For the next several decades Arabism’s political salience rose and its political projects crystallized as political elites and societal groups dealt with the international challenges of political independence, Palestine, and unity while standing vigilant over their domestic political interests.

 

Arab Nationalism and Independence

A map anticipated reality, not vice versa. . . . A map was a model for, rather than a model of, what it purported to represent.

—Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 73

The mandate system unleashed two somewhat countervailing nationalisms. The less prevalent of the two was pan-Arabism, which stressed Arab sentiments and the demand for political unity as far as the political identity stretched, that is, wherever Arabic was spoken. In this view the mandate system had territorially divided a singular Arab nation, creating the demand to rejoin what had been dismembered. Sometimes the fight for statehood and the desire for unity could be strategically merged in a single stream; for instance, Arab nationalists were at the forefront of the struggle for political independence, viewing the independence of the separate Arab states as the first step toward political unification. But they refused to coin terms that could conceptually and historically accommodate the separate struggles for political independence as part of distinct nationalisms, preferring to treat all independence drives as one step toward the larger goal of political unification. ₁₃ The growing stature of pan-Arabism was one consequence of the mandate system that divided the Arab nation.

The second and dominant strand was territorial nationalism. Between the wars many residents came to define Arab nationalism as anticolonialism and independence for the separate Arab states. ₁₄ The territorial segmentation channeled political energies to the local rather than the regional level, feeding into existing regional rivalries and differences. ₁₅ That is, the mandates did not exactly divide what the region’s inhabitants understood as once integrated, and in some cases these areas already had core constituencies that reflected more localized identities. Moreover, the establishment of the mandate system made political independence the key issue for all Arab governments, and in most instances Arab elites used the language of Arab nationalism in the struggle for statehood. The combination of these existing differences and the new institutional environment meant that most powerful political movements had as their guiding inspiration territorial independence rather than political unification.

Although Arab nationalism obtained a territorial character during the mandate period, the degree of satisfaction with the territorial arrangements was generally associated with the degree of societal segmentation and the salience of the Arab identity in relationship to other political identities. As a general rule territorial nationalism grew in popularity relative to pan-Arabism as one traveled away from the Fertile Crescent. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, and (to a lesser extent) Lebanon adhered to territorial nationalism and remained distant from pan-Arabism. Saudi Arabia, which emerged from a marriage of military prowess (Saudis) and religious creed (Wahabbis) and received its independence in 1921, presented itself as the homeland of the original Arabs but expressed an Islamic religious identity rather than a secular national identity. ₁₆ Any support for Arabism among the ruling elite was dissipated by the knowledge that the Hashemites of Transjordan and Iraq, a family that Saudi Arabia had defeated in battle in 1925 and evicted from the Hijaz, were among Arabism’s chief champions. Yemen also achieved independence at this time and was far removed from the unification spirit.

Lebanon was a creation of French strategic machinations, severed from historic Syria in 1920. In 1861 France helped to secure a special status for the Maronites of the Mount Lebanon region within the Ottoman Empire and backed by Western guarantees, specifically French military and political power. From then on, the Maronites actively pressed to expand their political and territorial claims. A winning opportunity came with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the assumption by France of the Syrian mandate; France created present-day Lebanon from Mount Lebanon and part of Syria. Now two communities, the Western-leaning Christian Maronites and the Arab-leaning Sunni Arabs, undertook a struggle over Lebanon’s national identity, with the Maronites reaching back to a Phoenician heritage and claiming for Lebanon a historical authenticity and the Sunnis challenging the legitimacy of the state and expressing a preference to join with their Arab neighbors. Indeed, of the five states that were “artificial creations and handed their constitutions by the Great Powers,” only in Lebanon did a local population “seriously advance a thesis in support” of the country’s national validity. ₁₇ However, what might have become a clash of national destinies eventually yielded to a gentlemen’s agreement to acknowledge Lebanon’s sovereign—but Arab—character, reflected by the National Charter of 1943. ₁₈

Egypt, which was not a mandatory country and had been ruled by Britain since 1882, was disposed toward territorial nationalism and distant from Arab nationalism through the mid-1930s. Indeed, Egyptians generally did not identify themselves as Arabs, and if they thought about those in the Fertile Crescent, they often held rather uncharitable views. ₁₉ Accordingly, Egyptians demonstrated little interest in the important Arab events of the 1920 riots in Palestine, the Arab Congress in Damascus in 1919 and 1920, and the French takeover of Syria in 1920. When the Egyptian nationalist leader Sa’ad Zaglul met the Arab delegates at Versailles in 1918, he insisted that their struggles for statehood were not connected: “Our problem is an Egyptian problem and not an Arab problem.” ₂₀ Many Egyptian intellectuals and politicians treated Arab nationalism warily; even the author Taha Husayn, who supported an increase in Egypt’s ties to the Arab world, opposed unity lest the Egyptian personality be diluted. ₂₁ In any event, Egyptians exhibited a strong territorial nationalism and saw their drive for independence as distinct from the other independence campaigns in the Fertile Crescent.

Nearly all surveys of Iraq, Transjordan, and Syria begin by stating how these countries were inventions of the colonial powers and, relatedly, highlight the problems of governance of ethnically and religiously divided societies whose people had little political identification with the state. ₂₂ Arabism’s popularity is closely connected to this environment. As a result of the Turkification programs, Arabism was already part of the political vocabulary in this region before World War I. But its stature grew in connection with the postmandate struggle for independence and the attempt to forge some political cohesion from a population whose primary political identifications derived from their religion, tribe, or village. As residents of countries that were created by Great Power machinations, they could hardly see themselves as, for instance, Syrians or become enthusiastic about Syrian independence. Confronting a situation in which the traditional sources of authority and legitimacy were quite weak, political elites found that Arabism made them politically useful, could create some commonality where only divisions existed, and raised a banner that could lead the struggle for independence. Appeals to nationalism, Clifford Geertz once remarked of new states, are based on hopes and not on descriptions. ₂₃

Britain promised Syria independence and then denied it in deference to France. In fact, Syria actually experienced a brief moment of political independence between its liberation in 1918 and the French military conquest in July 1920. Notable here was the series of congresses that occurred in 1919 and 1920. The last congress took place in March 1920 and offered Faysal, the son of Sharif Husayn, the whole of Syria. His reign was brief. In July French forces took Damascus, expelled Faysal, and established a republican regime. ₂₄ From this point on the Syrian political elite cultivated Arab nationalism for three related purposes. First, Arabism could legitimate the elite’s rule in a way that no other ideology or program could. Syrian leaders began to portray themselves as leaders of an Arab struggle in order to make themselves politically relevant and to link themselves to a past, present, and future. Second, Arabism proved relatively effective in the attempt to meld a single political community from the mélange of ethnic, tribal, and religious communities that was now Syria. To be sure, Arabism could not erase their differences outright, but it could lessen the existing political divisions. Third, Arabism proved highly useful in the struggle for independence. To rally the population for “Syrian” independence was politically difficult because its populace viewed Syria as an artificial creation of the West; to rally the population for Arab independence, however, tapped into a historic past and a tangible political identity. This independence was largely territorial, despite the prominent exception that many Syrian political elites insisted on the restoration of Greater Syria, which would include parts of Transjordan and Lebanon, territories that they viewed as ancestral parts of Syria severed by colonial whims. ₂₅ Arabism had an additional advantage in the anticolonial campaign: it could attract the backing of other Arab states in their struggle against France. That Arabism could tie together these three political programs became particularly evident at various moments; for instance, the Great Revolt in Syria of the mid-1920s was anti-imperialist and territorially nationalist in character, and the nationalist elite channeled the traditional nonnational loyalties and growing discontent of many residents into an anticolonial campaign. ₂₆ Such campaigns highlight not only the multifunctional use of Arabism but also the territorial character that the language of Arabism had in Syria, Arabism’s cradle.

Iraq, cobbled together from various areas of the old Ottoman Empire, contained three significant and regionally defined populations: the Kurds in the north, the Sunnis in the central areas and Baghdad, and the Shi’ites in Baghdad and in the south. It was left to a foreigner from the Hijaz and a self-proclaimed Arab nationalist, Faysal, to govern this divided polity. After the French ousted Faysal from Damascus, the British, attempting to repair relations with him and to use his close association with Arabism to legitimate their mandate, made him king of Iraq. ₂₇ Although the Kurds and the Shi’ites were suspicious of Arabism and their new king, Arab nationalism gained a foothold in Baghdad because of the spread of Arab clubs, the Turkification programs and Ottoman insensitivities, and, perhaps most important, the English military invasion in 1914–1918, which brought together Shi’i and Sunni in a common political cause for the first time in centuries. ₂₈

Iraq now had an Arab and Hashemite king who faced a dual challenge: reducing British control and creating a national identity among a people who had no shared political community. ₂₉ From the moment of Iraq’s creation Britain hammered out a series of treaties that guaranteed for Britain various rights and hinted at greater Iraqi autonomy and the prospect of independence. Iraq gained formal independence in 1930, but Britain continued to cast a long shadow over Iraqi life through various treaty provisions. Britain’s presence, coupled with the ongoing governability question, meant that the political history of Iraq before World War II is in many respects a tale of the coalitions and cliques that formed around three different nationalisms in the fight for istiqlal tam [total independence]: Iraqi nationalism and the attempt to forge an Iraqi national identity that could envelop the three principal demographic groups; Arab nationalism, which was territorial in character and envisioned an independent but Arab Iraq; and pan-Arabism, which was bound up with the palace’s long-standing aspirations but was viewed suspiciously by the Shi’ite and Kurdish populations, which saw it as a threat to their cultural and religious autonomy. The “Iraqi first” version of nationalism eventually lost out to a growing pan-Arab spirit that was closely bound up with the ambitions of the palace and was particularly strong among the officer corps. ₃₀ But the palace’s heavy reliance on Britain for financial and military support eventually clashed with nationalist currents; the palace responded to the greatest of these domestic challenges, the Rashid Ali coup of 1941, by leaning on British military power to support its rule, injuring the palace’s legitimacy and Arab credentials. ₃₁ Still, Iraq remained the home for various unification and Fertile Crescent schemes. ₃₂

The history of Transjordan is bound up with the personal ambitions of Abdullah, the son of Sharif Husayn and the older brother of Faysal. Watching the French conquest of Syria in 1920 from the Hijaz, Abdullah reacted by initiating a military campaign against the French. This act was a potential embarrassment to Britain and a source of friction between Britain and France because Abdullah was conducting his raids from British-controlled areas. Britain, hoping to quiet Abdullah and to be seen as making good on some of its earlier promises to the Arabs, lopped off the eastern part of the Palestine mandate, dubbed it Transjordan, and made Abdullah its emir. Beginning in April 1921, Abdullah ruled a land with no jewel for a capital city and few natural resources; it was all but landlocked and highly dependent on Britain for military and financial support. ₃₃ Abdullah, an unabashed Arab nationalist of the unification variety who named his army the Arab Legion, made the best of the situation by clamoring for political independence and circulating an endless number of Greater Syria schemes that featured Abdullah as the prospective king of Damascus. Although he gained some prestige by his association with Arabism, his Arabism was born not from domestic pressures but from his personal and territorial ambitions. Indeed, he faced little substantial domestic opposition to his rule, thanks to his skillful manipulation and use of patronage politics, but what opposition existed concerned not his Arabism but the demand for constitutional mechanisms to check his power. ₃₄ Abdullah and Faysal, the bearers of Hashemite ambitions, ruled from Amman and Baghdad but continued to covet Damascus and to dream of a unified Fertile Crescent that bore their family crest.

Arab nationalism was a growing force throughout the region, but Arab societies and elites maintained varying degrees of allegiance to the existing territorial states. As a general rule the Arab societies in the newly created states of Transjordan, Iraq, and Syria had little emotional attachment to the state and were more likely to favor unification than were the Arab societies of Lebanon, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. These latter societies were more removed from unification as a tenet of Arab nationalism and more closely identified with the existing state. Arab political and ruling elites tended to adopt a stance that roughly reflected these currents of opinion; those in Syria, Transjordan, and Iraq were more likely to wield a unification theme in the struggle for independence and in their contest for political power with domestic rivals than were those in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon.

But in all cases the mandate system and the searing drive for independence represented a powerful force behind territorial nationalism and statism. To be sure, some Arab political elites and social movements came to embrace the demand for unification as they struggled against colonialism, but in other instances the practical goal of immediate independence gave way to an attachment to the territorial state. Unification might be possible and desirable, noted many Arab political elites, but such goals depended first on territorial independence. ₃₅

Although Arab nationalists might have differed on whether they should work for unification or live within the confines of existing state boundaries, they were unified in the belief that independence implied not simply juridical statehood but also the elimination of foreign control. Statehood meant little if the colonial power retained its privileges and prerogatives; therefore all vestiges and residues of colonialism must be removed as well. But agreement on the need to remove foreign control yielded to disagreement on the types of relations permitted with the West. Many Arab leaders, because of pragmatism, a desire to keep aid flowing, or a genuine desire to emulate the model of the nation-state of the West, were resigned to, if not desirous of, maintaining relations with the West. But such a relationship had to be based on equality and respect, if only for domestic political purposes.

The demand for real rather than rhetorical independence came alive during the ongoing and highly controversial treaty negotiations between the Arab states and the mandate powers. Two features of these negotiations are worth highlighting. Britain and France were attempting to preserve their control over the region and to further their interests as much as possible; the Arab states were attempting to achieve independence and to maintain the flow of foreign assistance without sacrificing their autonomy. Soon after the imposition of the mandate system the British and the French became enthralled with the idea of replacing their formal rule with informal treaties that would generate the same package of benefits without the increasing political costs. ₃₆ Arab political elites were open to a treaty relationship because they were pragmatic and wanted financial and strategic assistance, but they were unwilling to sign on to a treaty that seemingly continued colonialism in all but name. Arab leaders were eager to conclude an agreement, but they were not so impatient that they were willing to make concessions that would leave them vulnerable to domestic rioting or subject to humiliating conditions from the Great Powers.

In addition, the spread of Arab nationalism meant that these treaty negotiations were linked across the region at both the bargaining table and within the various societies. Those negotiating in Cairo kept a keen eye on the negotiations reached in Baghdad, Abdullah in Amman would routinely insist on terms that resembled what his fellow Hashemites in Baghdad received, and Syrian politicians could hardly accept an agreement with France that was less than what other Arab leaders gained from Britain. The conclusion of a treaty, moreover, was cause for commentary throughout the region, including cables of congratulations from one Arab leader to another and pronouncements that the independence of one Arab state was a victory for Arabs everywhere. Conversely, a treaty viewed as conceding too much to the colonial power was met with catcalls and protests in capitals across the region. When Iraq concluded the Portsmouth Agreement with Britain in 1948, an agreement widely interpreted as allowing Britain to maintain its colonial prerogatives, rioting erupted in Baghdad and elsewhere; Abdullah’s treaty with Britain in 1947 led many Arab politicians and newspapers to comment that Transjordan’s independence was compromised by concessions made to Britain. ₃₇ The treaty negotiations between Arab states and the mandatory powers were the subject of regional commentary because of the view that the security of the Arab states was interdependent and that the fate of the Arabs was intertwined.

In sum, the first concrete and politically consequential meaning associated with Arab nationalism was anticolonialism and political independence. Arab leaders began to cultivate, appropriate, and accumulate the symbols of Arabism as a way of legitimating their rule, those symbols were largely displayed during the fight for independence and statehood, and the fight for independence in the name of Arabism helped to deepen and legitimate Arabism. Political independence, however, need not entail the severing of ties. Most Arab political elites contemplated a continued relationship with their colonial patron after statehood, but they also were determined to ensure that the relationship was viewed as equal if only because a perception of dependence could leave them vulnerable to domestic discontent and regional ridicule. To be an Arab nationalist meant to be committed to independence and freedom from foreign control.

 

Arab Nationalism and Palestine

Before 1936 the struggle in Palestine was hardly the stuff of regional politics. Palestine took a backseat to the more pressing and immediate demands of political independence. And even if Arab governments had wanted to become more engaged in the conflict, they could hardly pursue whatever foreign policy they wanted; not only were they occupied but the regimes in power had to fear that becoming too vocal might jeopardize their independence campaigns. Finally, for residents of Baghdad or Cairo to associate with the plight of an Arab-speaking resident of Jaffa generally required that they view their political circumstances as intertwined because of their shared Arab identity. But this was hardly the case. Except for the well-publicized clashes of 1921 and 1929, the drama in Palestine largely occurred in isolation and without political mobilization in other Arab lands; seldom did Arab societies demand that their governments take a stand on these events, and Arab leaders found little political advantage to be gained by doing so.

By the late 1930s, however, Palestine had become an Arab issue. Three factors contributed to this development. Arab nationalists increasingly framed the Zionist challenge as an Arab issue, as situated alongside the regionwide struggle for independence from the West. As the Arab identity emerged in relationship to the struggle against colonialism, Arabs fighting for their independence in Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo began to identify with the similar story unfolding in Palestine. ₃₈ Palestinian leaders in fact were actively educating their brethren about the connection in order to further their struggle against Zionism; by playing the Arab card, they could mobilize regional support on their behalf. ₃₉ In general, various Palestinian and Arab activists were framing Palestine as an Arab issue, attempting to build an identity-based bridge between those in different Arab lands and Palestine.

Further, the growing attention to Palestine contributed to and reflected a deepening Arab identity. During the 1930s more newspapers throughout the Arab world reflected a stronger voice for Arab unity, and more pan-Arab clubs and political associations reported on events in Palestine as a matter of concern to all Arabs. ₄₀ As individuals began to identify themselves as Arabs, they also began to make connections to the Arabs of Palestine, and the tendency to frame Palestine as an Arab issue led to the further attachment to an Arab identity.

The third factor contributing to the making of Palestine as an Arab issue was the watershed event of the Palestine strike of 1936. The background of the strike is bound up with the long-standing grievances of the Palestinians against Zionism, and the trigger for the strike was the murder of two Jews by Arab assailants, followed by Jewish retaliation that left two Arabs dead and more widespread violence. The result was an instantaneous and unplanned revolt among Palestinians in April 1936, peaking later that year and continuing with decreasing strength through 1939. The Palestinians organized strikes, demonstrations, and clashes with the Zionists and British authorities that were intended to assert Palestinians’ claims and to publicize their plight. ₄₁

And that they did. Occurring at a moment of growing support for Arab nationalism, the strike captured the attention of a region that had remained politically uninvolved in the Palestine conflict. That the strike was a major, if not the single most important, factor in the growth of Arab nationalism was the result of timing—it occurred during greater identification with Arab nationalism. ₄₂ In Syria the spontaneous popular support for the Palestinians resulted from a growing awareness of the place of Palestine in the future Arab world and the fear that an independent Zionist state might create an obstacle to Arab unity, establish a dominating economic presence, and represent a threat to the Arabs because of Zionism’s Western ties and origins. ₄₃ Iraqis generally shared the Syrians’ concerns and beliefs. Arab societies were racing ahead of their governments in support of Palestine, representing one of the first instances of social mobilization for a political project outside the state’s territorial boundaries. ₄₄

Such mobilization placed immediate pressure on Arabs governments to formulate a coherent and concrete Palestine policy. Indeed, domestic opposition groups found that they could advance their fortunes and embarrass the regime in power by challenging its Arab credentials and policy on Palestine. In Iraq the Palestinian strike quickly became part of domestic politics and the struggles among the rival factions for political power. ₄₅ The Syrian populace’s demand that the government aid the Palestinians challenged the political program of the National Bloc, the major political party in Syria, tipping Syrian nationalism—that is, the struggle for independence—into Arab nationalism, a connection to transnational obligations. ₄₆ Domestic political pressures pushed Arab governments everywhere to take a more active stand on Palestine.

But Arab governments also found that Palestine could become a source of symbolic capital, a way to bolster their domestic and regional prestige. Iraq now became “a vital center of Arab nationalist activity, enhancing Baghdad’s reputation among the Arabs. In Transjordan the ambitious Amir Abdullah, while not at all pleased by the use of his territory as a conduit for arms and fighters, sought to benefit from the revolt by expanding his influence in Palestinian politics.” ₄₇ Though driven less by nationalist than by religious identification, Saudi Arabia’s regional prestige swelled because of its visibility on the Palestine issue. ₄₈ Arab political elites could gain or lose politically depending on how their societies viewed them in relationship to the cause of Palestine; accordingly, the elites had every reason to attach themselves to the cause. ₄₉

Developments in Egypt highlight the growing identification of Palestine as an Arab issue, the insertion of Palestine in domestic politics, and the attempt by state officials to take the lead on Palestine for domestic and foreign policy purposes. Before the 1930s most Egyptians did not identify themselves as Arab and accordingly perceived Zionism with a blend of indifference and some modest concern, driven by an Islam-based fear that the Jews would control the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. ₅₀ During the 1930s, however, Egyptians began gravitating toward Arabism, and by the time of the Palestine strike what had once been indifference had become “interest, identification, and involvement.” ₅₁ In fact, the 1936 strike inaugurated Egypt’s new Arab orientation. ₅₂ At the grassroots level various movements began to organize public demonstrations and relief committees. But grassroots politics quickly became part of formal politics. The principal political opposition, the Wafd, found that Palestine was an effective way to embarrass the palace and score political points. The regime in turn found that becoming more involved was both politically necessary and a potential source of prestige. ₅₃ “Thus the question of Egypt’s political identity and orientation,” wrote Yeshohua Porath, “became deeply intermingled with its internal political strife, all the more so since the Palace and the politicians connected with it did whatever they could to outbid the Wafd on this matter.” ₅₄ Economic and strategic interests also pushed the regime to become more involved in the conflict: some Egyptian businessmen feared that a more financially and industrially advanced Jewish population would have easier access to the markets in the Arab east; the alienness of a potential Jewish state represented a strategic threat; and Egypt might generate some political clout with Britain if it became identified with the cause of Palestine. ₅₅ The palace, in short, found that a pro-Arab line was both popular at home and potentially consistent with its various interests. ₅₆ Symbolic capital could be exchanged for other highly valued goals.

Now that Arab states were more actively involved in the Palestine crisis, they began to coordinate their Palestine policy, engage in symbolic competition, and face growing normative constraints on their foreign policy. The Palestine strike caused Arab states to embark on their maiden effort to construct a common foreign policy on Palestine. In October 1936 Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen appealed to the Arab Higher Committee (the nominal leadership of the Palestinian community) to call off the strike. Soon thereafter Arab states routinely participated in informal discussions and consultations and attempted to coordinate their policies. By the waning days of the strike and the time of the St. James Conference of 1939, Arab states took it almost as a matter of course that they should coordinate their policies on Palestine and attempt to forge a collective position.

Because the Arab states were becoming more involved in Palestine, Palestine was becoming part of inter-Arab politics. Arab leaders competed not only with their domestic rivals to demonstrate their commitment on Palestine but soon they were doing the same vis-à-vis other Arab leaders. Finding that they gained incredible regional prestige if they were identified as a leader on the Palestine issue, prestige that could translate into domestic popularity, Arab officials now engaged in symbolic competition. ₅₇ But taking a stand on Palestine was not a risk-free proposition. After all, Arab leaders who “staked their prestige on saving Palestine for the Arabs risked being discredited if they could not produce results.” ₅₈ For the moment, however, those risks were minimal because Arab states were committed to little more than diplomatic support.

The regionalization and institutionalization of Palestine as an Arab issue meant that Arab leaders were increasingly constrained not only by domestic public opinion but also by “Arab” public opinion. One of the first instances of this came when Abdullah of Transjordan responded favorably to the 1937 Peel Commission’s proposal that Palestine be partitioned between the Zionists and the Palestinians, with the latter becoming part of Transjordan. He became the target of outrage for a stand that Arabs viewed as defeatist and acceding to the Zionists. ₅₉ To rally public opinion against the Peel Report and to increase pressure on the British, several hundred Arab nationalists from around the region gathered in the Syrian town of Bludan in September 1937. ₆₀ This unprecedented development—the attempt to mobilize Arabs across the region to change the foreign policy of an Arab leader—would soon become a permanent feature of Arab politics. Arab leaders increasingly found themselves accountable to Arab public opinion.

In general, the growth of an Arab identity led to greater involvement in Palestine, and events in Palestine, notably the 1936 strike, contributed to the rise of Arab nationalism. Although the influence of the revolt differed from place to place, it had the uniform effect of pushing and pulling Arab leaders toward greater involvement in the Palestinian conflict. Residents of the region were now defining themselves as Arabs, supporting Arabs in Palestine, and expecting their governments to do the same. And so they did. Although Arab leaders might have been genuinely concerned with developments in Nablus, Jaffa, and Jerusalem, considerable evidence exists that their involvement derived from domestic political calculations and the desire to accumulate symbolic capital tied to Arabism. By the late 1930s Arab governments had uniformly declared their commitment to justice in Palestine, staked their Arab credentials on it, begun to coordinate their policies and decisions, and found themselves politically accountable not only to their societies but to those in other Arab states. Palestine was now an Arab issue.

 

Arab Nationalism and Unification

By the late 1930s, as an independent Arab world emerged, the race for statehood among Arab states was “taken over by the struggle for unity.” ₆₁ Newspapers, popular magazines, and general political commentaries increasingly featured the topic of Arab unity and the practical steps that might foster this outcome. Arab leaders were beginning to speak of life after colonialism, and the political opposition in many Arab countries began using the theme of Arab unity to embarrass the government and score easy political points. ₆₂ Although strong divisions existed among Arab leaders, social movements, and intellectuals concerning what unity meant and what practical form it should take, the consensus was emerging that an Arab association of some sort was necessary for an Arab revival and commendable on strategic, political, cultural, and economic grounds. ₆₃ The mix of anticipated independence and Arab nationalism steered the conversation among Arab states and societies toward the future regional order.

At the heart of this debate was the meaning of Arab unity. Unity was one of those catchall words that few could define and even fewer could object to. Still, there were two distinct camps. The maximalist camp defined unity as entailing unification or federation among the Arab states to bring the state and the nation into correspondence, erase the residues of colonialism, and fulfill Arab nationalism’s ultimate aspirations. But even where unification was most favored—largely in Transjordan, Syria, and Iraq, and among the lower and middle classes—the support was hardly overwhelming. Few politically consequential mass demonstrations for unification were staged. ₆₄ Moreover, Syrian and Iraqi leaders could hardly be counted as genuine and diehard supporters. Most Syrian political elites resisted concrete calls for unification because of their fear of Hashemite designs, their desire for a republican rather than a monarchical regime, and their reluctance to trade French for British guardianship, which would have occurred with any association with Iraq or Transjordan. ₆₅ Iraqi officials proceeded cautiously toward unification or federation, fearing that it might ignite political instability among a population whose majority was Kurdish and Shi’ite and therefore suspicious of Arabism. ₆₆

But Iraqi, Syrian, and Transjordanian political elites kept unification alive—indeed, Arab officials matched, and sometimes outpaced, their societies—because of personal, political, and strategic calculations. King Abdullah of Transjordan aired various Greater Syria plans, primarily to achieve his long-standing personal ambition of being crowned king of Damascus and to lay claim to part of Palestine and secondarily to encourage Britain to expedite the timetable for Transjordan’s independence. ₆₇ Beginning with King Faysal and continuing over the years, the Iraqi palace saw Syria as having been promised and then denied to the Hashemites and held that a reclaimed Syria also would advance Iraq’s economic interests and leave it more secure from Turkey and Iran. ₆₈ Iraq’s interest in some sort of federation increased with formal independence in 1930, when the rather ambitious Nuri al-Said was prime minister, when such proposals might increase Iraq’s other foreign policy objectives vis-à-vis Britain or the other Arab states, and on occasion for domestic political purposes.

In general, these and other Arab officials might have been sincere champions of unification, but it just so happened that the discourse of unification served to legitimate their rule. And in the highly unlikely event that their proposals became reality, the result would be an increase in their political power. After all, these proposals had one common feature: the official forwarding the recommendation stood to be an immediate beneficiary. ₆₉

Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Lebanon, and Egypt comprised the minimalist camp, as they opposed unification and pressed for a regional association that exhibited some modest moves toward cultural, economic, and political cooperation within the constraining parameters of sovereignty. Saudi Arabia was suspicious of Arab nationalism or any related scheme that increased the political power of the Hashemite states of Transjordan and Iraq. And with good reason. The Saudis had ousted Sharif Husayn from the Hijaz in 1925, and ever since the Hashemites had been quite vocal about their desire to return. ₇₀ From then on Saudi king Ibn Saud viewed Arab nationalism as a potential threat. Yemen was equally distant from the flag of Arab unification.

Lebanese officials could not help but translate Greater Syria into Lesser Lebanon. Because Lebanon had been administratively created from part of historical Syria, many Lebanese feared that Syria would use the facade of Arabism to make a territorial claim on its soil. The language of Arab nationalism contained an additional threat: because political peace in Lebanon was dependent on accommodation between the Maronite and Muslim political communities, Arabism represented a threat to the former and hence a source of political instability. In fact, even those Lebanese who identified with Arab nationalism were wary of a nationalism that would subsume them under Syrian control or would disrupt the social peace.

Egypt’s initial attitude toward unification was not merely dismissive but derisive. Its pre-1930 position was famously captured by Sa’ad Zaglul, the great Egyptian nationalist: “If you add one zero to one zero, then add another zero, what will be the sum?” ₇₁ In his view the Arab countries were zeros. As Egyptians became more attached to Arab nationalism and concerned with Palestine, however, the government began to take a greater interest in regional politics. But even then, most Egyptian officials and intellectuals feared becoming entangled in Arab politics. ₇₂

The Egyptian government became more active in Arab politics after it made two calculations. The first was that it was in Egypt’s material interests to become more involved in Arab affairs; to become identified as a leader of Arab politics could elevate Egypt’s political importance in global affairs, increase its commercial relations with the Arab east, and perhaps even further its ultimate goal of independence. Second, so long as it was going to be vulnerable to Arab issues because of Arab nationalism’s growing popularity at home, it might as well control the Arab agenda rather than be controlled by it. ₇₃ And once the Egyptian government decided to become more involved in Arab affairs, it found that it was pushing on an open door. Although some Arab leaders in the Fertile Crescent resented this upstart’s long shadow, they ultimately kept such reservations private and publicly welcomed Egypt’s newfound activism and leadership. ₇₄ Many Arab nationalists viewed Egypt as a cultural center for Arabism and the Arab world’s most powerful country; these nationalists had found regretful Egypt’s long-standing reluctance to take a leading role in Arab affairs and thus openly embraced Egypt’s change of heart, even though Egypt represented a powerful force behind a minimalist view of Arab unity. ₇₅

The formal and informal discussions about the future regional order reflected this divide between the maximalist and minimalist camps. The leaders of the Fertile Crescent were busy circulating various proposals for unification or federation among themselves, whereas discussions that included Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon were modest in design. The first practical steps toward inter-Arab cooperation in fact embodied a more statist and minimalist orientation. Iraq and Saudi Arabia forged a treaty in 1936 that would have been long forgotten except that it represents one of the first efforts at inter-Arab cooperation. Later that year Egypt and Saudi Arabia commenced similar treaty discussions. Although the Arab states continued their discussions about the future regional association during the next few years, these discussions subsided and then nearly vanished as World War II neared.

Arab states began a more vigorous and serious set of conversations beginning in 1941. The catalyst was Britain’s announcement that it favored some sort of institutionalized arrangement among the Arab states. In his famous Mansion House speech of May 29 British prime minister Anthony Eden declared Britain’s support for any proposal that strengthened the ties among the Arab states. Britain was motivated by a desire to erase its antinationalist image, associate itself with a movement that it viewed as potentially unstoppable, and convince the Arabs that they should ally with Britain against Germany. But Eden’s speech attracted little acclaim among Arab nationalists, perhaps because the Allies had lost considerable prestige in the Arab world after the fall of France and because the Arabs had lost faith in the statements of Western leaders, particularly when they were being defeated in war. ₇₆

But Eden’s speech did encourage Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Said to forward a Fertile Crescent plan to the British minister of state in Cairo a few months later. Never formally published, officially titled “A Note on Arab Independence and Unity with Particular Reference to Palestine,” and subsequently known as the “Blue Book,” it had two defining features: the formation of Greater Syria (to include Syria, Transjordan, parts of Lebanon, and Palestine), which would then form a league with Iraq, and the belief that unity should be based on the states that most resembled each other in their general political and social conditions—that is, unity should include the countries of the Fertile Crescent and exclude Egypt and Saudi Arabia. To achieve this unity, Said observed, “sacrifices of sovereignty and vested interests may have to be made.” ₇₇ Said’s proposal had little immediate effect, but it did place greater political weight behind the idea of some type of association.

The next phase in the debate about the desired regional order began in 1943. Again the catalyst was Prime Minister Eden, who on February 14 offered another statement on the subject of Arab nationalism. Unlike his earlier commentary, which had little long-term effect, this time his thoughts triggered a highly involved set of discussions about the future regional order among Arab leaders. ₇₈ Nuri al-Said suggested to Egyptian prime minister Mustafa al-Nahhas that Egypt sponsor an all-Arab conference on the future regional order. Although Said knowingly risked handing the unity talks to a known opponent of unification, he believed that Nahhas would welcome the opportunity to score some domestic political points by taking the lead on the unity talks, hoped that by bringing Egypt into the picture he might overcome the obstacle posed by Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, and calculated that the future of Arab unity demanded the inclusion of Egypt, the most powerful Arab state.

Nahhas picked up on Said’s suggestion and on March 30, 1943, proposed that Cairo host a preparatory conference on the subject of Arab unity. ₇₉ Nahhas had various reasons for doing so. Egypt, a latecomer to the cause of Arab nationalism and an opponent of unification, saw its role as similar to the position of the United States in the Western Hemisphere: dominating and stabilizing. ₈₀ As the largest power, Egypt could regulate Arab affairs in ways that furthered Egypt’s various interests. Nahhas also stood to gain personally by sponsoring the all-Arab conference. Because of a recent political debacle he had been labeled an opponent of Arab nationalism. To now host the first all-Arab conference would be quite a personal coup, and he made sure of it. In announcing his invitation he portrayed himself as the arbiter of different Arab proposals, scoring political points and outdueling his political rival King Faruq in the process. ₈₁ In just a few short years Egypt had moved from the wings of Arab nationalism to become one of its leaders.

During the next several months Arab officials conducted a series of negotiations about who the Arabs were and what the regional architecture and its organizing principles should be. ₈₂ Nahhas of Egypt and Said of Iraq opened informal discussions by addressing who the Arabs were and whether to include Egypt and the Sudan; the form and system of governance of any future federation; Greater Syria schemes and the future status of Christian and Jewish minorities; the willingness of states to renounce their sovereignty; and the potential danger of Jewish expansion within a federation that included Palestine. ₈₃ The most important results of this discussion were that Egypt must be included in any future regional association, that unification was inconceivable and federation was politically unlikely, and that future discussions should concentrate on more practical possibilities.

The subsequent discussions among the other Arab leaders came to similar conclusions regarding unification. Saudi Arabia reiterated its opposition to any Fertile Crescent plan that was based on Iraqi leadership or, for that matter, any alterations that might leave the Hashemites advantaged. ₈₄ The imam of Yemen followed suit. ₈₅ Lebanon continued to stand by sovereignty. Syria, though publicly favoring federation—its parliament even adopted a formal resolution calling upon the government to work for a confederation of Arab states—also told Saudi Arabia’s Ibn Saud that they were in full agreement on the need to maintain the territorial status quo. ₈₆ Although Syrian leaders might have desired some sort of federation, they feared that it would leave them susceptible to Hashemite encroachments and recognized that the mandate system had given each part of Greater Syria its own national identity. ₈₇

These negotiations produced three discernible patterns that would become defining features of Arab politics for the next several decades. The first was the contradictory logics of wataniyya [state interests] and qawmiyya [Arab national interests]. Although Arab leaders had become quite comfortable with these territorial entities created by the West, Arab nationalism had a transnational component that expected Arab states to pool their separate sovereignties. Arab leaders routinely handled this tension by proclaiming their devotion to Arab unity while opposing most proposals intended to bring about unification on the grounds that they were impractical for the moment, unsalable at home, and might leave them vulnerable to unwanted outside interference.

Second, Arab leaders looked upon each other as a potential threat to their sovereignty, autonomy, and survival. Although they could hardly resist scoring some easy political points by calling for unification or federation, they viewed almost all such proposals as a Trojan horse and the deliverer of the proposal as a potential threat, because no Arab leader would advance or associate himself with a proposal that did not leave him better off and with more power. ₈₈ The result was that although Arab leaders needed to create some regional association to satisfy the aspirations of their societies, they feared that such an association might leave them vulnerable to other Arab leaders and thus threaten their survival.

The third feature of these negotiations was the ongoing debate about the meaning of “Arab unity.” Arab leaders eventually converged on a meaning that discarded the possibility of unification (at least in the near term) and allowed for a formal association that did not threaten their sovereignty and autonomy. These three related dynamics—the tension between statism and nationalism, the fear that an association would only encourage an interdependence that they viewed as a threat to their stability, and the meaning of unity—would become defining features of Arab politics for the next several decades.

After months of informal negotiations and after agreeing on a meaning of Arab unity, the Arab states gathered at the Antondiades Palace in Alexandria from September 25 through October 6, 1944, for the first formal round of negotiations. Attended by most of the major Arab leaders, although Yemen and Saudi Arabia initially were absent, the early part of the conference concerned unification and various Fertile Crescent schemes, the need for a formal organization, and what its architecture and machinery might be. ₈₉ Not surprisingly, given the conclusions of their informal consultations, the Arab delegations quickly discarded the possibility of unification or federation and agreed to work toward a less ambitious design. ₉₀

Two weeks of discussions by the Preparatory Committee led to a series of resolutions that became known as the Alexandria Protocols. The protocols attended to five principal issues surrounding the future regional order: creation of the League of Arab States, which included in its constitution pacific dispute settlement, binding decisions, and inter-Arab cooperation; cooperation in social, economic, cultural, and other matters; consolidation of these ties in the future; a special resolution allowing Lebanon to retain its independence and sovereignty; and a special resolution on Palestine and the need to defend the Palestinian Arabs. ₉₁ The protocols were signed on October 7 by all representatives except Saudi Arabia’s and Yemen’s. Their signatures were delayed because they did not have authorization, a sure sign of their deeply held suspicions. ₉₂

The protocols had something for everyone. Egyptian prime minister Nahhas could feel satisfied that he had controlled the Arab agenda and, more important, scored some political points. The Lebanese government was pleased to express its Arab orientation without sacrificing its sovereignty. The Syrian government was able to assert its independence vis-à-vis the French and move toward a greater alliance with its Arab brethren. Abdullah of Transjordan, although still waiting for Syria, had emerged as one of the elder statesmen of the conference. Iraq’s Nuri al-Said, though still hoping for something resembling a Fertile Crescent orientation, believed that an important step toward inter-Arab cooperation had been taken. Saudi Arabia and Yemen, still concerned about various features of the protocols, were gratified to realize that no Fertile Crescent unity was in the offing and that Egypt also opposed federation. ₉₃ And the general Arab public greeted the protocols with accolades and as a symbol of a more independent and grander Arab future. ₉₄

After six months of negotiations the Arab states met at the General Arab Conference at Za’faran Palace in Cairo on March 22, 1945, to toast the birth of the first post—World War II regional organization. At a dramatic gathering and to thunderous applause the Arab leaders signed the charter of the League of Arab States (which took effect on May 10, 1945). They celebrated their new organization with boasts of having fulfilled Arab nationalism’s vision and with proclamations of their desire to strengthen the Arab political community and defend its interests. Only twenty-five years before, the colonial powers had just finished carving up the Middle East, and Arab nationalism was a minor political movement that could claim only localized pockets of support. Now the Arab states had an organization that expressed their collective Arab identity, and this organization had tremendous regionwide support.

But the charter was a greater verdict for sovereignty than it was for a more robust definition of Arabism. The Alexandria Protocols envisioned no real constitutional powers for the league. Yet even this modestly restrictive organization was too much for several of the Arab states to accept. The six months of negotiations that followed Alexandria transformed an organization whose ties were supposed to bind into one that clung to sovereignty as an organizing principle and as a defense against both potential intrusions by signatories and Arab nationalism’s transnational traits. ₉₅ Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon, which had virtual veto power over the shape of the future organization, were at the forefront of watering down even further an already soggy organization. ₉₆

The weakening of the protocols in favor of the possessive sovereignty that defined the charter becomes apparent with a quick survey of their key contrasting tenets. Whereas the protocols did not prescribe any basis of inter-Arab cooperation except the goal of unity, the charter insisted on the “respect for the independence and sovereignty of these states”; whereas the protocols insisted on periodic meetings, the charter did no such thing; whereas the protocols discussed the importance of binding decisions, the charter reserved veto power for states; whereas the protocols demanded that Arab states adopt a common foreign policy, the charter insisted that each state was free to pursue its own foreign policy; whereas the charter insisted that the states respect each other’s choice of a system of government, the protocols made no mention of such a possibility; whereas the protocols hinted of Arab states’ yielding their sovereignty to unification, the charter insisted on the retention of their sovereignty (but did pay homage to the possibility of unification through Article 9). Finally, the Arab states debated and eventually discarded any mention of a collective security system or institutionalized military cooperation. ₉₇ However weak the protocols might have been, the only way that these separate Arab states could exist within the same organization seemed to be to hand the charter no real powers to create only the loosest of associations. This was why Abdullah of Transjordan colorfully characterized the League of Arab States as “a sack in which seven heads have been thrust.” ₉₈

A prevalent popular opinion at the time and the subsequent scholarly view was that the Arab League represented a vindication for statism and a vanquished Arabism. For many onlookers the league was a disappointing conclusion to a process that had begun with discussions of unification and federation. Although genuinely pleased that the Arab nation had an organization that symbolized its shared identity, many Arab nationalists criticized the charter for caring more for the interests of the regimes in power than for the aspirations of the Arab people. ₉₉ Most scholarly commentary too has characterized the league as ineffectual and designed to be so, constructed to protect the interests of the separate Arab regimes and built to contain Arab nationalism’s transnational impulses. ₁₀₀ The consensus, in short, is that the Arab states erected a fairly weak organization that gave institutional expression to their identity but did not threaten their sovereignty or decrease their autonomy. Perhaps Cecil Hourani delivered the most charitable comment about the league when he remarked that it was a victory for “moderate Arab nationalism.” ₁₀₁

But such opinion overlooks how the very establishment of a regional organization that baptized their shared identity—even one that had no formal constitutional powers—handed Arab states a mechanism to hold each other mutually accountable and left them increasingly vulnerable to symbolic sanctions. How so? Creation of the Arab League gave fundamental and symbolic expression to their shared Arab identity. This Arab identity, they proclaimed, was connected to Arab national interests that revolved around the shared desire to reduce foreign control, confront Zionism, and search for Arab unity. ₁₀₂ Because these were Arab interests, Arab states were obligated to proceed multilaterally. They might have designed the charter to defend their sovereignty and their autonomy, but by publicly acknowledging a class of issues that properly belonged to the Arab nation, they conceded that unilateralism was a violation of the norms of Arabism and that they were mutually accountable and thus mutually constrained in these critical areas.

The Arab League thus became a forum of collective legitimation. ₁₀₃ This legitimation process had a number of sides that shaped the potential opportunities and constraints on the foreign policies of Arab states. First, Arab states began to look to the league to establish their Arab credentials. An Arab leader seeking to demonstrate that he was a member in good standing would use the league as a source of symbolic capital by participating in its proceedings and by honoring its resolutions. But the other side of this opportunity was a constraint on their foreign policy activities. To be counted as a member in good standing an Arab state had to abide by the norms of Arabism. The Arab states had already conceded in practice that on certain issues they must proceed multilaterally; the construction of the league formalized this process, and whatever formal or informal decisions that evolved from their discussions would now act as a normative constraint. However much Arab states might protest and point to their sovereignty, they were far from the free agents they envisioned so long as they acknowledged and proclaimed that they were married by a shared identity.

Arab states also quickly recognized that these norms of Arabism could become an effective way to control the foreign policy of their rivals and even undermine them from within. As Arab leaders increasingly sought the symbols of Arabism to legitimate their actions and to further their domestic and foreign policy objectives, they also became increasingly constrained by whatever consensus emerged. That is, they became vulnerable to symbolic sanctioning. Even though the resolutions discussed and passed at the Arab League were nonbinding and usually failed to specify sanctions if they were violated, Arab leaders who disregarded them risked being defined as violating the norms of Arabism. Increasingly aware of this dynamic, Arab Leaders began to use the norms of Arabism to constrain their rivals’ foreign policies. This largely symbolic organization had pulled them closer together and increased their mutual vulnerability and susceptibility to symbolic sanctioning. ₁₀₄

The Arab League’s political effect came less through its formal constitutional structure and more through its acknowledgment that Arab states shared an Arab identity and set of critical interests; that because these interests derived from the Arab nation rather than from the territorial state, they should be pursued through multilateral rather than unilateral means; and that the league might begin to serve a legitimation function and therefore become a site to accumulate the symbols of Arabism, wield them against rivals, and control the foreign policies of other Arab states. But no matter how much the Arab states intended the league to be a defender of sovereignty and the status quo, the process that led them to its construction and their willingness to seek out the league to legitimate their foreign policies and hold their rivals accountable to the emergent norms of Arabism meant that they had institutionalized their interdependence and thus undermined their autonomy.

In less than a half century Arab nationalism, once a minor, romantic, and politically inconsequential movement, came to dominate the landscape and to imprint the debate about the desired regional order. Arab nationalism emerged because of new opportunities that came with the collapse of empires and the emergence of colonialism, new transnational networks and linkages that encouraged the populations of the region to associate and identify with one another, and the attempt by Arab leaders to wield the language of Arabism to serve their various interests, including the struggle for independence, the search for legitimacy, and the project of state building. By the close of World War II Arab nationalism was the reigning ideology of the region, the generally uncontested mode of political expression and protest.

Arabism was initially unattached to any defining political projects but soon came to be defined by the demand for independence and freedom from foreign control, the struggle against Zionism, and the desire for Arab unity. The Arab identity, then, was now connected to a concrete set of interests and practices. To be an Arab nationalist meant to fight against foreign control and Zionism and for Arab unity. The Arab League was intended to sanctify their interests in the territorial status quo and to celebrate their sovereignty, but the recognition that they were Arab states that had shared interests meant that they were now susceptible not only to domestic public opinion but Arab public opinion, were capable of seizing on key Arab issues as a source of symbolic capital, and potentially susceptible to the charge that they were acting outside the Arab consensus. Such matters would become clear during the next decade, although not over the issue of unification—something that they had successfully supplanted in favor of more conservative notions of unity—but over the norms concerning their collective position vis-à-vis Palestine and their postindependence relations with the West.

 

Endotes

Note 1: Kamal Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Modern Lebanon Reconsidered (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 38. Back.

Note 2: Kemal Karpat, “The Ottoman Ethnic and Confessional Legacy in the Middle East,” in M. Esman and I. Rabinovich, eds., Ethnicity, Pluralism, and the State in the Middle East, pp. 35–53 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988); Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991); Peter Mansfield, The Ottoman Empire and Its Successors (New York: St. Martin’s, 1973). Back.

Note 3: For good overviews of Arab nationalism, see A. A. Duri, The Historical Formation of the Arab Nation (New York: Croom Helm, 1987); Bassam Tibi, Arab Nationalism (New York: St. Martin’s, 1981); C. Ernest Dawn, “The Origins of Arab Nationalism,” in R. Khalidi et al., eds., The Origins of Arab Nationalism, pp. viii–xix (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); Rashid Khalidi, “Arab Nationalism: Historical Problems in the Literature,” American Historical Review 96, no. 5 (December 1991): 1363–73; R. Khalidi et al., Origins of Arab Nationalism; Martin Kramer, “Arab Nationalism: Mistaken Identity,” Daedelus 122, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 171–206; Israel Gershoni, “Rethinking the Formation of Arab Nationalism in the Middle East, 1920–45: Old and New Narratives,” in Jankowski and Gershoni, Rethinking Nationalism, pp. 3–25. Back.

Note 4: Duri, Historical Formation of the Arab Nation, p. 232; Tibi, Arab Nationalism, p. 16; Philip Khoury, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus, 1860–1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 58–59, 67. Back.

Note 5: Philip Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 6. Back.

Note 6: A. Hourani, History of the Arab Peoples, p. 316. Back.

Note 7: Mary Wilson, King Abdullah, Britain, and the Making of Jordan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 26. Back.

Note 8: Khoury, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism, p. 78; Ahmed M. Gomaa, The Foundation of the League of Arab States (London: Longman, 1977), p. 3. Back.

Note 9: Wm. Roger Louis, “The Era of the Mandates System and the Non-European World,” in H. Bull and A. Watson, eds., The Expansion of International Society, pp. 201–13 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). See David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Rise of the Modern Middle East (New York: Holt, 1989), for a detailed study of the period. Back.

Note 10: For various statements on Islam’s relationship to Arabism see Yehoshua Porath, In Search of Arab Unity (London: Frank Cass, 1986), p. 151; Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 41; Tibi, Arab Nationalism; Albert Hourani, “Middle Eastern Nationalism Yesterday and Today,” in A. Hourani, The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (New York: Macmillan, 1981), pp. 186–87; Khoury, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism, pp. 98–99; Salibi, House of Many Mansions, pp. 41–43; Malcolm Kerr, “Arab Society and the West,” in P. Seale, ed., The Shaping of an Arab Statesman: Abd al-Hamid Sharaf and the Modern Arab World, pp. 209–224 (New York: Quartet, 1983). Back.

Note 11: Barry Rubin, The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1981), p. 41. Back.

Note 12: A. Hourani, History of the Arab Peoples, p. 339; also see Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, chap. 3. Back.

Note 13: Muhammad Muslih, The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 4–5. Back.

Note 14: Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, pp. 221–22; Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, p. 159. Back.

Note 15: Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, pp. 221–22; Ilya Harik, “Origins of the Arab States System,” in G. Luciani, ed., The Arab State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 17–21. As the new borders and the economy led by colonialism funneled economic activities, moreover, unity’s attraction waned and weakened. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, p. 284. Back.

Note 16: Joseph Kostiner, The Making of Saudi Arabia, 1916–38: From Chieftaincy to Monarchical State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); P. J. Vatikiotis, Conflict in the Middle East (London: Allen and Unwin, 1971), p. 99. Back.

Note 17: Salibi, House of Many Mansions, p. 32. Back.

Note 18: Ibid., pp. 185–86. Back.

Note 19: Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, pp. 150–59; Gomaa, Foundation of the League, p. 31; Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, The Search for Egyptian Nationhood (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). Back.

Note 20: Quoted in Anwar Chejne, “Egyptian Attitudes Toward Pan-Arabism,” Middle East Journal 11, no. 3 (Summer 1957): 253. Back.

Note 21: Ibid., p. 258. On Egypt’s national identity also see Patrick Seale, The Struggle for Syria (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 17; Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, pp. 150–59; Nissim Rejwan, Nasserite Ideology: Its Exponents and Critics (New York: Wiley, 1974), chap. 4. Back.

Note 22: Derek Hopwood, Syria: 1945–86 (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988), p. 1; Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 13; Wilson, King Abdullah; Malik Mufti, Sovereign Creations: Pan-Arabism and Political Order in Syria and Iraq (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996), chaps. 2 and 3. Back.

Note 23: Clifford Geertz, “Politics of Meaning,” in C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 315. Back.

Note 24: Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 26; Khoury, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism, pp. 79–81; Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, pp. 40–41; Hopwood, Syria, pp. 21–22; Zeine Zeine, The Struggle for Arab Independence: Western Diplomacy and the Rise and Fall of Faisal’s Kingdom in Syria (Beirut: Khayat’s, 1960). Back.

Note 25: Daniel Pipes, Greater Syria: History of an Ambition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). Back.

Note 26: Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, pp. 205, 217. Back.

Note 27: Liora Lukitz, Iraq: The Search for National Identity (London: Frank Cass, 1995), p. 74. Back.

Note 28: Batatu, Old Social Classes, pp. 22–23. Back.

Note 29: Ibid., p. 25; Lukitz, Iraq. Back.

Note 30: Lukitz, Iraq, pp. 90, 110–14; Mohammad Tarbush, The Role of the Military in Politics: A Case Study of Iraq to 1941 (Boston: Kegan Paul, 1982); Reeva Simon, “The Imposition of Nationalism on a Non-Nation State: The Case of Iraq During the Interwar Period, 1921–41,” in Jankowski and Gershoni, Rethinking Nationalism, pp. 87–105 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). Indeed, Sati al-Hursi, an intellectual giant in the development of Arab nationalist thought, was briefly involved in Iraq’s education policy and used his government position to advance a curriculum that emphasized Iraq’s Arab roots and links. See Lukitz, Iraq, pp. 110–14. Back.

Note 31: Tarbush, Role of the Military, chaps. 6 and 7. See Gomaa, Foundation of the League, pp. 17–23, on the growth of Arabism in Iraq during the 1930s. Back.

Note 32: Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, p. 3. Back.

Note 33: Wilson, King Abdullah; Shirin Fathi, Jordan: An Invented Nation? (Hamburg: Deutsches Orient-Institut, 1994); Aqil Hyder Hasan Abidi, Jordan: A Political Study, 1948–57 (New York: Asia Publishing, 1965), chap. 1. Back.

Note 34: Fathi, Jordan, p. 99. Back.

Note 35: Some scholars claim that Britain and France devised the mandate system as a way to divide an increasingly unified and powerful pan-Arab movement. See George Antonius, The Arab Awakening (New York: Capricorn, 1965), pp. 248–49; Salibi, House of Many Mansions, p. 39.See Majjid Khadduri, “Toward an Arab Union: The League of Arab States,” American Political Science Review 40, no. 1 (February 1946): p. 90; and Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, p. 57, on the specific instance of France’s decision to create Lebanon from Syria. Although less inclined to argue that this was Britain and France’s intention, other scholars also suggest that the establishment of the mandate system represented an institutional constraint on pan-Arab mobilization. See Wilson, King Abdullah, p. 90; Antonius, Arab Awakening, pp. 100, 325–26; J. P. Sharma, The Arab Mind: A Study of Egypt, Arab Unity, and the World (Dehli: H. K. Publishers, 1990). p. 18. Back.

Note 36: Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, p. 485; Lukitz, Iraq. Back.

Note 37: Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, The Crystallization of the Arab State System (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1993), p. 31. Back.

Note 38: Michael Eppel, The Palestine Conflict and the History of Modern Iraq (London: Frank Cass, 1994); Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate; Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930–45 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Back.

Note 39: Palestinian Arab leaders had to determine whether to associate with Arab nationalism, the movement for a Greater Syria, or the struggle for statehood. For some of the younger Palestinian Arabs the idea of a Greater Syria offered them immediate protection from the Zionists and the British; for the older leaders, however, Greater Syria spelled domination by Syrian political and economic elites. Because of a confluence of forces Palestinian Arabs largely and eventually viewed the struggle in more particularistic terms and attempted to encourage identification with and support of their struggle from other Arab states through the linkages of Arabism. See Muslih, Origins of Palestinian Nationalism; Rubin, Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, p. 23; Eppel, Palestine Conflict, p. 27; Gabriel Ben-Dor, “Nationalism Without Sovereignty and Nationalism with Multiple Sovereignties: The Palestinians and Inter-Arab Relations,” in G. Ben-Dor, ed., Palestinians and the Middle East Conflict (Forest Grove, Ore.: Turtle Dove, 1979), p. 150; Anne Mosley Lesch, “The Palestine Arab Nationalist Movement Under the Mandate,” in W. Quandt, F. Jabber, and A. Mosley Lesch, The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism (Berkeley: University of California, 1973), pp. 22–24. Back.

Note 40: Batatu, Old Social Classes, pp. 298–99; Gomaa, Foundation of the League, pp. 32–33. Back.

Note 41: On the strike see Charles Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 2d ed. (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992), pp. 94–101; Baruch Kimmerling and Joel Migdal, The Palestinians (New York: Free Press, 1993), chap. 4; Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). Back.

Note 42: Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, p. 162; Gomaa, Foundation of the League, p. 7. Back.

Note 43: Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, pp. 535, 542. Back.

Note 44: Maddy-Weitzman, Crystallization of the Arab State System, p. 9; Rubin, Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, p. 68; Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, pp. 553–55. Back.

Note 45: Rubin, Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, p. 77; Eppel, Palestine Conflict, chaps. 3 and 5. Indeed, because of Iraq’s early independence in 1930 and membership in the League of Nations in 1932, the palace and the political elite viewed themselves as having a special obligation on Arab matters; that Iraq had some economic interests in Palestine only reinforced the interest in being involved. See Rubin, Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, pp. 54, 56; Eppel, Palestine Conflict, pp. 45–46. Back.

Note 46: Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, pp. 535, 544. Back.

Note 47: Ibid., p. 535. Back.

Note 48: Rubin, Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, p. 100. Back.

Note 49: Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, pp. 163–65. Back.

Note 50: Itamar Rabinovich, “Egypt and the Palestine Question Before and After the Revolution,” in S. Shamir, ed., Egypt: From Monarchy to Republic (Boulder: Westview, 1995), p. 326; Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, pp. 154–55. Back.

Note 51: Rabinovich, “Egypt and the Palestine Question,” p. 326. Also see Seale, Struggle for Syria, pp. 19, 20–21; Gershoni and Jankowski, Redefining the Egyptian Nation, chap. 5. Back.

Note 52: Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, p. 535; also see Ali Abdel Rahman Rahmy, The Egyptian Policy in the Arab World (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1983), p. 15. Back.

Note 53: Gomaa, Foundation of the League, pp. 37–39; Thomas Mayer, “Egypt and the 1936 Arab Revolt in Palestine,” Journal of Contemporary History 19, no. 2 (April 1984): 275–87. Back.

Note 54: Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, p. 158. Back.

Note 55: James Jankowski, “Zionism and the Jews in Egyptian Nationalist Opinion, 1920–39,” in A. Cohen and G. Baer, eds., Egypt and Palestine, pp. 315–31 (New York: St. Martins, 1984). Back.

Note 56: Seale, Struggle for Syria, p. 20; Rahmy, Egyptian Policy in the Arab World, pp. 16–18. Back.

Note 57: Gomaa, Foundation of the League, p. 8. Back.

Note 58: Rubin, Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, p. 97. Back.

Note 59: Maddy-Weitzman, Crystallization of the Arab State System, p. 9; Gomaa, Foundation of the League, p. 80. Back.

Note 60: Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, p. 554; Gomaa, Foundation of the League, p. 45. Back.

Note 61: Seale, Struggle for Syria, p. 1; also see Wilson, King Abdullah, pp. 129, 140. Back.

Note 62: Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, p. 189. Back.

Note 63: Gomaa, Foundation of the League, p. 114. Back.

Note 64: Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, pp. 151, 160–62; Maddy-Weitzman, Crystallization of the Arab State System. Back.

Note 65: Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, p. 56; Maddy-Weitzman, Crystallization of the Arab State System, p. 15; Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate. Back.

Note 66: Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, p. 3. Back.

Note 67: Ibid., p. 36; Wilson, King Abdullah, pp. 135–40; Ron Pundik, The Struggle for Sovereignty: Relations Between Great Britain and Jordan, 1946–51 (Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1994), pp. 37–39. Back.

Note 68: Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, chap. 1. Back.

Note 69: The idea of unification also gained some support in response to the ongoing crisis in Palestine. See Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, chap. 2; Gomaa, Foundation of the League, chap. 2. Various Arab leaders and British officials toyed with the notion of halting the crisis by absorbing Palestine into a unified Arab state, and various Fertile Crescent leaders encouraged such thoughts as a way of increasing their domestic fortunes and symbolic capital. Back.

Note 70: Nadav Safran, Saudi Arabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988); Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, p. 38; Mohammad Iqbal Ansari, The Arab League, 1945–55 (Aligarh, Pakistan: Aligarh Muslim University, 1968), p. 22; Maddy-Weitzman, Crystallization of the Arab State System, p. 8. Back.

Note 71: Quoted in Chejne, “Egyptian Attitudes on Pan-Arabism,” p. 253. Back.

Note 72: Gomaa, Foundation of the League, pp. 49, 50–51. Back.

Note 73: Eran Lerman, “A Revolution Prefigured: Foreign Policy Orientation in the Postwar Years,” in Shamir, Egypt, pp. 291–92. Economic elites, particularly those that were part of the Bank Misr group, also calculated that they might profit from greater exchange with the Mashreq. Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, pp. 155, 188. Egypt’s centrality in Arab circles increased during World War II because it became the hub of the Middle Eastern Supply Centre, Britain’s supply organization for the region during the war, and corresponding political and economic linkages to other parts of the Arab world. Cecil Hourani, “The Arab League in Perspective,” Middle East Journal 1, no. 2 (April 1947): 129. Back.

Note 74: Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, p. 314. Back.

Note 75: Ansari, Arab League, p. 13; Seale, Struggle for Syria, p. 23; C. Hourani, “Arab League in Perspective,” p. 129. Back.

Note 76: Ansari, Arab League, p. 11; Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, p. 194; Maddy-Weitzman, Crystallization of the Arab State System, pp. 11–12; Gomaa, Foundation of the League, pp. 99–101. Back.

Note 77: Cited in C. Hourani, “Arab League in Perspective,” p. 128. Also see Seale, Struggle for Syria, pp. 11–12; Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, pp. 51–53; Maddy-Weitzman, Crystallization of the Arab State System, p. 12; Gomaa, Foundation of the League, pp. 69–71. Back.

Note 78: Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, pp. 248–50. Back.

Note 79: Ibid., pp. 54, 258; Wilson, King Abdullah, pp. 142–43; Tawfig Hasou, The Struggle for the Arab World: Egypt’s Nasser and the Arab League (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 6–10. Back.

Note 80: Maddy-Weitzman, Crystallization of the Arab State System, p. 14. Back.

Note 81: Gomaa, Foundation of the League, pp. 160–61. Back.

Note 82: Ansari, Arab League, pp. 15–20. Back.

Note 83: Gomaa, Foundation of the League, p. 165. Back.

Note 84: Ibid., p. 174. Back.

Note 85: Ibid., p. 187. Back.

Note 86: Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, pp. 266–67, 272. See Ansari, Arab League, pp. 12–14, for other proposals of the pre-1945 period. Back.

Note 87: Gomaa, Foundation of the League, pp. 180, 181, 183; Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, p. 312. Back.

Note 88: Wilson, King Abdullah, pp. 143–44. Back.

Note 89: Ansari, Arab League, p. 25. Back.

Note 90: Gomaa, Foundation of the League, p. 219. Back.

Note 91: Ansari, Arab League, pp. 28–30; Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, pp. 278–83. Back.

Note 92: Ansari, Arab League, pp. 23–25. Back.

Note 93: Gomaa, Foundation of the League, pp. 226–35. Back.

Note 94: Ibid., p. 232. Back.

Note 95: Ansari, Arab League, chap. 2; C. Hourani, “Arab League in Perspective,” pp. 131–32; T. R. Little, “The Arab League: A Reassessment,” Middle East Journal 10, no. 2 (Spring 1956): 140–41; Baghat Korany, “The Dialectics of Inter-Arab Relations, 1967–87,” in Y. Lukacs and A. Battah, eds., The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Two Decades of Change (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1988), p. 165. Back.

Note 96: Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, pp. 285, 286. Back.

Note 97: Gomaa, Foundation of the League, p. 240. Back.

Note 98: Cited in Gomaa, Foundation of the League, p. 265. Back.

Note 99: Ibid., pp. 260–62; Maddy-Weitzman, Crystallization of the Arab State System, p. 20. There is controversy over who was behind the establishment of the Arab League and for what ends, with views ranging from a British to an Egyptian plot. For a sampling of the debate see Lerman, “A Revolution Prefigured,” pp. 290–91; Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, pp. 307–11; Maddy-Weitzman, Crystallization of the Arab State System, p. 10; Ellie Kedourie, “The Chatham House Version,” in E. Kedourie, The Chatham House Version and Other Middle-Eastern Studies, pp. 315–94 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970). Back.

Note 100: Alan Taylor, The Arab Balance of Power System (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1982); Robert McDonald, The League of Arab States: A Study in the Dynamics of Regional Organization (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965). Back.

Note 101: C. Hourani, “Arab League in Perspective,” p. 134. Back.

Note 102: According to a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, Arab states had three principal concerns: “Palestine: unity and defiance; the outside world: unity and hope; home politics of the Arab countries where dynastic and economic rivalries are still unsolved: circumspection.” Jerusalem Post, March 25, 1945; cited in Gomaa, Foundation of the League, p. 264. Back.

Note 103: Inis Claude, “Collective Legitimization as a Political Function of the United Nations,” International Organization 20, no. 3 (Summer 1966): 368–74. Back.

Note 104: Maddy-Weitzman, Crystallization of the Arab State System, p. 21. Back.