PAN-ARABISM

movement and doctrine for arab political unity.

Pan-Arabism, the desire or drive for Arab political unity, was largely, albeit not entirely, a product of World War I, when much of the former Ottoman Empire was awarded to British or French mandates by the League of Nations. Arab attention in the ensuing two decades focused on obtaining political independence from European control as opposed to broader discussions of social reform or the adoption of a particular political system. In the process, budding Arab nationalism and vague formulations of Arab unity became increasingly interwoven with support for Palestinians in their opposition to Jewish land purchase and immigration under the British Mandate.

As the Arab leadership organized to resist foreign occupation, it fostered a debate over which elements of the Arab heritage could best be employed as symbols around which to shape the image of Arab states. Some Arab writers continued to assert the primacy of Islamic bonds while others, like the Syrian educator Sati al-Husari, rejected Islamic sentiments in favor of a unified Arab nation bound by ties of Arab culture. Emphasizing the secular components of the Arab heritage, al-Husari envisioned an Arab nation, unified politically, and similar to the nations of Europe.

As late as World War II, pan-Arabism in the sense of a political movement aimed at unifying the Arab nation remained centered on Iraq, Syria, and the Arabian peninsula. The Baʿth Party in the 1940s called for comprehensive Arab unity in the form of a single Arab state stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf. Neither Egypt nor the Maghrib, the western Islamic world traditionally comprising Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and later Libya, played a significant role in pan-Arab movements until after the end of the war.

In the 1950s Gamal Abdel Nasser and the United Arab Republic (UAR) coopted the pan-Arabism of the Baʿth Party. Nasser argued that the Arab nations enjoyed a unity of language, religion, history, and culture, which they should exploit to create their own system of cooperation and defense. The peak of both Nasser's popularity and pan-Arabism as a political movement occurred between the 1956 Suez crisis and the June 1967 Arab–Israeli war. The collapse of the UAR in 1961 followed by the Arab defeat in 1967 dealt a severe psychological blow to the prestige of Arab leaders and the confidence of the Arab people; it is considered by many to constitute the Waterloo of pan-Arabism.

Over the next two decades, only a few Arab governments, notably Muammar al-Qaddafi's Libya, continued to promote pan-Arabism in terms of practical political union. As other Arab states established themselves and began to define and pursue national interests, their commitment to pan-Arabism was increasingly perfunctory. By the end of the twentieth century, its time as a widely accepted doctrine and political movement had passed; and if panArabism was not dead, it was surely a spent force. By the 1990s, Islamist political movements, inspired in part by the successful Iranian Revolution of 1979, were growing in popularity and strength throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds, often supplanting the earlier enthusiasm for pan-Arabism.

see also baʿth, al-; husari, sati al-; nasser, gamal abdel; qaddafi, muammar al-; united arab republic (uar).

Bibliography

Antonius, George. The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1946.

Dawisha, Adeed. Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Haim, Sylvia, ed. Arab Nationalism: An Anthology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962.

Hourani, Albert. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939. New York; London: Oxford University Press, 1970.

Khalidi, Rashid; Anderson, Lisa; Muhammad Muslih; et al., eds. The Origins of Arab Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

ronald bruce st john

Pan-Arabism general term for the modern movement for political unification among the Arab nations of the Middle East. Since the Ottoman Turks rose to power in the 14th cent., there have been stirrings among Arabs for reunification as a means of reestablishing Arab political power. At the start of World War I, France and Great Britain, seeking allies against the German-Turkish alliance, encouraged the cause of Arab nationalism under the leadership of the Hashemite Sherif Husayn ibn Ali , a descendant of Muhammad. As ruler of Mecca and a religious leader of Islam, he had great influence in the Arab world, an influence that continued with his two sons, Abdullah ( Abdullah I of Jordan) and Faisal ( Faisal I of Iraq). From the 1930s, hostility toward Zionist aims in Palestine was a major rallying point for Arab nationalists.

The movement found official expression after World War II in the Arab League and in such unification attempts as the Arab Federation (1958) of Iraq and Jordan, the United Arab Republic , the Arab Union (1958), the United Arab Emirates , and the Arab Maghreb Union (see under Maghreb ). The principal instrument of Pan-Arabism in the early 1960s was the Ba'ath party , which was active in most Arab states, notably Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen. Gamal Abdal Nasser of Egypt, who was not a Ba'athist, expressed similar ideals of Arab unity and socialism.

The defeat of the Arabs in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 and the death (1970) of Nasser set back the cause of Pan-Arabism. In the early 1970s, a projected merger between Egypt and Libya came to nought. However, during and following the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the Arab states showed new cohesion in their use of oil as a major economic and political weapon in international affairs. This cohesion was fractured by the signing of the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel and by the Iran-Iraq War . Pan-Arabist rhetoric was used by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in an attempt to stir opposition the UN coalition forces during the Persian Gulf War , but many Arab nations joined the anti-Iraq coalition.

Bibliography: See G. Antonius, The Arab Awakening (1946, repr. 1965); H. a Faris, ed., Arab Nationalism and the Future of the Arab World (1986); B. Pridham, ed., The Arab Gulf and the Arab World (1988).