A History of the Middle East (38 page)

The pan-Arabism preached by Sharif Hussein when he launched his Arab Revolt was haphazard and rudimentary and derived strongly from his personal and family ambitions. His claim to be King of the Arabs was recognized by no more than a few. In the exultant but brief period when Emir Feisal was established as King of Syria, he attempted to keep the pan-Arab idea alive. ‘We are one people,’ he said in May 1919, ‘living in the region which is bounded by the sea to the east, the south, and the west, and by the Taurus mountains to the north.’ Most significantly, he was also fond of saying ‘We are Arabs before being Muslims, and Muhammad is an Arab before being a prophet.’ This was the germ of a secular Arab nationalism. But within a year Feisal was expelled from Syria and, although the British installed him in Iraq, the Arab peoples of whom he spoke were divided by new national frontiers.

In the years following the First World War, therefore, there were two contrary trends among the eastern Arabs. One of these trends was the development of territorial nationalism in the new nation-states as they became involved in a struggle for full independence from Britain and France. This required the creation of a national identity, and it was sustained by the ambitions and rivalries of the national leaders. The House of Saud was hostile and suspicious towards the Hashemites, and there was rivalry between the Hashemites of Iraq and Transjordan.

The opposing trend was the aspiration towards Arab unity based on the feeling, to which all Arabs subscribed to some extent, that they had been artificially divided in order to weaken them and keep them under Western tutelage. Unity was necessary for Arab self-protection and renaissance. This tendency received a powerful impetus from the events in Palestine. The growing awareness that the Zionists, with the help of the West, aimed to seize as much of Arab Palestine as they could was the strongest factor in mobilizing Arab opinion, which was frustrated but not restrained by the fact that so little that was effective could be done to help the Palestinian Arabs.

Islam was and remains a uniquely potent element in Arab nationalism. Muslim militants, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, maintained that nationalism and Islam were incompatible since all Muslims of all races from China to Morocco were members of the same great Islamic nation or
umma
. Pan-Arab intellectuals attempted to demonstrate to the contrary that Arabism and Islam are mutually inclusive. As Abdul Rahman Azzam, the Arab League’s first secretary-general, said in a lecture in 1943, the ideals of Islam were the same as those of modern Arab nationalism and of the Arab nation which aimed to take its rightful place in the world and resume the mission which Muhammad had inaugurated. But the debate was largely artificial. Muslim militants in the Arab countries made their appeal for Islamic revival to their fellow-Arabs. Arab nationalism, on the other hand, could never be secular in the style and to the degree of Atatürk’s Turkish Republic (or even the Iran of Reza Shah) for the simple reason that Islam is an integral part of Arab civilization and culture. Hence Michel Aflaq, the young Syrian Christian school-teacher who was the ideologist of the Arab Baath (Renaissance) Party which he founded in Damascus in the 1940s, maintained that Islam was a permanent tendency in the life of the Arab nation. ‘Muhammad was the epitome of all the Arabs, so let all Arabs today be Muhammad,’ he told his followers. On the other hand, the representatives of the House of Saud, keepers of the holy places of Islam, have never had any problem about reconciling their Arab and Islamic aspirations, invariably mentioning them in the same breath.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Egypt largely excluded itself from any pan-Arab movement, with the approval of its fellow-Arabs. There was a conflict between the patriotism of an ancient nation-state (in Egypt known as ‘Pharaonism’) and the ideals of pan-Islam. An extreme view was put forward by the great Egyptian writer Taha Hussein, who said that though Egypt might be part of Europe by virtue of its present culture, it was Pharaonic in its traditions – it was certainly not part of the Muslim East. But most Egyptians had mixed feelings and managed to remain Egyptian patriots while
finding inspiration in the concept of Islamic unity at the same time. Mustafa Kamel, Egypt’s nationalist leader at the end of the Cromer era, was of this kind. But pan-Arabism did not appeal. Zaghloul interrupted Azzam Pasha, who was speaking to him of Arab unity, with the question ‘If you add one zero to another, and then to another, what sum will you get?’

The situation gradually changed from the late 1930s onwards. A growing body of Egyptians, among whom Azzam was outstanding, could see the potential role in the Middle East for Egypt once it was freed from British control, and there were other Arabs who were reaching the same conclusion. Sati al-Husri, an Aleppo-born writer who had followed Emir Feisal from Syria to Iraq and was to do more than anyone to popularize the idea of Arab unity, argued in 1936 that nature had endowed Egypt with all the qualities which made it incumbent upon the country to assume the leadership of the Arab national movement.

The shift towards a view of Cairo as the nucleus of pan-Arabism was not shared by Arab leaders or the Arab masses, including the Egyptian people themselves. It was by no means agreed that the Egyptians should even be regarded as Arabs. In December 1942 Nuri al-Said put forward a scheme for the unification of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Transjordan with ‘semi-autonomy’ for the Jews in Palestine, as a first step towards Arab unity. Egypt was not included. Another scheme, which was proposed by King Ibn Saud’s friend and adviser the British Arabist H. St John Philby, was for the Saudi monarch to head an Arab federation with an autonomous Jewish state in Palestine. This found favour with the Gentile Zionist Winston Churchill and the Zionist leadership. Again Egypt was excluded. However, despite Ibn Saud’s high prestige, which caused both Churchill and Roosevelt to imagine him as ‘King of the Arabs’, all such schemes were impractical because of the enmity between the Saudis and the Hashemites – neither would ever accept the others’ leadership.

However, the British Foreign Office was in favour of closer ties between the Arab states, provided that Western interests could be
maintained. A major factor was the hope that it would be easier to solve the Palestine problem within a broader Arab framework. From May 1941 onwards, Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary, made repeated statements that Britain favoured any scheme that commanded general approval among the Arabs for strengthening the cultural, economic and political ties between the Arab states. Britain now accepted that Egypt – the site of the Middle East Supply Centre and focus of the Allied war effort in the region – would make the best headquarters for any Western-sponsored Arab federation. Moreover the Wafd government led by Nahas, in wartime alliance with Britain, had begun to be attracted by the concept of an Egyptian-led Arab union. King Farouk was equally determined that Egypt should not be left out. Reluctantly Nuri al-Said and the other Arab leaders came to accept the inevitable: there was no alternative to Egypt. The last act of the Wafd government before it was driven from office in October 1944 was to sign the Protocol of Alexandria with the six other independent Arab states which led to the foundation of the Arab League in the following year.

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While Arabs and Iranians in their overwhelming majority sought the removal of European tutelage and domination in the aftermath of the war, there was one group in the Middle East which had different priorities: the Zionist Jews. When the war began, their dream of an independent Jewish state in Palestine had faded as a result of the change in British policy embodied in the 1939 White Paper. Their anger and bitterness were deep. Yet there could be no question of not helping Britain in the war against the Nazis. David Ben Gurion, the Zionist leader who was to become Israel’s first prime minister, coined the slogan that the Jews would fight the White Paper as if there were no war and the war as if there were no White Paper. Some 27,000 Palestine Jews enlisted in the British forces during the war, but others believed they could best serve their cause by building up the Haganah, the semi-secret Zionist army in Palestine. The war gave a powerful impetus to the development of a Jewish munitions industry, which supplied the British forces in
1942–3 but could strengthen the Zionists in the future. The British continued to reject Zionist demands for the formation of a Jewish army, flying the Zionist flag, to fight alongside the Allies.

As the danger of German invasion passed with Rommel’s defeat at Alamein, and at the same time news began to leak out from Europe of Hitler’s unspeakable atrocities against the Jews, the Palestine Zionists turned decisively against Britain. Enraged by Britain’s deportation of the few illegal immigrants who managed to reach Palestine, they blamed Britain alone for the failure to rescue European Jewry. Anti-British acts of resistance multiplied. A splinter group from the mainstream Haganah joined hands with the even more extreme Stern Gang in widespread attacks which culminated in the murder of Lord Moyne, British minister of state in Cairo, in November 1944. An outraged Churchill, a close friend of Moyne, temporarily abandoned his long-standing pro-Zionism.

The war also marked a decisive move of the headquarters of international Zionism from Britain to the United States. Chaim Weizmann still believed that the Zionists’ best hopes of achieving their aims lay in Britain, but he was overtaken by a new generation, represented by David Ben Gurion, which looked to the coming American superpower to force Britain’s acquiescence. At a conference, in which all shades of Zionist opinion were represented, at the Biltmore Hotel in New York in May 1944, a programme was adopted providing for unrestricted Jewish immigration and the establishment of Palestine as a Jewish commonwealth ‘integrated in the structure of the new democratic world’.

The Palestine Arabs, on the other hand, remained largely quiescent during the war. Some 12,000 joined the British forces. Hajj Amin al-Husseini escaped from Baghdad after the fall of Rashid Ali and went to Germany, where he tried to mobilize Muslim world opinion for the Axis cause. But he had little impact.

The coming to power of a Labour government in Britain in 1945 raised the hopes of the Zionists, because the Labour Party had opposed the 1939 White Paper and in conference in 1944 it had passed a resolution suggesting that the Arabs should move out of Palestine
as the Jews moved in. But once in power the Attlee government was faced with complex and daunting realities. Britain was nominally one of the Big Three which had won the war, and the Labour government had no more intention than the Conservative opposition that Britain should relinquish its position at the top table. In the Middle East region, where it had been the undoubted victor, Britain appeared to be the paramount power. In fact, exhausted and impoverished by the war, Britain was already facing a decline in its role, and the Labour government’s momentous decision to grant independence to India in 1947 would undermine Britain’s position as a global power. At the same time it was beset by problems in Europe, caused by the expansion of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe and by the breakdown of the wartime alliance with Stalin, which marked the outbreak of the Cold War. In the Middle East, Britain was confronted by Egypt’s demands for an end to the British occupation. Alternative military bases could be found in the eastern Mediterranean, but this was no answer to the by now insoluble problem of Palestine.

The prospect offered by the 1939 White Paper – that Palestine would become an independent binational Arab/Jewish state with the Arabs dominating the government – had been destroyed by Hitler. He had been defeated, but there was now overwhelming pressure that the survivors of the Holocaust should be allowed to take refuge in Palestine. Neither the Western countries, such as the United States, nor the Zionist leadership wanted them to go elsewhere.

The British foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, still believed that a solution might be found by negotiation. He unwisely told the House of Commons that he would ‘stake my political future’ on solving the Palestine problem. But he wanted to make the United States share responsibility. As soon as the war ended, President Truman cabled the British government to demand the immediate entry of 100,000 Jews into Palestine. The US Congress wanted unrestricted immigration. In November 1945 Bevin announced the formation of an Anglo-American commission of inquiry. In April 1946 this
recommended the continuation of the mandate and a unitary state, repeal of restrictions on land sales and the immediate admission of 100,000 Jews – in effect a return to the 1922 policy. The commission criticized the existence of the Jewish underground forces, which it estimated at 65,000, and it recommended that they should be disarmed.

The British government found these proposals impracticable as they stood but approved some discussions on Jewish and Arab autonomy. As Britain continued trying to prevent illegal Jewish immigration, the Zionist underground stepped up its activities, which reached a peak with the blowing up in July 1946 of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, containing British civilian and military offices.

Meanwhile, the seven independent Arab states were attempting to act to prevent an Arab disaster in Palestine. Their heads-of-state meeting in Egypt in May 1946 reaffirmed the Arab character of Palestine, and another meeting in June in Syria passed secret resolutions threatening British and US interests in the Middle East if Arab rights in Palestine were disregarded.

The British government faced an impossible dilemma. Public opinion in Britain was divided between Zionist sympathizers and those outraged by Zionist atrocities. In the Middle East, all British interests in the Arab world would be threatened if the Zionists were allowed to seize Palestine, but Britain was under relentless pressure from the US to allow massive Jewish immigration and, in the aftermath of the war, Britain was financially dependent on Washington. (In support of the so-called Truman Doctrine of overseas US involvement, set out in an address to Congress on 12 March 1947, President Truman asked Congress for aid, which Britain could no longer afford, to enable Greece and Turkey to maintain their independence against the Soviet threat.) After one more futile attempt to obtain Arab and Jewish agreement on a joint plan, Britain handed the problem over to the United Nations in February 1947.