MIDDLE EAST

The Politics of Nationalism in the Middle East



The Politics of Nationalism in the Middle East

1) Nationalism

Since the foundation of the Egyptian republic at the beginning of the 1950s, Arab or pan-Arab nationalism suffered a series of setbacks and gradually declined. At the same time, there was an increasing trend toward singularity among the various states which had emerged from the colonial or semi-colonial period (Meital 2008). This transformation and decline of Arab nationalism may be attributed to three main factors: defeats in the struggle against Israel; internal dynamics of the Arab world; and the emergence of Islamism.

Defeats in the struggle against Israel. The repeated defeats of the Arabs in their struggle against Israel may be considered as the first main cause of the progressive erosion of Arab solidarity and nationalism. While it is true that solidarity was manifested during the wars of 1948, 1967 and 1973, it was not very effective and the Arab states were frequently divided by divergent interests as well as other differences (Adam 2004). Following the 1973 war, however, Arab solidarity began to deteriorate significantly.

It was after this war that Sadat instituted a policy of openness toward the West which was to lead to peace with Israel and a definite break with the Arab world: Egypt became an outcast of the Arab community. Finally, many Arabs perceived the lack of an effective demonstration of Arab solidarity in the face of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon as conclusive evidence of the decline of Arab nationalism: "Arab reactions to the devastating war once again demonstrated the obsolescence of pan-Arabism and of the belief in a common Arab destiny” (Gold, 2007, 25).

Clearly, Arab nationalism was weakened by its failure to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine and to re-establish Arab policy and values in that territory. But internal dynamics of the Arab world also contributed to this decline. Internal dynamics of the Arab world. One important element of these dynamics was the competition for hegemony that is the conviction of one regime or another that it held the legitimate and authentic leadership for the unification of the Arab World.

The first wave of attempts at pan-Arab unification - initially the United Arab Republic and later the Federation of Arab Republics - was characterized and ultimately defeated by the hegemonic claims of Egypt, the refusal of the other states to yield to such hegemony, and Gheddafi's demands that Egypt do as he thought fit (Sela 2008). It is conceivable that the nationalist Arab regimes of the 1950s and 1960s were genuinely eager to surrender their power to the pan-Arab collectivity voluntarily.

But it was the attempts at hegemony and other disagreements that quickly convinced the regimes to think of their own survival and to strengthen the legitimacy or their states. It is important to note that in order to reinforce and legitimate themselves within their own states, the various regimes made considerable use of pan-Arab rhetoric.

The divisions and differences among the Arab states were often ...