PAN-ARABISM

Nationalist movement, primarily in the Arab East or Mashriq, advocating the political union of all Arab peoples on the basis of their shared history, language, and culture. It arose from the Arab struggle against the Ottoman Empire before and during World War I, and from the struggle against French and British imperialism after the war. During the war promises of a sovereign Arab state were made by the British to Emir Husayn ibn Ali al-Hashem, the ruler of the Hijaz and an opponent of Ottoman rule, in return for his help against the Ottomans; instead, once the war was won, the British and French divided Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine between them in accord with the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Further resentment was provoked by British encouragement of the Zionist movement, which brought to Palestine under imperial protection thousands of European settlers ambitious to create their own state. Arab politics increasingly focused on freeing the Arab lands from outside rule, and the idea of Arab unity was an emotionally powerful motivator.

In the 1940s the Ba?th Party, which was active in several countries, promoted the idea of a unitary Arab state from Morocco to Iraq. In the 1950s the success of the Egyptian revolution under Gamal Abdel Nasser, particularly after it successfully nationalized the Suez Canal while defying Britain, France, and Israel in the Suez War of 1956, made Nasser an international hero and powerfully stimulated the Nasserist version of pan-Arabism. The joining of Egypt and (Ba?th-ruled) Syria in the United Arab Republic in 1958 marked a high point for pan-Arabism, but changing politics and conflicting interests doomed the experiment, which ended in 1961. The failure of the Arabs against Israel in the Arab-Israel War (1967) also discredited the pan-Arab idea. The actions of Saddam Hussein—whose launching of the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–1988 and claiming defense of the Arab homeland as a justification, and even more his invading Kuwait in 1990—split the Arab League (founded in 1945 as a pan-Arab institution), as well as the willingness of several Arab states to negotiate directly with Israel, have all but killed pan-Arabism as a serious political idea. A somewhat attenuated form of Arab "unity" remains a diplomatic ideal at the Arab League, but even that is diminished by the existence of smaller regional groups.

SEE ALSO Iran-Iraq War;Mashriq;Nasser, Gamal Abdel;Sykes-Picot Agreement.