report on al jazeera’s focus: arab unity’€¦ · part five explains how islamic currents try...

Report on Al Jazeera’s focus ‚Arab Unity’ by Samir Awwad p. 1 /129

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Report on Al Jazeera’s focus:

‘Arab Unity’ By Samir Awwad


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"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." Thomas Jefferson on history


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Acknowledgements 6

I. History and Personalities 8

Arabs seek common cause 9

Arab world by Command and Conquest 10

In the land of Abraham 11

Reformers, liberators and martyrs 13

Profile: Saladin 15

Profile: Sati' al-Husari 15

Profile: Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi 16

A warrior of Arabia 18

Science in the Arab empire 20

Made by Muslims 21

Time to forget the Crusades 23

Scholar: No clash of civilizations 26

Arabic is the tie that binds 29

II. Battle of thoughts, Pan-Arabism 31

Revolution Calling 32

Socialism 34

The Arab Baath Socialist Party 35

The Iraqi Baath Party 36

Iraq's bloody political history 38

Nationalism 41

Rising nationalism 41

Fathering Egyptian nationalism 42

Dreaming of Greater Syria 44

Profile: King Abdullah I of Jordan 46

III. Zionism 48

Realizing the Zionist dream 49

Losing the Jews of Arabia 50

Why the Arabs were defeated 52

The Nakba: Catalyst for pan-Arabism 54

Opinion: Arabism's greatest loss 56

Tracing Gaza's chaos to 1948 58

Countdown to Arab defeat 61

'They destroyed our lives' 63


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Peace after the Yom Kippur War? 65

Israeli historian on Sadat's gamble 66

Camp David a blow to Arab unity 68

Palestinian refugees key to peace 70

Is right of return feasible? 72

Timeline: Palestine since 1915 76

Has Israel succeeded as a state? 81

Milestones of war and peace 83

IV. Nasserism 86

1948: A Cause for Unity? 87

Revolution bred by defeat 88

The 1956 Suez War 92

Nasser's 1967 Disillusion 94

Inspired by the roots of Arab unity 96

Arab Unity: The end? 98

The language of pan-Arabism 99

V. Islamism 102

The two 'isms' of the Middle East 103

Analysis: Nationalism vs Islam? 105

Fahmy Howeidy 'Islam larger than Arabism' 108

Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood 110

Profile: Sayyid Qutb 112

1967 and the rise of extremism 113

Iran and the Shia legacy 116

Timeline: Iran-Arab relations 117

Profile: The Mahdi Army 119

Palestinians see Nasrallah as new hero 121

List of Contributors 123

A Question of Arab Unity 125

Episode 1: Why Unity? 125

Episode 2: Unity Betrayed 125

Episode 3: Trials and Tribulations 126

Episode 4: A Cause for Unity 126

Episode 5: The Unity Experiment 127

Episode 6: Disillusion 127


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Episode 7: The Jewish factor 128

Episode 8: Holy Unity 128


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Acknowledgements

The Knowledge World Centre for Polls found Al Jazeera was the most respected news agency in the Middle East. Launching the focus “Arab Unity” elaborating the history of the 20th century of the Middle East, this well-known agency which is based in Doha – Qatar, presented a collection on essays, reports and interviews by various journalists and scholars from December 2007 until March 2008. This special collection is a nine-part series that has been aired on Al Jazeera television to wide audience. The widely held impression of the Middle East is that it is a sociological homogeneous area called “Arabia.” This area has a diverse history of over 6000 years of civilizations and traditions. This makes the region as complex as India or even Asia; hence the challenge to be addressed is how to deal with the synonym Arabia in a fair and proper way. An adequate handling of relations with people from the Middle East is of increasing value for businesspersons, travelers, experts of foreign relations, politicians and leaders working and visiting this region. First and foremost, a shift in emphasis is required to understanding the people first. To provide a general understanding of the region, the objective and main focus of Al Jazeera’s “Arab Unity” has been to carefully document the people. In general, three striking questions need to be answered to understand the Middle East. First, where do people living in the Middle East get their source of identity? Second, what are the main political and social movements that affect the political and social dynamics in the Middle East? Third, how would people in the Middle East answer these questions in light of the current situation? This paper takes into consideration these questions and is further elaborated upon in a five-part report. The first part of the report collects information that Al Jazeera provided on the last 3000 years of history. The reports concentrates on the time-frame from the 7th -13th century covering the period of the crusades and scientific advances/successes, and the birth of Islam in the 7th century with the Prophet Muhammad followed by other striking respectable personalities. The second part of the report concentrates on “The battle of thoughts” which highlights the main currents of socialism and nationalism that together make up the term “pan-Arabism” appearing at the beginning of the 20th century. The term Pan-Arabism also includes the influence of a monarchy system that is still prevalent and successful today. The third part of the report primarily describes how Arab movements where influenced by ideological currents from Europe, a roughly external variable on the Middle East. Also highlighted are the impacts of thousands of years of civilizations, war and controversial developments such – “Zionism”. This means the “homecoming” of its descendants fleeing European nationalism and the Holocaust. This part shows an Arab point of view and perception of the impact on their world. Part four of the report covers “Nasserism”- a strong social movement in the Arab world under a charismatic leader reflecting the ideological counterpart to the creation of the Israeli statehood in the 1950’s. Gamal Abdel Nasser, Arabian’s blue-collar hero, has been the idol of pan-Arabism and his military defeat by Israel and death is partly seen as a defeat and death of pan-Arabism. The question of what substitutes the Pan-Arab part of the Middle Eastern identity besides a common language is further examined. How the term “Islam” appeared as a political identity and as a secondary storyline during the “battle of thoughts,” is described. How the role of Islam as a religion became revived and grew stronger to handle political problems is also addressed. Part five explains how Islamic currents try to fill the gap left by the sense of failure of the secular movements shown before. These movements laid the ideological base for what we know as Islamic terrorism today. An examination of Islamism as the second “ism” joining nationalism enables an analysis of most headlines on


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the Arab world provided by international media if topics of war, terror and civil unrest are covered. This section also includes various articles that were not the main focus of Al Jazeera to try to provide a field of information and background on what is happening today especially on Iran, a theocracy, that is under allegation to spread its regional influence by the use of Shiite Islam and brutal force. The focus “Arab Unity” is linked in the final chapter guided by remarks Al Jazeera made. The Al Jazeera Focus “Arab Unity” appears as a thoughtful and talented way to provide an explanation on what moves the Middle East, its political and social situation, and the world within its range. However, it might leave too scary of a picture not referring to success stories that are written by many countries, the people living within their borders and their governments who have to manage this context. Providing guidance through the five sections of this paper should be a chance to have a brief introduction into the Middle East, its past, and the soil that it stands on. I would like to thank Udo von Massenbach for his help and guidance in the course of the current elaboration. I explicitly acknowledge him for directing my attention to new and interesting problems and remain in his debt and gratitude. Sincerely yours, Samir Awwad, Pfullingen, 4 April 2008


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I. History and Personalities


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Arabs seek common cause The Arab world covers a vast geographic area stretching from the Atlantic coast to the Gulf The Arab world covers a vast geographic landscape comprising 22 countries. Mountain ranges crisscross two continents, acting as barriers separating farmland and coastal strips from virtually uninhabited deserts in a region stretching from the Atlantic shores of Morocco to the Gulf. Traditionally, the Bedouin of the deserts maintained a lifestyle different from the inhabitants of the great river valleys of Iraq and Egypt or the urban societies of the Mediterranean. But, whatever differences may separate Arabs, there are three general commonalities: they all speak Arabic, 95 per cent are Muslim and most, at some point and in different ways, have sought unity. Caliphate power base In the first 50 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, Islam was an Arab religion and the caliphate an Arab kingdom. The term Arab was applied to those who were full members by descent of an Arab tribe, and who, either in person or through their ancestors, had originated in Arabia. The Arabic language, a Semitic language akin to Hebrew, Aramaic and Amharic, bound the Arabs together providing them with the same cultural mannerisms and identity. But after the eighth century, the role of the Arab caliphate began to decline giving way to non-Arab dynasties which gained control of the state. As the new Muslims pushed north, east and west, the caliphate was gradually transformed from an Arab to an Islamic empire, incorporating non-Arabs such as Kurds, Persians, Berbers and Ottomans. It was in this period that there was an explosion of ideas and innovation. New concepts in mathematics, science, agriculture, philosophy and art exemplified the new Islamic empire and in later years influenced the European renaissance. Innovations such as toxicology, the first medical encyclopedia, the astrolabe and the use of the numeral zero ushered in an age of Arab invention and scientific breakthrough. But after the last Christian crusade in the 13th century and the sacking of Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Empire, in 1258, the sun set on the new Arab empire. Gone were the philosophers and scientists as the accumulated written knowledge compiled by the Arabs was destroyed. It was during this period that Ottoman Turkic peoples came to dominate the Islamic caliphate. They relocated the Islamic focus of power from Mecca to Constantinople, soon renamed Istanbul. Arab renaissance It would not be until the Arab renaissance of the 19th century that the concept of a single unified Arab state would emerge and embed itself into the fabric of Arab consciousness, becoming crystallized after Gamal


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Abdel Nasser, the iconic Egyptian president from 1956-1970, came to power. It has been called Pan-Arabism, Arab Nationalism, or just plain Arabism and it first arose as a direct reaction to the decline of the Ottoman Empire. By the middle of the 19th century, Arabs began to resist Ottoman reforms, especially ones imposing the Turkish language in schools, and discontent spread throughout the Arabic-speaking provinces of the empire. This discontent would come to be known as the Nahda - the Arab "awakening". One of the central principles of the Nahda was the idea of one single unified Arabic nation built on dialogue, rationality and secularism. Politicians and intellectuals such as Butros al-Bustani, Nassif and Ibrahim Yaziji from Lebanon, the Iraqi Sati El Husri, and Abdel Rahman al-Kawakibi from Syria argued that the Arabs from the Gulf to the Atlantic were one people and ought to be united in one social and political entity. Fawwaz Traboulsi, a political analyst, says: "I think the ideals of the Nahda still make sense in this world. They make a lot of sense in our world; freedom from all forms of oppression, the rule of law, the republic, the question of the relationship between religion and belief, the reinterpretation of religion, is religion open to individual interpretation or is it closed?" "Finally, [there is] the question of social justice. All those are common notions of the Nahda." They called for Arabs to educate, empower and emancipate themselves from Ottoman hegemony and demanded that the caliphate power be based in Mecca. Catchphrases But the struggle for Arab unity has been plagued from the beginning by definitions and differing interpretations of identity and nationalism. Ahmad Youssef Ahmad, the director of the Arab Institute for Research and Study, says: "There are those Arab nationalists who prefer to use the term Arab nation instead of Arab world… One could say that the reality at present is the Arab world, but our ambition is to be the Arab nation." Arab unity has meant different things to different people at different times. For some such as Sheriff Hussein of Mecca at the beginning of the 20th century, unity was a way to defeat Ottoman colonialism. For his son, King Faisal, unity was an expression of resistance to the colonialism of Britain and France. The region's religious and ethnic minorities sought a secular Arab unity while Islamist movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood, wanted to emulate the glories of their collective past in an Islamic caliphate. For others, including Nasser, or the secular pan-Arab Baath party, unity was suggested as a mechanism to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation and to create one over-arching Arab sovereign state. Arab world by Command and Conquest Conflict, turmoil and the flight of innocents from their homes is not a new phenomenon in the Middle East but has been etched in history over the past 7,000 years. From the merging of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms in Ancient Egypt in BC 3100 to the establishment of a judicial system in Babylon in BC 1800 and the expansion of the militaristic Roman Empire, this region has seen great scientific and social development in the wake of war and conquest. As empires have risen and fallen, populations migrated, and philosophies and religions emerged, the Middle East today is in essence built on the foundations of both its brilliant and bloody history. An interactive map, courtesy of Maps of War (www.mapsofwar.com), charts the flux of empires and peoples over the past 5,000 years.


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In the land of Abraham - By Ahmad Atif Ahmad

The Middle East was the birthplace of all three Abrahamic religions [GALLO/GETTY] The Middle East, home to some of the oldest communities in the world, is the geographic area where major religious customs have coexisted as a matter of tradition for several thousand years. Its recorded history - ancient, medieval, and modern - has documented this coexistence of hundreds of religious groups, some atheistic or agnostic, some polytheistic, and some monotheistic. And, despite occasional polemical and even violent encounters among Middle Eastern religions, history clearly points to undeniable tolerance and maturity among the region's communities that has gone largely unacknowledged. Within the various Middle Eastern religious groups, monotheistic communities occupy an important position, given their large size and cultural immanence. In simple terms, the main conditions of coexistence among Middle Eastern monotheists have been the fluidity of borders among these communities and their mixing in cultural and intellectual circles, in the government, and in the family. Fluid borders Religions in the Middle East: Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Druze, Sabaean (Mandaean), Alawite, Baha'i, Yazidism, Zoroastrianism One must note that Middle Eastern monotheistic communities cannot simply be reduced to three categories - Jewish, Christian and Muslim. Monotheists of partial affiliation with these three groups have lived in the Middle East at least throughout the last three millennia. Some of these communities are known as the hunafa (those who follow the path of Abraham) and have lived in Arabia since around the time of the rise of Islam. More importantly, the borders among these and other monotheistic communities enjoy a considerable degree of fluidity. Some old Christian communities were indistinguishable from their contemporary Jewish communities who lived in their vicinity. Borderline communities (people who claimed both Jewish and Christian heritage, for example) survive today, such as the Nasranis and St Thomas Christians who claim a mixed Syrian Jewish Christian heritage and live mostly in India. The differences within Jewish communities have been just as significant (or insignificant) as the differences between these and Christian communities at various points. These groups experienced shifts of convergence and divergence - some small religious groups were unified into larger groups, and some branched into smaller ones. Islam and monotheists The rise of Muslim communities in the midst of Jewish, Christian, and other monotheistic communities, added another element to the picture. The early Muslim communities were inevitably influenced by the older monotheists in their beliefs and practices. Islam has embraced monotheism in general and specific terms. Both the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad's adages praise Jewish and Christian communities, as they do non-Jewish, non-Christian monotheists. The Quran (Surah 2: Verse 136), for example, shows that the declaration of faith for all Muslims includes belief in all the prophets: "We believe in God, and in that which has been bestowed from on high upon us,


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and that which has been bestowed upon Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and their descendants, and that which has been vouchsafed to Moses and Jesus; and that which has been vouchsafed to all the [other] prophets by their Sustainer: we make no distinction between any of [these prophets]." The linguistic-cultural map The same patterns of convergence and coexistence are also reflected in the linguistic map of the Middle East. Syriac and Syro-Aramaic (Syrian varieties of Aramaic) represent a convergence between Jewish and Christian communities east of the Mediterranean and north of the Arabian Peninsula. The adoption of Arabic by many Middle Eastern communities added to their ability to share a significantly unified cultural world. Medieval Jewish communities developed Judeo- Arabic (Arabic written in Hebrew letters) to address the constant interaction between the Jewish communities and their Arab surroundings.. Aside from these hybrid linguistic formations, Middle Eastern languages have continued to borrow heavily from one another, creating a natural bridge for the exchange of ideas and cultural activities. Middle Eastern intelligentsia The production of knowledge in the Middle East, especially in the Middle Ages, fostered religious coexistence by defying simple affiliation with the labels "Arab" or "Muslim". Medieval Middle Eastern philosophy, generally defined as an umbrella of the natural and human sciences, could be called Islamic or Arabic, given the role Islam played in it and given the religious diversity of those who participated in it. In this environment, major Muslim philosophers, such as Farabi (d. 950) boasted of their education at the hands of Christian mentors. Major Islamic philosophers, such as Kindi (d. 873) and Rhazes (d. 925), did not hold orthodox Muslim beliefs. Major medieval Jewish intellectuals, such as Sa'dia Ga'on (d. 942), Yahuda Bin Halevi (d. 1141), and Moses Maimonides (d. 1204), were conversant in Islamic philosophy and mysticism. Scientific co-operation and path-crossing also pervaded the areas of the natural sciences and medicine, among other areas of knowledge in the medieval world. Government and family But coexistence could not have been fostered and secured had it not been for the roles of government and the family. Aside from intellectual circles, the political and social spheres reveal a similar pattern of harmony and unison. Jews and Christians held positions of influence in Muslim governments, spanning the functions of political advisers, city planners, state emissaries, courtiers, secretaries, scribes and translators, technical assistants, and personal physicians for the heads of state and their families. In the social sphere, intermarriage across religious groups was almost as common as marriage within the same religious group at different points in history. Dietary laws observed by one spouse did not have to be observed by the other spouse who was of a different religion (a Christian wife could consume pork in the house of her Muslim husband, for example). Thus, mutual respect prevailed, and coexistence flourished. Abrahamic communities Ironically, as it becomes fashionable to speak of a world-wide Abrahamic community, consisting of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities, the Middle East, with its historically privileged position as the birthplace of these faiths and the theatre of their longest interaction, is described as a troubled region - one where coexistence among these same religious communities is hardest. This is a bit counterintuitive as well as counter-historical. Middle Eastern Jews, Christians, and Muslims are the natural nucleus of a world-wide Abrahamic community, since Abraham, the father of all monotheists, is revered by all three religions, and the Middle East is the birthplace of Abraham and all three religions. The cross-cultural, cross-civilisational Abrahamic community could only claim to continue the tradition of coexistence among Middle Eastern monotheistic communities, with an ambitious (and laudable) goal of transcending race, economic background, and cultural sensibilities. History can provide many lessons of coexistence and co-operation among Middle Eastern populations. These examples must be used as a bridge for contemporary Middle Eastern communities to build a more tolerant world for themselves and as an example to be followed by the rest of humanity.


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Reformers, liberators and martyrs

An extract from Sunset in Palestine by Basel Almisshal 2004 courtesy of baselonline.co.uk While Islam acted as a unifying factor for the dispersed and disparate rural and urban communities of Arabia, the vision of a singular state was never achieved. Rifts, in-fighting, the Crusades and the push of the Mongol horde undermined hopes of solidifying the Arabs into a cohesive nation. However, this has not stopped efforts by iconic figures in Arab history from continuing to call for the ideal of Arab unity to be realised. While the Prophet Muhammad brought the tribes of the hijaz together, it was Saladin al-Ayoubi, the legendary Kurdish military leader, who pushed for political reform within the Arab nation as he battled the foreign Crusader armies. But Saladin died young, and by 1258, when the Mongols sacked Baghdad, the Arab state had been torn apart by corruption and complacence. The principles of unity would lie dormant until the early 19th century as Europe once again pushed against the borders of the Ottoman-occupied Arab nations. Prophet Muhammad Ibn Abdullah The early years Muhammad ibn Abdullah, the final prophet of Islam, was born in the trading city of Mecca, Arabia, in c AD 570, to the ruling clan of Banu Hashim. His early childhood was spent in the desert, as per the tradition of the time, where he learnt to speak the pure Arabic tongue and was raised in an uncorrupted environment away from the luxuries and distractions of the city. Orphaned in his early years, he spent the rest of his childhood in the care of his grandfather, Abdul Muttalib, and after that his uncle, Abu Talib, who also initiated the young Muhammad into the trading profession by taking him on his expeditions. It was through this trade that Muhammad met his wife, Khadija bint Khuwailid, a widow who was several years his elder. She was impressed by his widespread reputation for honesty and trustworthiness. Khadija and Muhammad married when he was approximately 25 years old, and she was to prove a pillar of strength and support to him during the early years of Islam. Revelation Muhammad developed a habit of retreating from the hustle and bustle of Mecca to the surrounding mountains and their caves, as a form of spiritual solace and meditation. On one occasion, when he was 40-years old, he experienced something which was to change the course of his life, indeed the course of history for the whole of Arabia and arguably, the world. Muhammad received the first revelation from the Archangel Gabriel, who’s first and most persistent words to


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him were the imperative "read!" Illiterate Muhammad was deeply shaken by the force of this experience, but gradually came to terms with the weight of the responsibility he now held. He accepted his role as prophet, and his mission to communicate God's message - "read" - an inspiration for humans to this day to think, learn, rationalize, criticize and innovate. Persecution During the early years of Islam, Muhammad's followers were few - notably Khadija and his best friend Abu Bakr. Many of the early Muslims were socially weak – both in terms of their wealth and in their all-important tribal status. A number of them were slaves, such as Bilal ibn Rabah, the Abyssinian. The reaction of the Meccan leaders was to persecute these "heretics" - torturing them, abusing them and eventually imposing a social and economic boycott. In AD 620, Muhammad experienced a miraculous night journey with the Archangel Gabriel. In the first part, the Isra, he traveled from Mecca to "the farthest mosque" (in Arabic: masjid al-aqsa), in Jerusalem. In the second, the Miraj, Muhammad visited heaven and hell, and spoke with earlier prophets, including Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Emigration Soon after this event, Muhammad and the Muslims received an invitation from tribal leaders in the town of Yathrib where fighting between Arab and Jewish tribes had been going on for a century. The people of Yathrib had heard of Muhammad's reputation as a just and trustworthy character, and requested that he act as arbitrator in their disputes, offering him and his follower’s sanctuary. Muhammad's followers began to emigrate, and by 622, Muhammad, accompanied by Abu Bakr, made the journey himself. Welcomed by those who were awaiting him, Yathrib was renamed Madinat ul-Nabi (City of the Prophet) in his honor. Today it is known as Medina for short. In Medina, Muhammad is recorded as having established peace among the tribes, notably through the Sahifa - what was roughly a constitution for Medina. In the ensuing years, Medina was forced to turn its attention towards battle with external enemies, in the form of Mecca and her allies. Most prominent among these being the Battle of Badr - a victory for Muhammad and his followers, and the Battle of Uhud, initiated by the Meccans in the form of revenge for Badr and where complacency and a lack of discipline after initially gaining the upper hand, eventually led to a defeat for the Muslims. Truce of Hudaybiya and the conquest of Mecca In 628, Muhammad and his followers began a journey towards Mecca as pilgrims. There was still enmity between them and the Quraysh of Mecca and the pilgrims were stopped. Just outside Mecca, at Hudaybiya, talks took place and an agreement was reached. Muhammad and his followers did not perform their pilgrimage, but came back with a form of truce and the promise of passage for pilgrimage the following year. Two years later, the leaders of Mecca were considered to have broken the truce by assisting another tribe in an attack against a Muslim. Muhammad mobilised to enter Mecca and, in a historic manner, was able to do so without shedding a drop of blood, while offering amnesty to all in the city who did not choose to accept Islam. Muhammad died in 632 in Medina where he is buried. Today, more than one billion people across the world profess to the faith of Islam and hold Muhammad in reverence as a unique, powerful yet very human personal role model.


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Profile: Saladin A towering figure in Islamic and Middle Eastern history, Salahuddin (Saladin) Yusuf Ibn Ayyub is best known as the general who liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders in the 12th century. A Kurd, he was sent to Damascus during his childhood to complete his education, where he was trained in military techniques by his uncle Shirkuh, in the court of Nuruddin Zengi. Saladin became the vizier of Egypt in 1169 and then took full control of the country in 1171. He later built the Citadel in Cairo. His conquest of Jerusalem in 1188 prompted the Third Crusade, led by Richard I (also known as Richard the Lionheart) of England. Richard's forces defeated Saladin in several battles, but could not retake Jerusalem. Saladin and Richard signed an armistice in 1192. The Muslim general's reputation as a chivalrous knight earned him respect and reverence even from his enemies. Bahauddin Ibn Shaddad, a historian and Saladin biographer, wrote in 1189 of a Frankish woman who was searching for her missing three-month-old baby. It had been stolen from her camp and sold. The Franks, at war with the Muslims at the time, urged her to approach Saladin with her grievance. He used his own money to buy the child back. Ibn Shaddad wrote: "He gave it to the mother and she took it; with tears streaming down her face, and hugged it to her breast. The people were watching her and weeping and I was standing amongst them. She suckled it for some time and then Saladin ordered a horse to be fetched for her and she went back to camp." Saladin is also known for his pivotal role in uniting the then divided Abbasid (Sunni - Baghdad) and Fatimid (Shia - Egypt) caliphates. His legacy as a force for unity stretches to this day across the Middle East and into Europe. The "Saladin eagle" is seen as a symbol of Arab unity and features on the coats of arms of Egypt, Iraq, Palestine and Yemen. The province in Iraq where he was born is now named after him, as is the university in Irbil. Visitors to Damascus can view his statue at the entrance to the city's citadel and visit his place of burial, the Umayyad Mosque in Old Damascus. Profile: Sati' al-Husari Born in 1880 to Syrian parents living and working in Yemen, al-Husari is considered a leading figure of Arabism and the mentor of several pan-Arab political parties formed in the 20th century. The son of a magistrate, the young al-Husari was a brilliant student. He graduated from the Royal School in Istanbul in 1900 and soon assumed several key positions in education. His writings about developing the education system gained him respect across the Arab world. He left Turkey for Syria in 1919 after the fall of the Ottomans. He was welcomed by Prince Faisal bin al-Hussein, the would-be King of Syria. The prince told the young thinker when he first met him: "Whenever I read your writings or hear about you, I think you are an old man, but seeing you now and realising that you are still young, makes me feel happy that you still have plenty of time to serve our nation." When Faisal was installed as the King of Syria in 1920, he offered al-Husari the ministry of education. Shortly afterwards, Faisal was deposed by the French, who occupied Syria and installed their own mandate system. Work in Iraq Al-Husari left with his king to Europe. King Faisal was installed as Iraq's king in 1921 with al-Husari as the general director of the education ministry. The then Jewish minster of education, Sason Hisqiyal, opposed the appointment, arguing that the post could not be offered to non-Iraqis. King Faisal granted al-Husari Iraqi citizenship. Al-Husari lived in Iraq for 20 years and established the groundwork for a complete education system, making


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the study of history a key component of the curriculum from primary to high school. Al-Husari always stressed that the key factors for creating a viable and strong Arab nation were a common language and history, rather than religion. He developed a belief that the bonds of race and community are deeper and stronger than those of religion. His Islamist critics downplayed his beliefs arguing that he unnecessarily ignored religion as a motivator. They said al-Husari failed to realise the efficacy of the Islamic bond between Arabs and other non-Arab Muslims, which enabled the Islamic state to flourish until the fall of Baghdad, the capital of the Islamic empire, to the Mongols in 1258. Al-Husari argued that his ideas were misunderstood. In his book Al-Urooba Awalan (Arabism First), he insisted that Arab unity would be the best foundation for establishing a greater Muslim unity. Influenced by al-Husari's pan-Arabism, and backed by strong public passion, Rashid Ali al-Gailani, the then-Iraqi prime minister, and a group of nationalist officers rose in 1941 against the British military presence in Iraq and sought to end the British- Iraqi agreement of 1930, which they believed made Iraq a servant of British interests. The revolt was supressed and the pro-British government reinstalled, while al-Husari was forced into exile in Syria. He participated in the preparations for the establishment of the Arab League, which saw the light in Egypt in 1945. Two years later he was appointed as the league's cultural director. He occupied the position for 18 years, during which he wrote most of his works. He returned to Baghdad in 1965 and died there in 1967. Sati' al-Husari regarded Arab unity as his mission in life and believed it was the only way for Arabs to win back their freedom and dignity. When the Arab armies were defeated by the Israelis in 1948, he was asked for the reason for the loss. He responded "because they were seven armies only", indicating that if all Arab armies were united as one, they would not have been defeated. Profile: Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi Scholars are divided on whether Abd al- Rahman al-Kawakibi was a pioneer of Arab nationalism or modern Islamic political thought. Born in 1849 to a wealthy family in Aleppo, Syria, al-Kawakibi studied the Sharia (Islamic law) before working for the al-Furat newspaper in Aleppo and later his own al-Shahbaa' as an exile in Cairo. He was imprisoned several times before being exiled for suggesting that the Ottomans were corrupting the Islamic identity. He urged the Arabs to overthrow the Turks and seize control of the caliphate. His career in journalism often meant that he raised the ire of Ottoman administrations and their Arab allies and was branded a traitor. He believed Mecca, not Istanbul, should be the center of Islamic power. His belief was reinforced as the power of the Ottomans began to wane and slide into often widespread corruption. A European resurgence in the Middle East also pushed against Ottoman influence in the area. Despite his imprisonment, al-Kawakibi continued to write of a need for a regional nationalism to counter Ottoman occupation which he blamed for the Arab's startling illiteracy and backwardness. However, he did not rule out working with the Ottomans to usher in an Islamic renaissance. In 1900, al-Kawakibi published Umm al-Qura (Mother of Towns) in which he called for a secret Islamic congress to be convened during the Hajj in Mecca every year. In this treatise, he called for an Arab caliphate and urged intellectuals to take up the cause against the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans feared that this was a rallying call to end their influence in religious matters and pursued al-Kawakibi. Al-Kawakibi died in 1902 and many of his family and supporters alleged that he had been poisoned by Turkish agents. However, this has never been proven. A Land for a Stranger, a Syrian film directed by Samir Zikrah in 1998, followed the life and works of al-Kawakibi and his struggles for reform. In 2002, Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city, hosted a two-day conference which examined al-Kawakibi's contribution to the Nahda. Though al-Kawakibi has been largely ignored by western studies of Arab nationalism, there has recently been an effort to bring the significance of his works to the fore and recognize him as one of the leading proponents of the Nahda.


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Lebanon's men of letters Nasif al-Yaziji Like several of the principle players of the Arab Awakening (Nahda), Nasif al-Yaziji migrated from a Mount Lebanon ravaged by discord and revolt, to Beirut at a time when the city was undergoing rapid development and establishing itself as a centre of academia and journalism. A Greek Catholic, he began his career as a private secretary (mudabbir) - a common way for Christians to attain social mobility under the restrictive iqta' system by which Mount Lebanon, which he described as "a country of tribes", was governed. First employed by Prince Haydar al-Shihabi, he went on to work for Bashir Shihab II (1788-1840), whose brutal repression of his opponents earned him the title the "Red Emir". When al-Yaziji moved to Beirut in 1840 he became an Arabic tutor and it was in this role that he came into contact with American and British Protestant missionaries. He would help fulfil one of the greatest ambitions of the missionaries - the translation of the Bible into Arabic - when he corrected a translation that Eli Smith (1802-52), an American missionary, and Butros al-Bustani (1819-83) started in 1847. After this he taught at the Syrian Protestant College (later renamed the American University of Beirut) and wrote on poetry, rhetoric, grammar and philosophy. It was for his attempts to emulate the style of classical Arab writers, thereby rediscovering the literary heritage of the Arabs, that he is best known. Among his works is a treatise on the muqata 'ji system. Used by the Ottomans to govern the emirate of Mount Lebanon, this involved tax-farming or iqta' rights being given to leading local families. These families enjoyed a degree of autonomy in the running of their region, controlled the land, collected taxes and benefited from tax exemptions and benefits in exchange for providing the central authorities in Istanbul with revenue and armed men. With al-Bustani and Mikha'il Mashaqqa, al-Yaziji formed the Syrian Association for the Sciences and Arts - the Arab world's first literary society - in 1847. The circle tackled and published its deliberations on themes such as women's rights, history and their fight against superstition. It was dissolved in 1852 but its inner circle went on to establish the Syrian Scientific Association a few years later. This became a much larger, multi-sectarian society of intellectuals who pushed for Arab independence from the Ottomans. Butros al-Bustani A Lebanese Maronite Christian, al-Bustani is regarded among scholars of modern Arab history as a pioneering proponent of pan-Arabism. Born in 1819, al-Bustani came into a world beset by the rise of Arab nationalism against the French invasion of Egypt and Ottoman occupation of Lebanon and Syria at the turn of the century. His study of Arabic poetry, literature, and several Semitic languages led him to translate the Bible into Arabic and also work on the first Arabic encyclopedia in 1881. It was during this time that he came to realize that a pan-Arab cultural reawakening was the only way the Arabs could overcome the yoke of Ottoman dominance. To this end, he founded the first co-educational Arab school in Beirut, countering illiteracy that was common among the Arabs living under Ottoman rule. Half a century before TE Lawrence helped the Arab tribes to fight the Ottoman Turks, it was al-Bustani who called for an uprising against Constantinople. He would be the first in a long line of Christian pan-Arabists who contributed to an Arab nationalistic identity. Ibrahim al-Yaziji It was at a meeting of the Syrian Scientific Association in 1878 that Nasif al-Yaziji's son, Ibrahim (1847-1906), recited an ode that would become a slogan for Arab nationalism, the cultural roots of which were beginning to take hold. It was never printed but Arise, ye Arabs and awake, which praised Arabs and called for their unity, was passed along orally and gained widespread fame. Ibrahim al-Yaziji taught at the Ecole Patriarchale and the National School in Beirut. A linguist, he called for and contributed to the revival of the Arabic language. His interests included poetry, with which he began his literary career, art and astronomy. He was also considered to be one of the best calligraphers of his


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generation. At the Paris exposition of 1878, his Arabic translation of the Jesuit Bible won a gold medal. One of his most significant innovations was the creation of a greatly simplified Arab font. By reducing Arabic character forms from 300 to 60 he simplified the symbols so that they more closely resembled Latin characters. It was a process that contributed to the creation of the Arabic typewriter. Ibrahim fled to Egypt to avoid Ottoman repression and died in exile. A warrior of Arabia Lawrence perfected the art of desert guerrilla warfare, which defeated the Turks

Thomas Edward Lawrence, a British army captain in the Middle East Theater of operations against the Ottomans in World War I, is a legend among Arab historians. Nicknamed Lawrence of Arabia, he was considered by the West to be the leader of the Arab revolt against Ankara. To the Arabs, and to the family of Sherrif Hussein ibn Ali, governor of the Hejaz, Lawrence was an Arab patriot and cunning warrior. Immortalized in David Lean's influential 1962 epic, Lawrence is credited with inspiring a feverish Arab nationalism, but in the past few decades his significance had waned somewhat. It would not be until well into the US invasion and occupation of Iraq that Lawrence's role in fomenting Arab nationalism and military tactics would return to the fore. Attrition and sabotage Having dedicated his boyhood fantasies to mastering the tactics of medieval warfare, including siege paradigms, Lawrence can be credited with formulating a blueprint of guerrilla warfare used in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Algeria, Sudan, and Yemen. In Iraq, for example, US military commanders have always complained that Iraqi armed groups retreat - almost disappear – immediately after an attack on their forces. This was a tactic perfected by Lawrence when he led attack after attack on Ottoman supply convoys and trains, fuel depots, military and communications installations in Transjordan and Syria in 1916. One minute the Arab fighters would be there killing Ottomans with ferocious intensity. And then…gone. The Ottomans would be left with no one to pursue. Lawrence did not believe that his under trained Arab fighters could take on the might of the Ottoman Empire head on. As a result, he sought a drawn out war of attrition, slowly and systematically draining the Ottomans of their supplies, morale and will to fight.


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Indirect approach B.H. Liddell Hart, a British military historian, said Lawrence was a master of the "indirect approach". In his book Strategy, Hart wrote of Lawrence's military acumen: "This campaign was the Arab Revolt, with Lawrence as its guiding brain. While it comes into the category of guerrilla warfare, its strategy had such a scientifically calculated basis that we should not miss its reflection on normal warfare. "The Arabs were both more mobile and less able to bear casualties than orthodox armies. The Turks were almost insusceptible to loss of men but not to loss of material - of which they suffered a scarcity. Superb in sitting tight in a trench, firing at a directly oncoming target, [Turks] were neither adaptable to, nor able to endure the strain of, fluid operations." Hart concluded that the Arab Revolt was the first entirely successful use of guerrilla warfare in World War I. Betrayal and sadness Lawrence believed in the vision of Sherrif Ali in creating a unified Arab state. But he was torn between his loyalties to Britain and his new adopted homeland. He was aware of the Sykes-Picot agreement which carved up the Middle East between colonial powers and was strongly against it. At the 1921 Cairo Conference, Lawrence was an adviser to Winston Churchill, who was Britain's secretary of state for the colonies at the time. He urged Britain to rethink its approach to the Arabs. But his pleas fell on deaf ears. He withdrew from social and military circles, feeling personally responsible for misleading the Arabs. In the years before his death, he wrote of his adventures and use of military strategy in the celebrated book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The book has in recent years risen to new prominence. In 2006, US General David Petraeus ordered his senior officers to master the book as it could help them understand the mindset of the Iraqi resistance. Excerpts from the book are quote in the 2006 US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual. Lawrence died in a motorcycle accident in 1935.


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Science in the Arab empire

The 16th-century al-Amiriya madrassa in Yemen incorporated architecture based on complex trigonometric designs [EPA] Within a century of the death of the Prophet Muhammad in AD 622, the new Arab Muslim Empire spread from the Arabian Peninsula reaching as far as Spain in the West and China in the East. It was during the formative years of this empire that the Arabs launched a renaissance incorporating the sciences, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, architecture, agriculture and innovations from the lands they conquered. Between the seventh and 13th centuries, the Arabs developed a keen sense of education and spearheaded a wave of scientific and social developments. The following are some of the Arab achievements seen by many historians as those most important in enabling the European renaissance to flourish several centuries later. The madrassa The madrassa, or school, evolved in the 10th century as a centre of education where a formal curriculum was introduced, a precursor to the modern interpretation of the traditional university. One such university was established in Fez in present-day Morocco by Fatima al- Fihri, a wealthy businesswoman. Instructors were paid a regular salary and various subjects including Islamic jurisprudence, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, and commerce were taught. It was here that Christian, Jewish, Arab, Persian, Kurdish, Hindu and Byzantine Greek philosophies openly intermingled. In 815, Mohammad ibn Musa al-Khawarzimi, a prominent mathematician at the House of Wisdom academy in Baghdad, sought precise measurements to settle land inheritance issues as stipulated by the Quran. He developed the Hindu concept of numerals, which introduced the concept of the zero as a place holder value system, and created the decimal system. He went on to write a treatise, Hisab al-jabr w'al-muqabala, on the concept of al-jabr (algebra), the first such work on the subject. The word algorithm is derived from his name. The astrolabe Many of the Arab inventions were spurred on by the needs of Islamic practise and the astrolabe was no exception. Originally devised by the Greeks 2,200 years ago, it was not until the eighth century that Arab astronomers perfected its use to calibrate the times of sunrise and sunset to facilitate the five prayer times for Muslims. The astrolabe was also used to determine when Muslims began and ended their fast during the month of Ramadan. Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, a Persian Tajik physicist, became an expert on the astrolabe in the 10th century and


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used it to theorize that the Earth rotated on its own axis, a postulate later proven by Galileo. Arab scientists were also able to use the astrolabe to determine latitude and longitude and produced detailed astronomical charts. By the 12th century, widespread use of the astrolabe spread into Europe from Andalusian Spain. The medical encyclopedia Modern medicine has its roots in the documented compilations of several Arab scientists, chief among them Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, a Persian scientist who in the ninth century stressed the need for clinical medicine and observation. Among his many achievements was the study of smallpox and measles and he was the first to distinguish between the two, becoming an expert on human contagions. He also discovered ethanol and applied it to medicinal practice. In his Kitab al-Mansuri, al-Razi produced a series of medical surveys which were compiled into the first medical encyclopedia. Less than 100 years later, Abu Ali al-Hussain ibn Abdullah ibn Sina, also known as Avicenna, built on al-Razi's research and produced a volume of study on about 750 drugs used in the treatment of patients. He also wrote Al Qanun, The Canon of Medicine, a volume of detailed medical studies combining experimentation and quantification in the study of physical and psychological illnesses. His works were standardized for use in Arab and European universities until the end of the 19th century. Made by Muslims - By Indlieb Farazi A cup of coffee, windmills, carpets, soap and the fountain pen, what do they all have in common? Apparently they were all invented by Muslims. Muslims have invented everything from surgical instruments to the camera, according to an exhibition touring Britain. One inventor featured is Ibn Hazm, an Andalusian astronomer the exhibition credits with proving that the world was round 500 years before Galileo made his discovery. The exhibition, 1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage In Our World, shown at the Manchester Museum of Science & Industry, features some of the best-kept secrets and scientific contributions by ancient Muslim scholars to much of the Western civilization and the world now. Professor Salim Al-Hassani, chairman of the Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilization (FSTC), which organized the exhibition, said: "The extent to which Muslims have contributed to Western civilization is not generally well known. Yet these ancient scholars from the Islamic world gave us many of the everyday things we use such as coffee, soap and clocks. "This exhibition shows that Muslims have always shared the heritage that provides a platform for developments that makes the Western world tick." Flowering civilization In the West, the Dark Ages are usually seen as an interlude between two great flowering civilizations, in which little advancement of knowledge took place. However, in this period Islamic scholars across southern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Persia and Central Asia were busy preserving and building on the knowledge of the ancient world. For example, the exhibition organizers say that records show that the coffee bean was first used to make a drink when the bean was exported from Ethiopia to Yemen where Sufis drank it to stay awake at night to pray on special occasions. Much of the Islamic world began to regard coffee as an aid for devotion, allowing dervishes to stay awake for long hours dedicating their nights to divine remembrance. By the late 15th century it had arrived in Makka, Saudi Arabia, then Turkey, and later Vienna in 1645. Inventions The exhibition credits the invention of the first pin-hole camera to Ibn al-Haitham, a 10th-century Muslim mathematician, astronomer and physicist. It also says that Islam's requirement for cleanliness and purity encouraged Arabs to develop the ancient Egyptians' use of soap, and create the recipe combining vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide that we still use today. A 10th-century Muslim surgeon, known only as al-Zahrawi, is said to have designed surgical instruments,


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which are still in use. And Ibn al-Nafis, a 13th-century Muslim medic, is said to have described the circulation of the blood 300 years before William Harvey discovered it. Muslims doctors are also credited with inventing anesthetics of opium and alcohol mixes, and developing hollow needles to suck cataracts from eyes in a technique still used. The windmill, often associated with the Dutch, is said to have been invented in 634 for a Persian caliph and used to grind corn and draw up water for irrigation. Justin Champion, a professor of the history of early modern ideas, at the Royal Holloway, University of London, said: "The exhibition looks very impressive – exactly the sort of public history that ought to work to bring communities together." Missing history Examining a thousand years of missing history, the exhibition brings to life historical inventions and innovations made by some of the greatest Muslim minds. Mohammed El Gomati, the director of FSTC, said: "The project started six years ago. The FSTC, a group made up of Muslims and non-Muslims alike, realized there was a need to travel around the country and educate and inform the public about Muslim contribution to the world." The exhibition is designed to encourage and inspire British youth to pursue careers in science, engineering and technology. It is hoped to help dispel negative perceptions of Muslims and provide positive role models to young British Muslims in particular. El Gomati, a professor in physics and electronics at the University of York in England, said: "There is definitely an element of ignorance in the West towards the Arab Muslim world. Open any school book in Britain and you will find little, if any, mention of what Muslims have achieved historically. "We have decided to redress this imbalance." The exhibition at the Manchester Museum of Science & Industry ends in June, other dates and venues are yet to be confirmed.


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Time to forget the Crusades - By John Tolan

A Crusader navy attacks the Muslim port of Damietta in this 15th-century painting of the Fifth Crusade by Cornelis Claesz vanWieringen. French historian Joseph Francois Michaud (1767-1839), in his Histoire des Croisades, affirmed that the Crusades had proven the superiority of Europeans over Muslims and showed the way to the conquest and civilization of Asia. Shortly thereafter, Louis Philippe, the King of France from 1830 to 1848, commissioned a Salle des Croisades at Versailles, replete with monumental romanticized paintings of scenes from the Crusades. It is perhaps no accident that at the same time the French were embarked upon the conquest of Algeria. For numerous French and British of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, the Crusades were a precursor to their brave new colonial adventures in the Orient. In reaction, Turkish and Arab writers denounced the European colonial enterprise as a re-enactment of the fanaticism and violence of the Crusades. The Crusades have long stirred emotions of admiration or revulsion, from Tasso's epic Gerusalemme Liberata (1580) to Youssef Chahine's film Saladin the Victorious (1963) and beyond. Arguing the clash The legacy of crusading, simplified and distorted, is evoked to argue the inevitability of a present and future "clash of civilizations". When Osama bin Laden speaks of countering the attacks of American and European "crusaders", he taps into a 19th-century European tradition of seeing the medieval crusades as precursors to the colonial (and subsequently post colonial) relations between Europeans and Arabs. But, the Crusades played little part in Arab conceptions of history from the 14th to the 19th centuries. Until that time, the Crusades were relatively minor phenomenon in the broad sweep of Muslim history. Of course, chroniclers such as Ibn al-Athir, Ibn Al Qalanisi or al-Maqrizi, close to rulers who fought against the Faranj (rulers like Saladin, al-Kamil, Baibars), made much of the threat posed by the Europeans and the heroic exploits of the sultans who defeated them. Ibn al-Athir explained that the attack on the Muslim Mashreq (Middle East) was part of a movement of Faranj that included the Castilian capture of Toledo (in 1085) and the Norman conquest of Sicily (1072-91). Yet for other Arab writers of the Middle Ages, the invasions of the Faranj were a minor inconvenience: they were simply another group of Christians who, like the Byzantines or Armenians, could seize small territories and pose threats to local Muslim rulers.


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The Mongol threat Far more troubling were the invasions of the Mongols, who captured and plundered large swaths of the Muslim heartland, sacking Baghdad in 1258 and Damascus several times. The Mamluks' victory over the Mongols at Ayn Jalut in 1260 was far more vital than their victories over the string of small and powerless crusader enclaves such as that of Acre, which the Mamluks captured in 1291, ending the Crusader presence in the region. Ibn Khaldun, in his great works of historiography, the Muqaddima and the Kitab al-'Ibar, has little to say of Crusades and Crusaders, much more about Mongols (including Timur, whom he met) and about the Berber dynasties of the Maghreb. Few Arab authors of the following centuries take much interest in the Crusades, which are largely seen as a footnote to the sweep of Muslim history. In Europe, meanwhile, the Crusades, and their failure to galvanize and unify European Christendom, were an obsession to many authors. In the aftermath of the loss of Acre in 1291, various Europeans called on kings, princes and popes to organize fresh crusades against the Mamluks and increasingly against the Ottomans. Most of the anti-Turkish "crusades", like those of Nicopolis (1396) and Varna (1443) ended in crushing defeat for the European troops. But various European Christian authors continued to use the language of the Crusades to try to fire their co-religionists into attacking the Ottomans or other enemies, including Protestants and "heathen" American Indians. The historians and philosophers of the 18thcentury Enlightenment, in contrast, vilified the notion of war in the name of God: for them, holy war represented the epitome of medieval fanaticism. Voltaire depicts the Crusaders as blood-thirsty fanatics, while portraying their opponents, particularly Saladin and al-Kamil, as wise and just monarchs. European nationalism Yet this negative vision of crusading is swept aside in 19th-century Europe by three powerful forces in European culture: Romanticism, nationalism, and colonialism. The Romantics rehabilitated the Crusades which they portrayed as, at times, bloody and senseless, yet redeemed by a remarkable and admirable idealism. This idea is embodied in the novels of Walter Scott, such as Ivanhoe (1819) and the Talisman (1825). Francois de Chateaubriand, in his Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem (1811), takes umbrage at those who speak ill of the Crusades. On the contrary, for him, despite their shortcomings the Crusaders were imbued with a faith and a selfless sense of mission that pushed them to abandon wives, children, lands and material riches to wrest Christ's tomb from the grasp of the Muslims. In Jerusalem, at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Chateaubriand was dubbed into the Order of the Holy Sepulcher by a Franciscan friar wielding what was supposed to be the sword of Godfrey of Bouillon, knight and first ruler of Crusader Jerusalem. Chateaubriand and other Europeans dreamed of a return to the heroic age of the Crusades. European colonialism Their dream was not long in the waiting. Beginning in 1830, French troops undertook the conquest of Algeria. French Crusader historians Francois-Joseph Michaud and Jean-Joseph Poujoulat praised kings Charles X and Louis-Philippe as new incarnations of Saint Louis. In a preface to a school textbook on the Crusades, the authors present the feats of medieval French Crusaders as models for the youth sent off to conquer Algeria: "The narration of the great events of olden times shall serve as lessons of patriotism for our youth." When Napoleon III addressed the troops ready to set off for Lebanon in 1860, he exhorted them to be "the worthy children of those heroes who gloriously carried Christ's banner into those countries". The British similarly painted their victories over the Ottomans in the First World War: Richard the Lionhearted, who failed to take Jerusalem from Saladin, appears in the pages of Punch in December 1917, in the aftermath of Allenby's capture of Jerusalem, saying "At last, my dream come true!" One could multiply the examples of British and French authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries who affirmed that their colonial empires were reviving the best traditions of medieval crusading: its idealism, its mission to bear European civilization into the heart of the Middle East. Independence dashed At the Versailles peace conference at the close of the first world war, when the French and British argued over the partition of the Arab lands wrested from the Ottoman empire and the Arab envoys increasingly realized their hopes for independence would be dashed, one of the French representatives tried to ground his claims on French prominence in the Crusades.


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Amir Faisal, in frustration, shot back: "Would you kindly tell me just which one of us won the Crusades?" It is through the French and British, principally, that Arabs of the 19th and 20th centuries rediscovered the Crusades. Modern Arabic terms for the Crusades, such as harb al-salib, were coined in the 19th century as translations of European terms; there had previously been no Arabic word for "crusade". Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876-1909) warns that "Europe is now carrying out a Crusade against us". The first book in Arabic devoted specifically to the Crusades is Sayyid Ali al-Hariri's al-Hurub al-Salibiya, published in Cairo in 1899. His work is grounded in both European scholarship and in knowledge of the medieval Arabic chroniclers. Unify the Arabs! Al-Hariri, like subsequent Arab scholars, accepted Michaud's assertion that the Crusades were a precursor for European colonialism. Arab nationalists responded by drawing their own historical lessons from this comparison: the new crusaders can be defeated just as their predecessors had been by the unification of the Arabs under leaders who, like Saladin and Baibars in the Middle Ages, will expel the intruders from Arab soil. Since the middle of the 20th century, if Europeans or Americans compare the Crusades to colonialism, it is in order to denounce one, the other, or both. In the late 20th and 21st centuries, Westerners tend to see the Crusades as manifestations of violent fanaticism, not as expressions of admirable idealism. It is now principally in the circles of radical Islam that the 19th-century European paradigm equating Crusades with European colonialism lives on. Sayyid Qutb in the 1960s affirmed that "the Crusader spirit runs in the blood of all Westerners". Similar statements have been proffered by more recent Islamists, including bin Laden or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: Crusaders and Zionists are implacable enemies with whom one neither speaks nor compromises. The mirror term among more extreme western writers is Jihadists: Islamists (or for some, more broadly Muslims) are seen to be inordinately hostile to non-Muslims, against whom holy war is a sacred duty. What clash? These Manichean world views fuel pessimistic scenarios such as Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations". Yet when one looks closely at the age of Crusades, one finds that the lesson to be drawn is far less simplistic than Huntington or bin Laden would have us believe. It is a time of trade, when Egyptian merchants bought spices in India and sold them in Spain, when Venetians and Genoese traders sold English or Flemish wool cloth in Alexandria and brought back to Europe Egyptian glass, Damascene metalwork, Indian spices. Pilgrims - Christians, Muslims and Jews - bound for Mecca and Jerusalem, traveled together on Genoese or Pisan ships, along with merchants, mercenaries and adventurers. It is a time when storms tossed their ships and all raised their voices to God in a multilingual supplication. Conflict, as always, was endemic, but it often crossed confessional lines. The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (and the other Crusader principalities) did not, as some have claimed, comprise an "apartheid" regime of boorish European louts lording over cultured but abject Muslims. Its inhabitants were in fact a cosmopolitan mix of Arabs, Turks, Armenians, Italians, Normans, Provencaux, etc. In religion they were Shia and Sunni Muslim, Druze, Catholic, Monophysite, and Jewish. The Latin rulers gradually "orientalized", marrying the daughters of prominent indigenous Christians, learning Arabic, eating and dressing like natives, making truces and alliances with neighboring Muslim rulers and promoting commerce. Yet one should not imagine an idyllic land of tolerance: social distinctions were real, and often followed lines of religion and ethnicity. Seeking historical understanding In this, as in the violence with which they imposed and enforced their rule, the Latins differed little from other contemporary interlopers in Syria/Palestine: Turks, Byzantines, Kurds, Egyptian Fatimids and Mameluks. The historical fallacy of identifying modern struggles with those of the Middle Ages continues to be an impediment to a real historical understanding of Arab-European (and more broadly Western-Muslim) relations. The motivations for al-Qaeda's violence have more to do with internal Saudi politics and resentment of US policy in the Middle East than with a supposedly eternal clash between "crusaders" and "jihadists". The roots of Iranian anti-Americanism can be found in decades of American alliance with the Shah, rather than in centuries of a supposed clash of civilizations. The solution to the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is to be found in the righting of the wrongs of the past 60 years, not in invoking the age of the Maccabees or Saladin.


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It is time to put to rest simplistic notions of the clash of civilizations based on a falsified image of a long-vanished past. Our current problems are real enough to merit being understood on their own terms. Scholar: No clash of civilizations - By Firas Al-Atraqchi Born in 1944, Armstrong began her journey to faith as a Roman Catholic nun but left her order in 1969 when she embarked on a doctoral study of Lord Tennyson. She later left academia and, following a brief teaching stint, began researching the life of St Paul for a documentary series. This eventually led to a reexamination of religions and several books on the subject including A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths; Muhammad: a Biography of the Prophet; The Battle for God; and Islam: A Short History. Armstrong is currently teaching Christianity at London's Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism. Her latest publication focuses on the birth of compassion in the pre-Christian Axial Age. Al Jazeera recently caught up with Armstrong in Cairo where she was delivering lectures on religion as part of the American University in Cairo's English public lecture series. Al Jazeera: What is the common denominator linking all the faiths you have studied? Armstrong: I would say compassion and the Golden Rule, ("don't do to others as you would not have done to you") which is what they all teach. I was with the Dalai Lama a couple of months ago and he said all religions teach kindness. He said: "My religion is kindness." Compassion doesn't mean we have to feel warm affection for people - we have to learn to feel with them, to dethrone ourselves from the center of our world and put another there. We have to do that globally to learn other nations, other people, are as important as ourselves. If we don't like people speaking against our culture, bombing or terrorizing us, we shouldn't do it to others. Which direction is Islam taking in the West? Why does there seem to be turmoil for Muslims who have lived for generations in the West? At the moment, Muslims are reeling under the impact of 9-11 and it's very uncertain where they are going. Some have put their heads down and don't want to raise them above the parapet at all while others are horrified by what happened but find their voices are not listened to. Some - as we have seen by our own British bombers - are appalled by the pictures coming out of Guantanamo, Iraq and Abu Ghraib and daily from Palestine. This feeds into an alienation that they feel from their own British culture they were brought up in. Since 9-11, hostility towards Islam has accelerated which is endemic in our society. On the other hand, these images of people being beheaded on TV just reinforce these old stereotypes and make it more difficult for Muslims to feel at home. It is very difficult to know where they are going. But there is no clash of civilizations in an ontological way. At the beginning of the 20th century when Muslims first began to encounter the modern West, they recognized it as congenial to their own traditions. But then bad foreign policy - Palestine, Suez, the support of tyrannical dictatorial rulers, and the rush for oil (which often meant that ethics were overlooked) - has alienated many in the Muslim world and made them feel the West is a double dealer. On the part of Western politicians, there is a failure to see the contradictions in their own policies. You can't be talking about free speech one moment and threatening to bomb Al Jazeera tomorrow. This is not consistent. I was with Desmond Tutu - I am on a United Nations committee called Alliance of Civilizations which tries to


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bring people together - and he was saying how appalled he was that Tony Blair was trying to push through a law allowing detention without trial for 90 days. Tutu recalled when they were fighting apartheid in South Africa the British had always been coming to the government and telling them you can't put people in jail without trial. You can't be democratic or part of the modern world if you practice this sort of thing and yet here they are doing that, never mind Guantanamo Bay where people have been held for a very long time without trial. The race riots in France and Australia, they involved Arab and Muslim youth. Is this a harbinger of things to come? I don't know much about the riots in Australia as I have been traveling, but the French riots had very little to do with Islam and much more to do with deprivation and ostracizing, racism. There's been trouble brewing in France for so long with the immigrant communities which are kept in some type of ghettos. Similarly, with our British bombers, they were kept in a part of Yorkshire, in northern England, that I have never visited. And that is indicative - I wouldn't go there. But there are places where Pakistani youths are at the bottom of the pile. They have very little chance for advancement. There were in 2001 race riots there, before 9- 11. It is race and second classism, a sense that there is no way they can make their way forward in society. Nothing much was done after the 2001 race riots in the UK. And they are now beginning to reap the rewards of that. Disaffected people look at images coming from Guantanamo Bay and Iraq and this ignites something in their soul. We are not talking about a universal Islamic Jihad and it was wrong of the papers to call these Muslim riots; these were just riots about deprivation and discrimination. In your book, Battle for God, you wrote that fundamentalist religious movements claim God as their own. What are the similarities and differences between the various fundamentalist movements? I've concentrated only on the ones in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Most of them began in fear - a fear of annihilation. All groups are convinced that modern secular liberalist society is going to wipe them out. This is true across the board. When they feel that their backs are against a wall, that's when they become aggressive, defensive and worried. A profound hinging on this is a loss of identity - people not knowing where they are and feeling their values have been marginalized and kicked out of the way. This produces a sense of frustration and impotent rage. They have a desire to bring God and all religion back to center stage. This expresses itself in an exaggerated vision of the enemy; all of them have cultivated blown-up versions of the enemy which reflects a great deal of their own sense of menace. In some cultures, this fear and dread is hardening into rage and it was quite clear when I finished this book; some fundamentalism was becoming more extreme and moving into a new phase. Why is Christian Fundamentalism such a powerful force in North America? It has gradually been making its way to the forefront and many in the US feel alienated by the secularist, intellectualist, and sophisticated discourse of New York, Harvard, Yale and Washington, DC. Many people in small town America have for a very long time felt colonized by this ideology, just as colonized as people in Egypt felt by the British or in Syria by the French. There is therefore a struggle. All culture is always contested. Since the 1970s there has been a concerted movement to bring what they call Old Time Christianity back to center stage, back to the position it held before modernity really took root in 20thcentury America. People like George Bush (the US president) - he isn't as stupid as he is often depicted, but he is not a great intellectual - represent many of the values of small town America. He has simplistic views of the Middle East; he's hardly ever stepped foot out of the country [before becoming president]. He's not very typical even though he comes from a very rich family; nevertheless he seems to speak for small town America. They have used the democratic and political process very skillfully to come from a marginalized position and over the years bring themselves back to center stage. It does not have universal support. In the last election, America was split pretty evenly down the middle and there are Americans who abhor this type of discourse. There are people in the Democratic Party who are beginning to create a religious discourse on the left. Jim Wallace is doing that and a rabbi in San Francisco – Rabbi Lerner - has just written a book called The Left Hand of God to reclaim religion. Americans at the moment seem to be more attuned to a religious than secular discourse. Can you tell us about your new book focusing on the Axial Age? I just finished it and it will be out in the UK in March and in the US in April. It is already out in Holland. The Axial Age is the period from 900 to 200 BCE when all the world's religions which have continued to nourish humanity came into being or had their roots. You can consider Christianity and Islam as later flowering of the Axial Age ideals of monotheism. This included the emergence of Confucianism and Taoism in China, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism in India. In Europe, you had the Greeks and philosophical rationalism. It is not just an exercise in spiritual archeology, because I hope the book will give some indications of perhaps


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where we may be going wrong today. It seems to me that in our various institutions we are creating exactly the kind of piety people like the Buddha wanted to get rid of. The essential teachings of the Axial Age were in every case - except for Greece – a rejection of violence. And as a consequence of that the cultivation of compassion and the Golden Rule "don't do to others as you would not have done to you". That seems to be the basis of religion; they weren't interested in metaphysics or doctrine or orthodox theology at all. Some have called you a healer idealist while others point to your description of Islam and say you must be a Muslim. How do you describe yourself? I wouldn't say I am an idealist because I am far too pessimistic to be an idealist. But I have a strong sense of dread, a prickly feeling that we have been here before and we can't go down this road again. I first got it during the Salman Rushdie crisis - a feeling that in Europe we have been here before. We have cultivated a distorted vision of a people for a thousand years and this ended in the death camps in the 1930s. And we can never go down this road again. When I started to hear people talking in this loose-lipped way about Islam, I felt a sense of real fear that somebody, even if it had to be me, had to correct these perceptions. Furthermore, I really admire the Muslim tradition so much. The Prophet Muhammad is the most magnificent example who inherits the most appalling situation - in Arabia at the time there was a bloodbath - and brings peace out of it. And at a great personal cost to himself. And not only that, but he bequeathed to humanity a scripture that has helped millions of human beings to make sense of their lives. To have such a combination of very strong spiritual genius with political genius is extraordinary. So there is that admiration. At the height of Islam's power, Muslim theologians were so pluralistic and daring and affirmative and inspiring; people like Ibn Arabi and Rumi. I was very alienated from religion by my own experiences as a young nun and wanted nothing to do with religion. But it was the study of Islam and Judaism, but Islam particularly, that brought me back to a sense of what religion could be at its best. It gave me an entirely new perspective on things. Even though I am not a Muslim, I have absorbed so much of Islam that it has become a part of me. I used to describe myself as a freelance monotheist because I draw inspiration from all - I cannot see any of them as superior. And that has now spread to Buddhism and all the rest. I see all of them just equal, each with its own genius and with its own flaws. At the moment, I would describe myself as convalescent; recovering from a bad religious experience by the study of these other traditions which continue to inspire me and feed me. So your books, then, can be considered a spiritual quest? Yes, yes certainly. Have you found God? Oh, yes. But that word - God - is not easy to define and once you do define it, what you really have is a projection because, Allahu Akbar, God is Greater than anything we can conceive. I see my study as a form of prayer. When I am working at the library or at my desk, I have moments where I am deeply touched within and lifted momentarily beyond myself. The discipline of trying to put myself out of my post-enlightenment 20th-century rationalism and the feeling of superiority and into the mind of the Prophet and the mystics of long ago teaches me about compassion and to feel with others. And that spills over into my personal life. I get very upset now by unkindness in any form. I have a thinner skin than I used to have. So have I found God? As the Chinese would say: "I am on the way." The Now is the point; what's important is the why you're actually on the way and not to be so concerned by the destination.


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Arabic is the tie that binds - By Zyad Tariq Rasheed

Language binds Arabs together. Design by Basel Almisshal; Courtesy baselonline.co.uk Spoken by roughly 320 million people in 22 countries from Iraq in the north to Somalia in the south, Bahrain in the east to the western shores of Mauritania, the Arabic language is identified as a unifying force for all these nations. The Arabic used today was spoken throughout the Arab peninsula in the fourth century, pre-dating Islam by about 200 years. The Quran was revealed in Arabic and, with the spread of Islam, the language spread rapidly across the Middle East, North Africa and other regions where it is still spoken today. The language spread as far as Senegal, Mali, Chad and the Comoros Islands. In the approximately 1,400 years since the Islamic empire reached Europe and China, the language has gradually transformed. Linguists now divide the language into three main categories: classical or Quranic Arabic, formal standard Arabic, and spoken or colloquial Arabic. Formal Arabic is used as the official language of the Arab world and in the context of non-religious literature. It is closely related to classical Arabic but with slight modifications as per the necessities of a fast-changing world where international trade plays a role. Colloquial Arabic, on the other hand, is a slang form spoken by the majority of people as their daily dialect. Colloquial Arabic differs from area to area due to geographical differences and the impact of the language of colonial powers including Turkish, Persian, English, French, Spanish and Italian. Modern standard Arabic (MSA) is written and spoken throughout the contemporary Arab world and known also as fusha. Today, MSA is taught in schools and used for most printed materials, TV news reporting, interviews, sermons and other formal events. In sociolinguistic terms, Arabic occurs in a diglossic situation, meaning that native speakers learn and use two substantially different forms (classical and formal on the one hand, and colloquial on the other) in different aspects of their lives. Origins of Arabic Some Arabic words in English: Admiral amir al bihar (captain of the seas) Alcohol al kohol (spirits) Arsenal dar al sina'a (factory) Coffee qahwa Elixir al iksir (potion) Ghoul al ghoul Magazine al makhzan (storehouse) Tariff ta'rifa (notification)

Arabic is rooted in Semitic speech, which linguists agree is derived from the language spoken by Saam (the Hebrew Shem, son of Noah, according to the Bible), and as such is one of the oldest known linguistic groups


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in the world. Akkadian, the language of the Babylonians, is the forerunner of Arabic and was first attested in cuneiform writing on clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia in 3,500BC. Other Semitic languages which developed in unison with Akkadian were Phoenician - and its descendant Punic (the language of Carthage), the classical form of Hebrew, Ammonite and Moabite, and early dialects of Aramaic, the language believed to have been spoken by Jesus. Modern Semitic languages include Arabic, Amharic (the official language of Ethiopia), Hebrew, Tigrinya (the official language of Eritrea), and Aramaic (the language of the Jewish Talmud) which is spoken by a few thousand people in northern Israel and southern Syria today. Aramaic was given special prominence by Mel Gibson, the actor and director of The Passion of the Christ, in 2004 when he shot the film in classical Aramaic. All of the Semitic languages have evolved over the past 3,000 years, but classical Arabic has remained mostly intact because of its prominence in the Quran, which has not been changed. Modern Arabic, on the other hand, is flexible; it borrows from other languages and subjects those loan words to its own morphophonemic rules and grammar. Linguistic threats But in the past several years, the increased use of satellite reception in the Middle East has allowed the infiltration of European and North American catchphrases and terms which ultimately intermingled with colloquial Arabic. The challenges of globalization and western cultural influences on the new generation of Arab youth now threaten to morph the language into a form removed from the original. The heavy reliance on foreign languages including English and French in the Arab world, keep a number of learners away from the language of their ancestors. Scholars say this directly threatens the cultural and linguistic unity of the Arab nation; language is seen as the essence of Arab national pride. Hoping to preserve the language, several countries, such as the United Arab Emirates (where English is widely spoken and taught) and Morocco (where French prevails) have established cultural centers and institutions dedicated to keeping Arabic's literary wealth alive.


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II. Battle of thoughts, Pan-Arabism


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Revolution Calling

As millions of European soldiers were facing off each other in the doomed trenches of Verdun and the Somme during World War I, a fierce guerrilla war was raging in the dunes of Arabia. Thomas Edward Lawrence, a British army captain and archaeology enthusiast, led a ragtag force of several Arab tribes against the military might of the Ottoman Empire. And won. Called the "First Great Arab revolt", this victorious uprising against nearly 400 years of Ottoman rule inspired the formation of the Arab National Council, a gathering of once warring tribes. Lawrence's influence in bringing these tribes together inspired Sherrif Hussein ibn Ali, the governor of the Hejaz region of Arabia, to seek a unified Arab state. But the British and French victors of the war had other plans. They formulated the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement which carved up the Middle East between themselves. Betrayal The Arabs felt betrayed. Promises made to them by various British generals – and Lawrence – failed to materialize. That feeling of betrayal seeped into the collective Arab consciousness and as Fawwaz Traboulsi, a political analyst, explains, 'Arabism' emerged as a result of that betrayal by the West. "[Arabs] had to put their demands concerning independence and unity in a language which met the dominant nationalism in Europe. So, Arab Nationalism is a vehicle of Arab demands for independence and unity addressed to Europe." By 1919, when Egyptians clashed with the British troops in Cairo and Alexandria, the die had been cast. The persecution and exile of the Egyptian nationalist Saad Zaghlul - and his return to power – signaled a new paradigm in Arab-West relations. The age of revolution had begun. Nationalism During the 1920s and 1930s, three major nationalist movements took form. Pan-Arabism dismissed existing sovereign states as artificial colonial creations while local nationalism insisted on preserving the independence and sovereignty of individual Arab countries. Then there were those who sought some form of regional unity, such as a Greater Syria or the North African union, either permanently or as a step toward a broader Arab unity. In 1919, Zaghlul's famous cry "Egypt for the Egyptians" set the ball rolling for regional nationalism. Zaghlul believed that Egypt and the Nile Valley, including the Sudan, were one entity. In Lebanon, Antoun Saadeh carried the mantle of regional nationalism, proposing the creation of a Greater Syria and establishing the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) with this aim. Rejecting the notion,


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dominant in pan-Arabism, that language was a defining characteristic of a nation, Saadeh argued that geography, history and culture made Greater Syria a naturally unified bloc. 'Awakening Arab consciousness' Around the same time a group of Syrian intellectuals proposed that differences among Arabs were, in fact, "accidental and unimportant" and that they would all "disappear with the awakening of Arab consciousness". Like Saadeh, Michel Afleq and Salah Bitar, the founders of the Baath party, wanted to rid the region of foreign domination but, in contrast to Saadehh's regional nationalism, their party promoted the idea of the "common destiny" of all Arabs. Baathism took off after 1948, when a lack of Arab unity was held responsible for the loss of Palestine and the defeat of Arab forces at the hands of the new state of Israel. During the later half of the 20th century the party played a critical role across the region but the nationalist ideals of its founders was rarely reflected in their implementation.


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Socialism Founding an Arab brotherhood - By Julian Madsen Michel Aflaq (right) is regarded as one of the pioneers and intellectual forefathers of the Arab nationalist movement. Considered the Christian 'father of pan- Arabism' by some Arab historians, Aflaq was born in Ottoman-occupied Syria in 1910. The son of a middle class Greek Orthodox family, Aflaq studied in Damascus and attended the Sorbonne in Paris, before returning home as a school master in 1934. There, Aflaq began promoting Arab independence from French colonial rule in the classroom. With Salah al-Din al- Bittar (left), a Sunni Muslim, whom Aflaq met while studying in Paris, he created the political movement which would later come to dominate Syria and Iraq - the Arab Socialist Baath (Resurrection) Party. In 1942, Aflaq abandoned his teaching career, and devoted himself fully to the cause of Arab independence. "One Arab nation with an eternal message," was the catchphrase he launched, seeing nationalism and unity as the Arabs' only answer to problems of foreign domination, underdevelopment and religious strife. Unity, freedom, socialism Yet the movement had to wait a number of years until it became a formal political party. April 1947 marked the date of the inaugural congress of the Baath party in Damascus, with Aflaq serving on the party's executive committee. By then, the party had begun publishing its own newspaper (al-Baath) with Aflaq serving as a principal ideologue, spelling out the party's platform in its pages. Launching the party's slogan as 'Unity, Freedom, Socialism', Aflaq's central philosophy was the quest for freedom, not just as emancipation from political tyranny and oppressive poverty, but the liberation of the Arab people, unified in mind and spirit, and joined together in brotherhood "The frontiers of every Arab region are the frontiers of the whole Arab nation", he wrote. "Its boundaries are the boundaries of the entire Arab homeland, the boundaries of the whole Arab existence." Aflaq called for a struggle against foreign influences, and stressed that the Baath message was the eternal message of the Arab nation, no different in its values and divine inspiration than that of Islam. He did not seek to take Islam out of Arabism; he sought to make Arabism the central tenet of Islam, praising the revolutionary aspect of Islam. Political failures He twice failed to win a seat in parliament, but was brefly a minister of education in 1949 before he was ousted. He was in and out of jail in the early 1950s as the party struggled for influence in Syria and was the main architect of Syria's disastrous union with Egypt in 1958; the first and only example of Arab unity in modern times ended acrimoniously three years later. Once the union dissolved, Baathist army officers, who had maintained their military organisation in defiance of a dissolution order, were quick to seize the Syrian party apparatus and remove Aflaq and his civilian colleagues. Exile Factional fighting within the party saw Aflaq flee Syria in 1966, first for Beirut before moving to Baghdad in 1968. Although, this was not the first time Aflaq had fled to exile - he had done so briefly in 1953, in 1959, and in 1964 - this was to be his last. In 1971, Aflaq was sentenced to death in absentia in Syria. With the Baath party now in power in Iraq, Aflaq was appointed secretary-general of its branch. Despite this appointment, he was to spend the rest of his days in virtual isolation in Baghdad, rarely appearing in public.


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The sensitive and austere Aflaq, considered by many a talented intellectual was to play no further part in political life. Convert to Islam Upon his death in June 1989, Aflaq was given a state funeral in Iraq and an official Muslim burial. It was then announced that the Syrian-born Christian had converted to Islam some years ago but decided to keep it a secret during his lifetime to prevent it being misinterpreted among his followers. Nevertheless, he died a bitter man; the party he founded was divided by arch enemies Syria and Iraq, and his dream of Arab unity was even more distant than it appeared when he started preaching it 50 years earlier. Although it is almost 20 years since his death, Aflaq left behind a significant intellectual legacy that remains part of Arab political life today. The Arab Baath Socialist Party - By Ahmed Janabi

In the past 50 years, three Arab leaders attempted to unite their country into a single state Angered by the French mandate that allowed Turkey to annex his home city in Syria, Zaki al Arsuzi left Antioch for Damascus in the late 1930s. Once there he started to actively promote his ideals of pan-Arabism as the only way for Arabs to rid themselves of foreign colonialism. His ideas found favor within Damascus's active political scene, in particular with Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, who led a small study group called the Movement of Arab Revival. After the French withdrew from Syria, Aflaq, al-Arsuzi and al-Bitar managed to get their newlyformed Baath (Renaissance) organization officially licensed as a party. The party's constitution was adopted at its first congress on April 7, 1947 and upheld the belief that unity was a means to revive the Arab world's erstwhile glory and bring an end to foreign colonialism and Arab aristocracy. Merging of ideals In 1953, the volatile Syrian political scene drove the Baath Party to merge with the Syrian Socialist Party of Akram al-Hurani, acquiring a new name - the Arab Socialist Baath party. Driven by a passion to form one


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greater Arab nation, the party - led by Aflaq - played a major role in helping Syria and Egypt amalgamate into a United Arab Republic (UAR) in 1958 with Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser as the president of the newly established state. The Baath party hoped that the pan-Arabist Nasser would give it the upper hand in Syria's politics, but the Egyptian leader did not favour the Baathists. Iraq's wing of Baath Party assumed power on February 8, 1963 in a coup led by general Abd al-Salam Aref. One month later Syrian Baathists managed to depose the secessionist government of Nadhim al-Qudsi and assume power. Iraq-Syria feud But almost immediately, the two branches differed over the application of nearly identical ideologies, bewildering many observers who had hoped for a final pan-Arab framework. In 1963, Aref dissolved the Baath Party. However the party recaptured power in a 1968 coup led by general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and Saddam Hussein. In Syria, a coup led by the Baathist Air Force commander, Hafez al-Assad brought the party to power in 1970. In 1979, both countries attempted to unite and subsequently revive the UAR model of 1958. The attempt failed with both accusing each other that it tried to use the initiative for espionage. A complete falling out between Iraq and Syria followed. The much-vaunted slogans of the Baathists which voiced the need for unity and common interests never crystallized, leaving some disillusioned that yet another Arab nationalist initiative had crumbled. Tension between Iraq and Syria seemed to never end and at several points during the 1970s and 80s both countries came dangerously close to war. De-Baathification While the Baath Party retains national branches in many Arab countries, it has never been able to assume the level of power seen in Iraq and Syria. The Baath party is still the sole ruling party in Syria, but in Iraq, the Baathists were purged from power in 2003 when the US-led invasion deposed the government led by Saddam Hussein and dissolved the party. A De-Baathification committee was established to uproot party members in Iraq and prohibit Baathists from assuming roles in the new government and army. The law under which the committee operated for four years was relaxed in early 2008. The Baathists in both countries are credited with initiating a surge in the economy, education and health care services, but critics say Iraq and Syria both clamped down on freedom of speech and ruled out any political power-sharing framework. In Iraq, the Baathists under Saddam were blamed for violating their commitments to defend Arab land by quietly abiding by the invasion of another country – Kuwait. In Syria, critics say the Baathist government of Hafez al-Assad failed to uphold the Arab ideals by siding with non Arab Iran during the 1980-1988 war with Iraq. The Iraqi Baath Party Shortly after the defeat of the Arab forces in Palestine in 1948, three young Syrian men arrived in Baghdad, to continue their studies. The three men, Fayiz Ismail, Wasfi al-Ghanim and Sulayman al-Eisa - returned to Syria and joined political scientist Zaki al-Arsoozi, who was intent on founding al-Baath (renaissance) party. Al-Arsoozi's desire was to restore Arab pride. The men joined the party and pledged to carry the Baathist name back to Baghdad. Upon their return to Baghdad in 1949, they established the Iraqi Baath Party. The party membership grew steadily from just 50 members in 1951 until they gained recognition by the Baath National Leadership in Damascus. Party organization and structure From its earliest days, the Iraqi Baath Party relied upon and recruited college and high school students, as well as intellectuals and professionals. Most recruits were of urban Iraqi Arab origins.


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Military officers, who joined Baath membership in the early 1950s, included Ahmad Hassan al Bakir, Saleh Mahdi Ammash and Abd Allah Sultan, all of whom assumed prominent responsibilities in Iraqi political affairs in later years. The party cell or circle was composed of three to seven members. It constituted the basic organizational unit of the party. Cells functioned at the neighborhoods or village level, where members would meet to discuss and execute party directives. A party division comprised of two to seven cells. They were spread throughout the bureaucracy and the military where they functioned as the party’s watchdog. A party section, which comprised of two to five divisions, functioned at the level of a large city quarter, a town, or a rural district. The branch came at the top of the section, and was composed of at least two sections which operated at the provincial level. The party congress, which combined all the branches, was responsible for electing the regional command as the core of the party leadership and top decision-making mechanism. The national command of the Baath Party ranked on top of the regional command. It was the highest policy-making and coordinating council for the Baath movement throughout the Arab world at large. Baath ideology The party promoted its ideology of pan-Arab secular nationalism with socialist leanings. In early 1988, the Baath Party began calling for parallelism between regional (qutri) and national (qawmi) goals. Territorially and politically divided Arab countries were merely regions of a collective entity - The Arab Nation, according to party rationale. The Baath movement in one country was considered merely an aspect of, or a phase leading to, "a unified democratic socialist Arab nation". The crucial test of legitimacy for any Baath government would be whether or not their policies and actions were compatible with the basic aims of the revolution. The Baath party embraced the principles of "unity, freedom, and socialism". Although the party's efforts to create a unified Arab nation faced many problems, it did not abandon its goal of Arab unity. But Arab unity was to become a long-term ideal rather than a short term objective. By 1982, Baathists advocated that "Arab unity must not take place through the elimination of local and national characteristics of any Arab country but must be achieved through common fraternal objectives". In practice, this meant that the Iraqi Baath Party had accepted unity of purpose among Arab leaders, rather than unification of Arab countries. Baath political objectives and role The Baath Party remained underground during the 1950s. Members had little choice, since their call for the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy and Syrian government meant they were liable to be arrested. Baath joined other opposition parties to form the United National Front and participated in the activities that led to the 1958 revolution ending the British control of Iraq. But the new republican government did not favor pan-Arab causes or other Baath principles. Some younger party members, including a young Saddam Hussein, became convinced that Iraqi leader Abd al-Karim Qasim had to be ousted. In addition, the United States became concerned at Qasim's ties to the Soviet Union. The US Central Intelligence Agency is believed to have backed the plot to assassinate him. But the attempt on Qasim's life in October 1959 failed. Saddam, one of the assassins, fled Iraq while other party members were arrested and tried for treason. The party was again forced underground, and internal dissensions over which tactics to use to achieve their political objectives rose among its members. The second attempt to overthrow Qasim in February 1963 was successful, and brought the Baathists to power for the first time. But the Baathists, driven by factions and outmaneuvered by political rivals, were forced out of government within nine months. It was not until 1965 that the Baath overcame its ideological and personal rivalries. The party then reorganized under the direction of General al-Baqir as secretary general with Saddam Hussein as his deputy. Both men were determined to return the Baath to power. In July 1968, the Baath finally staged a successful coup, and al-Baqir became first Baathist president of Iraq. New values and principles The government's primary concern since 1968 had been domestic issues rather than pan-Arab concerns. The Baath attempted to create a strong and unified Iraq, using political campaigns to eradicate what it called "harmful pre-revolutionary values and practices". The party concentrated on fighting exploitation, social inequality, sectarian loyalties, apathy, and lack of civil spirit.


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Official statements called for the abandonment of traditional ways in favour of a new lifestyle based on the principles of patriotism, national loyalty, collectivism, participation, selflessness, love of labor and civic responsibility. Those principles were the major goals adopted by the party since 1968. By the late 1980s, the party had succeeded in socializing significant economic sectors including agriculture, commerce, industry and oil. But government investment in the industry sector remained in government hands. Large-scale industries such as iron, steel, and petrochemicals were fully owned and managed by the government. Power wielding under Saddam The Iraqi Baath Regional Command Council (RCC) was supposed to be the body which makes decisions regarding party policy based on consensus. In practice, however, all decisions were made by the party Secretary General Saddam Hussein, who since 1979, was party RCC chairman and president of the republic. Saddam ruthlessly dealt with suspected opponents of his rule from within the party. In one display of his brutality, Saddam stood in front of an audience of party members where he named several high-ranking Baathists who were quickly ushered out of the auditorium and executed for allegedly planning a coup. The infamous speech was videotaped and used to strike fear in anyone who dared consider challenging Saddam's authority. If party members were not executed, they were forced into retirement. Following the US British occupation of Iraq, the Baath party was dissolved along with its affiliate organizations. Iraq's bloody political history

US involvement in Iraq has echoed the turmoil of earlier Western entanglements in the country When George Bush, the US president, ordered troops to invade and occupy Iraq, many analysts hoped he had at least reviewed the history of previous western entanglements in the oil-rich, yet troubled Arab country. The UK, America's strongest ally in Iraq, had previously occupied the country on two different occasions.


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British mandate Under their mandate, the British designed a paradigm of Iraqi political life at the Cairo Conference of 1921, which had been established to carve up the territories formerly ruled by the Ottoman Empire. These laws, institutions, and political limitations would remain in effect, and make Iraq a British proxy in the Middle East, until the revolution of 1958. The British installed King Faisal, a Hashemite ruler, as monarch of Iraq, after efforts to install him as the ruler of Syria were rejected by the local populace and the French mandate in Damascus. But the British would struggle to impose King Faisal as Iraq's ruler on the Iraqis, who despite their divisions as Kurd, Turkeman, Shia, Sunni, Christian, and Jew, were fiercely independent and nationalistic. Nevertheless, the British moved to secure Faisal as the new King of Iraq, seeing in him a Muslim who traced his lineage to the Prophet Muhammad, was an Arab nationalist, and yet was so insecure in his role as a foreigner in Iraq that he would need to heavily rely on the British as advisors, allies, and mentors. This insecurity led to the signing of the Anglo-Iraqi pact, which effectively ensured that British advisors would be used in the highest level of governance, in particular overseeing economic, financial and military issues. The British moved quickly to remove any dissent by establishing a one-question plebiscite for the Iraqi people: "Do you agree to Faisal as king and leader of Iraq?" Not surprisingly, the result was an astounding 96 per cent. The British were now satisfied that Iraq was secure. First Arab coup King Faisal was born in Taif, Saudi Arabia. He had proclaimed himself King of Syria, but was quickly removed by the French, who by 1920, were in charge of the Levant (Syria and Lebanon). Nationalistic aspirations and tribal divisions came to the fore when Faisal died in 1933 and was succeeded by his son Ghazi I. Ghazi, mentored in the West, was inexperienced in the ways of the Iraqis, especially when it came to tribal political power and loyalties. In the eyes of nationalist Iraqis, Ghazi was seen as little more than a puppet of the British, brought into their midst to control Iraq. This boiled over into the first coup d'etat of the Arab world in 1936: General Bakr Sidqi, the leader of the Iraqi army, launched a military coup against the government and proceeded to implement non-Arab policies geared towards satisfying Turkey and Iran. Sidqi lacked political vision and experience. His policies led to chaos, murder and a breakdown in security throughout Iraq, a situation similar to Iraq after the 2003 US led invasion. His policies contributed to his assassination in 1937. A car crash ended Ghazi's life in 1939 after he had begun courting Iraqi nationalists and had called for the invasion of Kuwait to return it to Iraqi sovereignty. Iraqis saw Ghazi's passionate call as a pan-Arab nationalistic movement to unite Arabia. The mysterious circumstances surrounding his death, crashing headfirst into a lamppost, were said by some to be a British plot. Ghazi's son, Faisal II, ascended to the throne. "But real power was wielded by Britain's man in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri as- Said. The US and Britain forced Iraq to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact and sell its oil at give-away prices to the West," wrote historian and author Eric Margolis in his book Iraq's History is Written in Blood. The 1936 and 1939 Arab revolts in Palestine gave rise to pan-Arabism as a powerful new ideology. Pan-Arabism quickly found favour in Iraq, where the British role in repressing Arab Palestinians while the migration of Jews into the region steadily increased stoked the fires of Iraqi nationalism. World War II gave these nationalists new power. In 1940, Rashid Aali Al Gelani succeeded Nouri as-Said as prime minister and quickly moved to restrict British movement in Iraq. The British, sensing a threat to their influence, pushed Nouri to initiate a silent coup against Gelani. For his part, Gelani, who was widely popular with the military and Iraqi civilians, ousted as-Said, who fled to Transjordan (now known as Jordan). Resistance The British invaded Iraq and were greeted with fierce resistance from the people who now believed the British were beginning a second phase in the occupation of Iraq. British Royal Air Force (RAF) strafed Iraqi military and civilians alike (a 1917-1920 rebellion by Iraqi tribes was quelled by the RAF who used poison gas to kill thousands of Iraqis) and marched towards Baghdad. Gelani and his staff fled to Iran. The monarchy was put back in control of Iraq under Faisal II. Some Iraqis now secretly talked of revolt and it appeared they were completely disenfranchised from a monarchy they considered foreign and treacherous. It was perceived that Iraq's oil wealth was being siphoned off for use by the British for the war effort against the Nazi-led Axis powers, and the country's development was in decline.


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The 1947 UN partition of Palestine enraged pan-Arab Iraqis. Faisal II, now King of Iraq, dispatched a poorly equipped and badly funded Iraqi army to fight the new Israelis. The army was not defeated on the battleground but a lack of political will to take Tel Aviv disgruntled Iraqis back home who blamed as-Said for deliberately withholding funds from the military. Iraqis believed it was a British plot to weaken Iraq and keep it under Churchill's grasp. As-Said was seen as the agent of this British plot. Between 1950 and 1955, as-Said called for greater unity between Britain and Iraq and openly supported a US-influenced coalition to face off the Soviet threat of Communism. In 1952, Gamal Abdel Nasser led a military coup that ended Egypt's Britishinfluenced monarchy. This helped tip the balance in favour of revolutionaries and pan-Arabists throughout the Arab World. The growth of Nasser's popularity threatened the Jordanian monarchy, which moved quickly to call for a federation between Jordan and Iraq. This was too much for Iraqis to bear. Such was the hatred for British involvement in Iraq and for its puppet monarch that a 1958 revolution, led by General Abdul Karim Qassim, ushered in a bloody new chapter in the country. As the monarchy was deposed and abolished, chaos ensued; thousands were killed and hung from lampposts as a sign and lesson for future generations.


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Nationalism Rising nationalism

The Arabs sought ways to free themselves of foreign rule and create a united nation During the 1920s and 1930s, three major nationalist movements took form. Pan-Arabism dismissed existing sovereign states as artificial colonial creations while local nationalism insisted on preserving the independence and sovereignty of individual Arab countries. Then there were those who sought some form of regional unity, such as a Greater Syria or the North African union, either permanently or as a step toward a broader Arab unity. In 1919, Saad Zaghlul's famous cry "Egypt for the Egyptians" introduced the concept of regional nationalism. Zaghlul believed that Egypt and the Nile Valley, including the Sudan, were one entity. In Lebanon, Antoun Saadeh carried the mantle of regional nationalism, proposing the creation of a Greater Syria and establishing the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) with this aim. Rejecting the notion, dominant in pan-Arabism, that language was a defining characteristic of a nation; Saadeh argued that geography, history and culture made Greater Syria a naturally unified bloc. Islam is the key But a school teacher in Egypt believed there was another path to unifying the region. Hassan Al-Banna turned to the Quran, Islam's holy book, and the sunnah – teachings of the Prophet Muhammad - for inspiration and guidance to chart the course of unification. He urged that the Arabs take up the banner of Islam, rather than embrace secularism, to rid the region of foreign occupation. Al-Banna said the Quran and sunnah "will lead the Islamic states, reunite the scattered Muslims, restore their glory, and retrieve for them their lost lands and stolen homelands."


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Fathering Egyptian nationalism - By Dina Abdel-Mageed in Cairo

Saad Zaghlul is considered the father of the modern Republic of Egypt For more than 400 years, all Arabs – except for parts of Arabia and Morocco – were under Ottoman rule. But the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire after 1918 resulted in Arabs falling prey to identity conflicts and foreign domination, and prepared the stage for a surge of nationalistic feelings in the region. Nations which had struggled under Ottoman occupation now found themselves occupied by the victors of World War I – Britain and France. Contrary to traditional Islamic thought, nationalism - often called the religion of the modern world - divided what was considered a Muslim ummah (nation) into political entities based on shared characteristics, such as language and culture. Thus, nationalism was seen as a new, imported idea. It was in this context, marked by chaos and confusion, that Saad Zaghlul, a liberal reformist and later father of Egyptian nationalism stepped in, putting into action his modernist, liberal vision of an independent nation free from the yoke of British occupation. Liberate Egypt Zaghlul, who had studied Islamic law at Al-Azhar University, began his career as a public official when he was appointed the minister of education between 1906 and 1908 and the minister of justice between 1910 and 1912. In 1913 he became vice-president of the Legislative Assembly. It was during his tenure in government that he came to believe that independence could be achieved through legal and educational reform, an idea influenced by Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi and Sati al-Husi, two Arab nationalists who dominated regional politics in the 19th century. Walid Kazziha, a professor of political science at the American University of Cairo, says Zaghlul was able to build on the principles established by other nationalists in the region. "The foundations of nationalism in Egypt were originally based by Mustafa Kamel [a nationalist lawyer who called for British troops to leave], but Saad Zaghlul gave the nationalist movement a wider social dimension by engaging the urban masses," Kazziha said. But Mounir Fakhry, a senior member of the Wafd Party which was founded by Zaghlul in 1919, says there are significant ideological differences between Kamel and Zaghlul. "While Saad Zaghlul belonged to Lutfi al-Sayyed's school of thought, which advocated the slogan 'Egypt for Egyptians', Mustafa Kamel fought for Egypt's independence within the framework of the Ottoman Caliphate. "For Kamel, nationalism was merely about ending the British occupation, not establishing an Egyptian nation-state."


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The Wafd As World War I came to an end, Zaghlul increasingly began to call for Egyptian independence from Britain. He believed that the best opportunity to present Egypt's case would come at the Paris Peace Conference of January 1919 in which the victors of the war were to negotiate peace treaties with the defeated powers. Zaghlul formed a delegation – the Arabic term, al-wafd – to head to Paris, but the British authorities in Egypt arrested and exiled him to Malta. If the British had hoped to extinguish the flames of nationalism, his arrest came as a bitter disappointment to them. Of the people The exile of Zaghlul - "the uncrowned king of the peasants" as described by the Austrian journalist Wolfgang Michel - unleashed fierce Egyptian anti-British sentiment, resulting in huge demonstrations and riots in what came to be known as the 1919 Revolution. The British had failed to factor in Zaghlul's popularity with ordinary Egyptians. Raised in a rural environment, Zaghlul was gifted at communicating with ordinary Egyptians. He combined anti British sentiment with the concept of the nation to form a nationalist movement. Kazziha said: "The nationalist movements had until then consisted mainly of army officers … it consisted of lawyers and Effendis. Zaghlul, however, managed to transform it into a popular movement, in which the Egyptian peasantry participated heavily." Zaghlul also stressed Muslim-Christian unity, an idea that would heavily influence other Arab nationalist movements. "Zaghlul managed to break class boundaries, turning the nationalist movement into a comprehensive, popular movement that combined all religious and social groups ... he strengthened Muslim-Coptic Christian ties," Kazziha said. In his 3000-page-autobiography, which he wrote shortly before his death, Zaghlul spoke at length of his relationship with the ordinary Egyptian people: "The British and the legal authority represented by the Khedive failed me. But, the simple, ordinary Egyptian people are the ones who supported me." Victory from defeat Released after 800 Egyptian deaths in riots protesting his arrest, Zaghlul and the Wafd reached Paris and were disappointed that their calls for independence fell on deaf ears. The British kept up the pressure and re-arrested and exiled Zaghlul to the Seychelles in 1921. But Egyptian nationalism had become a formidable force. He was released a year later and by 1923, Britain ended its protectorate hold on Egypt. In 1924, Zaghlul became the first popularly elected prime minister of Egypt. Though Britain would wield considerable influence with the Egyptian monarchy until 1952, the fires of nationalism in Egypt spread quickly throughout the region. Exporting revolution "Zaghlul merely gave an impetus and inspiration to the other nationalist movements inside the Arab world and even outside it," the Wafd party's Fakhry told Al Jazeera. In 1920, Iraq witnessed a localized rebellion against the British, and in 1925, there was a nationalist revolt against the French in Syria. Kazziha described the 1920s as an age of revolts in the region, but said there was no clear connection between all of them. He said: "There was no cause-effect relationship, but there was some sort of sympathy between Arab uprisings." In 1928, the National Bloc, which was in line with the Wafd party, was founded in Syria by Hashem al-Attasi and Jamil Mardam Bey. In Lebanon, Riyadh Al-Sulh and Bishara Al-Khuri followed suit and led their country to independence. The Iraqi movement of the Nationalist Brothers was also part of the nationalist wave. In 1933, the Neo-Dostour party, which raised the flag of nationalism, was established in Tunisia under the leadership of Habib Bourguiba. By the early 1940s, Morocco and Algeria witnessed the rise of nationalist movements. Rise of Arabism Historians today are divided on whether Zaghlul was an Arabist and therefore fuelled pan-Arab movements or just an Egyptian nationalist who avoided a larger, more regional view. Kazziha says that Zaghlul and his


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supporters in the Wafd were cautious and did not want to be seen as regional troublemakers. They believed a regional nationalistic movement could hurt their efforts to end the British occupation of Egypt. Michael Reimer, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the American University of Cairo, argues that Arabism did not become a significant movement in Egypt until the 1940s. "One evidence of this is the fact that when the 'Great Arab Revolt' took place during the First World War, under the leadership of the Hashemites in the Hijaz, many, perhaps most, Egyptians looked askance at it," he told Al-Jazeera. But Reimer believes Zaghlul contributed indirectly to the rise of Arabism in Egypt by insisting as education minister on making Arabic the language of instruction in the public primary schools, against the wishes of the British. Unfinished revolution Zaghlul's death in 1927 was received with overwhelming public grief, a spectacle that would not be repeated until the death of another "leader of the masses" in 1970. The death of Zaghlul, who was described by TIME magazine in 1927 as the "very symbol of modern Egypt," did not close the floodgates that he had opened. Though his main focus was Egypt, Zaghlul sowed the seeds of nationalism that continued to grow inside and outside Egypt even after his death. Some historians, according to Kazziha, have called the 1919 Revolution the "unfinished revolution" because it failed at ending the British occupation; they believe it was completed by the 1952 Revolution, which succeeded in ousting the British and bringing about social, economic and political changes. A British diplomat in Cairo in the early 20th century once described Zaghlul as a gambling man who enjoyed good food and laughed at bad jokes. "He is in some ways the first really representative Egyptian and one racy of the soil. Whether he thunders like a minor prophet or chaffs in dialect like a man of the people, he speaks a language that every Egyptian can understand." Dreaming of Greater Syria - By Abdul-Ilah Saadi "I was only a child when the Great War broke out in 1914, but I had already begun to perceive and comprehend. The first thing that suddenly occurred to me, having witnessed, felt and actually experienced the affliction of my people, was this question: What was it that brought all this woe to my people?" So wrote Antoun Saadeh, one of the Arab World's most prolific nationalists, from prison in 1935. Born in 1904 in Mount Lebanon, Saadeh's political philosophy was shaped by the climate in which it developed. War, plagues, famine When World War I broke out in 1914, Lebanon's Ottoman rulers imposed compulsory military service with an extortionate exemption tax that led many into the path of usurers. Jamal Pasha, the Ottoman envoy who was sometimes referred to as the 'Butcher', publicly executed independence activists between 1914 and 1916, while by the end of the war, famine - caused in large part by Ottoman commandeering of food supplies - had killed an estimated 100,000 people in Beirut and Mount Lebanon. Plagues and an invasion of locusts aggravated the situation as dead - and sometimes barely alive - bodies were piled in the streets for the municipality to cart away. With the Ottoman defeat in 1918, the Arabs saw their lands divided into French and British 'zones of influence' in accordance with the Sykes-Picot accords of 1916. Lebanon became a French mandate and in September 1920, the frontiers of modern-day Lebanon were re-drawn. Against this backdrop, Saadeh completed his education and left Lebanon, first for the US, and a year later in 1921, for Brazil, where he joined his father, Khalil Saadeh, a respected Arabiclanguage journalist.


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Greater Syria Saadeh's political views continued to take form, his concerns revolving around the "chronic political problem that seems to drive my people from one adversity into another, constantly delivering it from a lesser evil to make it an easy pray to a greater one". He argued for the creation of a united Syrian nation in the lands that formed historic or Greater Syria - Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Cyprus. In such a bold proposal, he deviated from traditional Arabists and Lebanese nationalists. He later included Iraq in this desired Syrian nation. Geography - not language, ethnicity or religion - was the defining characteristic of a nation, according to Saadeh. He maintained that Syria was historically, culturally and geographically distinct from the rest of the Arab world. Social Nationalism After a brief spell in Damascus, he returned to Beirut in 1932, taking a position at the American University of Beirut. In the same year, he founded the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). As well as proposing the formation of a Greater Syria, the SSNP also posited the complete separation of religion and politics as a fundamental condition for real national unity. Historian Kamal Salibi suggests that for the Greek Orthodox community, of which Saadeh was a member, "the concept of pan-Syrianism was more meaningful than the concept of Arabism". For the first three years of its existence the party operated underground, and when it eventually began overt activity in 1935, Saadeh was repeatedly harassed and imprisoned. In 1938 he fled to Brazil and then to Argentina. Revolution and execution Saadeh returned to Lebanon in 1947, after the country's independence from France. In 1949, after the cancellation of legislative elections, the SSNP attempted a coup d'etat. The revolt failed and Saadeh fled to Syria to meet Husni el-Zaim, the Syrian military dictator who had previously agreed to support him, but el-Zaim handed him over to the Lebanese authorities. Within 48 hours of being captured, Saadeh and many of his followers were tried by a military court and executed. Saadeh's ideas and the party he founded would go on to play an influential role – sometimes revolutionary but predominantly ideological - in the turbulent politics of Lebanon and Syria throughout the course of the 20th century.


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Profile: King Abdullah I of Jordan Born to the Hashemite as- Sayyid Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif Hussein of Mecca and close ally to the British, as-Sayyid Abdullah I bin al-Hussein, king of Tansjordan, ruled as a moderate with a pro-Western outlook, which many say was the cause of his assassination. Abdullah became ruler of the Transjordan territory in 1921 after a British mandate was set, and in 1946, Transjordan received independence and Abdullah became King Abdullah I of Jordan. Before acquiring ruler ship of the Transjordan territory from the British, Abdullah and his forces planed to liberate Syria and dislodge the French from Damascus. Abdulla was a member of the Hashemite dynasty, a descendant of the tribe of the Prophet Muhammad. He is also frequently called King Abdullah the Founder, since he was the founder of Jordan. Abdullah had five children: Prince Talal, Prince Nayef, Princess Haya, Princess Munera and Princess Maqbouleh. Abdullah was assassinated at the foot of the stairs of the al-Aqsa Mosque, near the tomb of his father, Sharif Hussein.

Did Rise to power When Abdullah was notified of the French forces capturing Damascus at the battle of Maysloun and that his brother Faysal, who was crowned king in 1918, had been expelled, Abdullah moved his forces from Hejaz into Syria. When Winston Churchill heard of Abdullah's plans, he invited him to the infamous "tea party" and asked Abdullah not to attack the French, who were Britain's allies. Abdullah was convinced to back down, and was rewarded when the British created a protectorate for him, which later became a state, Transjordan. Moderate ruler While Abdullah was considered a moderate leader, he and his beliefs were seen as a threat among other Arab leaders in the area. Abdullah dreamed of a Greater Syria comprising the borders of what was then Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and the British mandate for Palestine under a Hashemite dynasty with "a throne in Damascus". Because of this dream, he was the only Arab leader to accept the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. Many Arab countries distrusted Abdullah and saw this wish as a threat to the independence of their own countries. They also believed him to be friendly with the idea of the creation of a Jewish state. With these accusations, Abdullah in return distrusted his fellow Arab leaders. Abdullah was a moderate in the eyes of the West, even standing for peace with Israel, and would have signed a peace agreement with the Jewish state, were it not for the Arab League's opposition. While Abdullah was against military action, he was pressured by neighbouring Arab states in 1948 to join the all-Arab military offensive against the newly created State of Israel, ending with the conclusion of the 1949 Armistice Agreements. The assassination Abdullah's belief in creating substantial peace followed him to his death, a crucial mark in Jordan's history. Robert B. Satloff, the executive director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, stated in his book, From Abdullah to Hussein: Jordan in Transition, that: "In one sense, Abdullah's death clearly marked the end of an era in Jordanian history. After a quarter century as amir and then another five years as king, Abdullah's reign was synonymous, not merely coterminous, with Transjordan's consolidation, autonomy, independence, and ultimately, expansion. "With great intensity of purpose, Abdullah focused his efforts on the twin objectives of nation and state building, and his significant progress toward them was in the end, his greatest achievement. Transjordan bore his indelible mark, not that of either the Sharifian elite he brought with him north from the Hijaz or the Syrians, Palestinians, and Circassians he enlisted over the years to administer the affairs of state." On July 20, 1951, Abdullah was assassinated on the steps of one of the holiest shrines of Islam, the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, during Friday prayers, by a Palestinian opposed to Jordan's tolerance of Israel.


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A few days earlier, Riad Bey al-Solh, a former prime minister of Lebanon, had been assassinated in Amman, Jordan, where rumors were circulating that Lebanon and Jordan were discussing peace with Israel. Abdullah was in Jerusalem to give a eulogy at the funeral of the former Lebanese prime minister and was shot while attending Friday prayers at the steps of the al- Aqsa Mosque. The gunman fired three deadly bullets into Abdullah's head and chest. The king's grandson, Hussein bin Talal (King of Jordan from 1953 to 1999) was at his side. It is rumoured that a medal that had been pinned to Hussein's chest at his grandfather's persistence deflected the bullet and saved his life. The late Abdullah was succeeded by his son Talal, however, since Talal was mentally ill, Talal's son - Hussein - became the effective ruler as King Hussein at the age of 17.


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III. Zionism


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Realizing the Zionist dream To the more scientifically-minded, Chaim Weizmann may be considered the father of industrial fermentation but to most he is known as the first president of the fledgling state of Israel and contender - along with Theodor Herzl - to the more controversial crown, the father of Zionism. As unrelated as his scientific and political careers may appear, it was in fact the former that brought him to the attention of high-ranking British government officials, gaining him the contacts and influence he would utilize so effectively to establish the latter. But the story began far from either England or Palestine, in the small town of Motol in the Pale of Settlement - the part of Russia to which Jews were largely confined. It was there that Weizmann was born to an observant Jewish family in 1874 and began his formal Jewish education when he was just three years old. Weizmann excelled at science and went on to study in Germany and Switzerland before taking up a teaching post at the University of Geneva. It was during this time that he started to make his mark within Zionist circles. The first Zionist conference was held in Switzerland in 1897. Travel problems stopped Weizmann from attending but he became a regular at every subsequent Zionist congress. 'Rock of Gilbraltar' In 1904 he made his move to England, taking up a teaching post at the University of Manchester. While there he met the then British prime minister, Arthur Balfour, who was also the Conservative MP for Manchester. Balfour was in favour of the creation of a Jewish state but felt that its establishment in Uganda would receive more political support. Weizmann has been credited with persuading Balfour to switch his gaze to Palestine. It was the beginning of a relationship that would have huge ramifications for the goals of the Zionists. Upon the outbreak of World War I, Weizmann, who was now a British subject, accepted a government appointment supervising the production of acetone, which was vital for the production of mortar shells. With this new role, his political influence grew and, working without the official authorization of the Zionist agency, Weizmann was able to sell the Zionist dream to leading British politicians. Weizmann's diplomatic labors bore fruit firstly, and perhaps most significantly, with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which promised British support for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. This was further cemented when, in 1918, Weizmann led the Zionist Commission, which visited Palestine and worked to establish a basis for cooperation with the British military administration there. In 1919, he led the Zionist delegation to the Paris Peace Conference which signaled the end of World War I, helping to secure confirmation of the British mandate. Comfortable within British political circles, Weizmann always worked to balance Zionist aims with British interests in the region. He referred to this alliance between Zionism and Britain as the "Rock of Gilbraltar" of his approach. Zionism from below But as much as his diplomatic skills propelled him to prominence within Zionist circles and were critical in fulfilling Zionist aims, Weizmann believed that the creation of a Jewish state could not be achieved solely through political moves from 'above'. He argued that any political gains could not be maintained if there was not a simultaneous movement from 'below' through active and practical settlement of the land. In a 1907 speech he made this position clear: "The governments of the world will pay attention to us only as they will become convinced that we are capable of conquering Palestine through persistent practical work. Political Zionism means to make the Jewish question an international one. It means going to the nations and saying: 'We need your help to achieve our aim; but we ourselves are doing all in our power to strengthen our position in the land, because


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we regard Palestine as our homeland.' We must explain Zionism to the governments in such a manner that they shall understand it as the Jews understand it." Figurehead In 1920, he was elected president of the Zionist Organization. Although challenged by some who questioned how closely he had tied Zionist interests to those of the British, he was for much of the next 20 years the figurehead of Zionism. But as British policy began to change - culminating in White Paper of 1939, which severely restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine, and with the revelation of the extent of the Holocaust, Weizmann was increasingly sidelined by more aggressive Zionist leaders. In 1946, Weizmann received a vote of no confidence at the post-war Zionist Congress. However, in February 1949 - a month after Israel's first elections - an ailing Chaim Weizmann was elected as the first president of Israel. It was a largely ceremonial post and Weizmann found himself and his ideals frustrated within a government led by David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister. A Time article after Weizmann's death in 1952 reported a conversation Israel's first president had with an aide. A year before his death, in a rare public appearance, Weizmann dropped his handkerchief. When an aide picked it up, Weizmann said: "Thank you, thank you very much, thank you very much indeed." When the aide reflected that it was only a handkerchief, Weizmann replied: "My handkerchief is terribly important to me. It's the only thing in the country I can stick my nose into. Into everything else, it's Ben- Gurion's nose." The man Arthur Balfour described as being able to "charm a bird off a tree" was buried in the grounds of his estate in Rehovot, near the campus of the Institute of Science that bears his name. Losing the Jews of Arabia - By Rachel Shabi

A Jewish family outside their tent at the new immigrants' camp at Beit Lid in the newly-established State of Israel [GALLO/GETTY] "The war between Israelis and the Arabs made it impossible for them to stay," says the Israeli historian, Tom Segev of the almost one million Jews who had lived in Arab countries for several millennia prior to 1948. Jewish populations, who once were a significant and largely harmonious minority presence in countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Iran, migrated en masse following the establishment of Israel in 1948. In 1949-50, 49,000 Jews from Yemen were flown to Israel; in 1951, 120,000 Iraqi Jews did the same; by 1967, around 200,000 Jews had left Morocco – although not all of them to Israel. Why did they go? Some argue that the Zionist movement, at the time predominantly European, recruited those Jews to the cause of settling Israel and setting up underground movements in Arab countries with that purpose in mind.


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'Pushed' or 'pulled'? Many Israelis who came from countries such as Morocco or Iraq remember being promised better lives, large homes and plenty of work upon arrival to the new Jewish state. Others place the impetus in religious terrain, explaining that strongly pious Jewish communities saw a messianic calling in the creation of Israel. Talk to some Israelis of Moroccan or Yemeni origin and they might say that they knew nothing about Zionism back then, just that they loved Jerusalem. A different narrative suggests that rather than being "pulled" to Israel, these Jewish communities were instead "pushed" out of their home countries in the Arab world. Even prior to the war in 1948, the increasing tensions between Palestinians and Jewish settlers to the territory were having an adverse effect on Jewish citizens of the Arab world. That manifested either in assault at street level or in government-sanctioned discrimination: curtailment of rights, loss of employment, stopped access to state education. These measures were not necessarily anti-Jewish in intent, but that was their effect. Deflection device? In Iraq, a series of emergency measures introduced during the 1948 war were presented as anti-Zionist laws but were defined in such a way as to enable their abuse: Jews were often rounded up as suspected Zionists, as a means of extortion. Significant numbers of Jews in such countries were not Zionists, but rather members of the Communist or nationalist movements, joining the struggle against the colonial rule that dominated the Middle East at that time. It can be argued that, seeking a way to cope with rising and regular nationalist protests against pro-colonial governments, those regimes used their Jewish subjects as a deflection device. Caught in the turbulent waters of conflicting currents, the Jews of Arab countries suffered the practical consequences of a conflation of terms: "Jewish" became synonymous with "Zionist" and the latter synonymous with "enemy". The historian Segev says: "They were not a part of that war, but as Jews they were automatically made part of Zionist aspirations, even if [those aspirations] were not necessarily theirs." There are myriad individual narratives of migration from Arab countries to Israel, but the collective history of this exodus has now been hijacked by agendas of each side, Arab and Israeli. Historian Yehuda Halevi has written: "Only two contradictory tales are admitted to this mythology: the anti-Zionist myth of the perfect integration of all Jews in all Arab societies at all times, and the Zionist myth of the permanent persecution of Jews under Islam." The truth about the Jewish exodus from the Middle East almost certainly lies somewhere in between. But in the ever-polarized conflict between Arab and Jew, it has become practically impossible to hold this middle ground.


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Why the Arabs were defeated - By Dina Abdel-Mageed

The Palestine Post, later renamed the Jerusalem Post, announcing the birth of Israel on May 14, 1948. One of the stories is of an Egyptian air attack on Tel Aviv [GETTY] Jewish immigration to Palestine between 1933 and 1939 resulted in widespread domestic unrest that culminated in a number of violent incidents involving Jews and Arabs. The situation was further exacerbated when despite Arab rejection; the United Nations approved a plan to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states on November 29, 1947. While preparing for their withdrawal, the British paid little attention to the turmoil to which Palestine had fallen prey. On May 14, 1948, the last British high commissioner, General Alan Cunningham, left what was known then as the mandate of Palestine. John Marlowe wrote of the last few minutes of British rule in the book, The Seat of Pilate: "The Union Jack was lowered and with the speed of an execution and the silence of a ship that passes in the night British rule in Palestine came to an end." On the same day, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, announced the independence of the state of Israel, established on the land granted to the Jews by the Partition Plan. Mobilized for defeat Within a day, forces from the armies of several Arab countries, including Egypt and Transjordan, attacked the new state of Israel. Underestimating the power of the fledgling state, Arab rulers thought they were heading towards an easy victory that would quiet post-World War II domestic unrest and - perhaps - gain them more territory. "The advisors to President Quwatli and King Farouq, for example, were telling them that this will be a piece of cake for the Syrians and Egyptians [respectively]," Sami Moubayed, a Syrian political analyst and author of Shukri al-Qawatli's biography, The George Washington of Syria, said. The scenario of defeating defenceless Israel turned out to be a far-fetched one. The forces of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Transjordan suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Israeli military which was a combination of Jewish militias, such as the right-wing Irgun Tzvei Le'umi and the more extreme Stern Gang. The reasons behind the crushing defeat are still the subject of many heated debates. Radwan al-Sayyid, a Lebanese political thinker, told Al Jazeera that there was not enough awareness among Arabs about the possibility of totally losing Palestine. "The Jews, who constituted only around 20-25 per cent of the population, were not perceived as a serious threat by most of the Arabs," he said.


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Disunited, Arabs fall Another factor that contributed to the 1948 defeat was inter-Arab political rivalries. While Arab leaders claimed to be fighting for Palestine, they were also engaged in a war of interests in which the warring parties had different agendas and often conflicting goals. Arthur Goldschmidt Jr, a professor emeritus of Middle East history at Pennsylvania State University, says these rivalries altered the course of the war. "Notably the rivalry between the Jordanians, with their British-officered Arab Legion and King Abdullah's ambitions for a Greater Syria, and the Egyptians, with King Farouk's ambition to lead the Arab World, backed to some degree by the League of Arab States and by the former mufti of Jerusalem," he said. Goldschmidt, who is co-author of A Concise History of the Middle East, said Iraq tended to support Transjordan while Saudi Arabia sided with Egypt, pointing out that "[it] is not clear who really looked out for the Palestinian Arabs". Some historical reports even mention a secret deal between Transjordan's King Abdullah and the Jews in which he was offered the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem. Al-Sayyid said: "During the course of the war, the Arab Legion did not advance beyond the regions the Israelis had given Abdullah under the deal." Not collective defeat Moubayed, however, argues that the war should not be seen as a single collective defeat. "Speaking from a Syrian perspective, the Syrian Army was not defeated. They performed with flying colors during the early stages of the war," he told Al Jazeera. "Also in the initial stages, the Egyptians took Gaza and raised their flag over Khan Yunis." But soon enough, instead of fighting against the Jewish state, Arab leaders fought against each other for land and glory. "The rivalries were a major problem because they resulted in poor command, lack of transparency, and ultimately, failure," Moubayed said. He considers the first armistice, which gave the Israelis time to re-organize themselves, and the secret deal between King Abdullah and Golda Meir, the iconic Israeli prime minister, as major setbacks that turned the course of events in favour of Israel. Negligence, corruption, scandal But the Arabs also exhibited negligent underestimation of the abilities of the Jewish militias in in Palestine. Perhaps, the military campaigns were never taken seriously enough by Arab leaders and as a result, a small number of poorly-equipped Arab forces were sent to the battlefield. According to historical reports, the number of Arab forces combined was less than that of the Jewish fighters. "The Jews were superior in numbers and equipment," Al-Sayyid said. The Egyptian military also alleged that they were supplied with deficient weapons by their own government. But, Moubayed argues that "it was actually the souls that were corrupted, more so than the weapons". Unlike the Arabs, the Israelis were well-prepared and well-organized and had many experienced fighters who had served in units of the British Army during World War II. "Some [Israelis], like Moshe Dayan, had seen service on behalf of Britain in World War II. There were also volunteers, mostly Jewish, but some Gentiles also, who came to Israel's aid and had gained training and experience in the Allied forces during World War II," Goldschmidt said. Balfour The Israeli victory in 1948 can also be attributed to the international support Israel received, notably the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which the British promised to support the Zionist cause of establishing a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. The UN Partition Plan, which passed in the General Assembly, was approved by both the US and the USSR. "The 1948 war occurred before the start of the Cold War, and world powers together with other small countries were for the establishment of a Jewish state," Al-Sayyid said, mentioning the example of the USSR pressuring Czechoslovakia to send weapons to the Israelis during the war. Moubayed also expressed a similar viewpoint, citing Harry Truman's alleged response when he was asked about the reason behind his support for Israel: "Because there is no Arab constituency in Washington." The Nakba But some historians, say the importance of international support has been overstated. Khalid Al-Dekhil, a Saudi analyst and political science professor, said: "This factor [international intervention] is always there.


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Israelis were smart enough to make use of it. Why did not Arabs do the same?" In his book Ma'na al-Nakba (The Meaning of the Catastrophe), Constantine Zurayq, a prominent thinker, considered the Arab battlefield losses and their political impotence to be signs of a "civilizational defeat". Al-Dekhil believes that the 1948 defeat was truly a civilizational defeat because military weakness was only a reflection of an overall state of decay. Al Sayyid, however, argues against Zurayq's analysis, attributing the defeat only to the lack of preparation, organization and coordination between the handful of independent Arab states. Regardless of the accuracy of Zurayq's analysis, the name he gave to the 1948 defeat - al- Nakba - is still used today to refer to the humiliating defeat that shaped the Middle East forever. The Nakba: Catalyst for pan-Arabism - By Lamis Andoni

Palestinians commemorate May 15, 1948, the day after the creation of the State of Israel as their Nakba, or catastrophe [GALLO/GETTY] One of the narratives often repeated in the West is that the Arab states sent their armies to crush the nascent state of Israel in 1948. But by miracle and might, the tiny entity emerged victorious over "the organised armies" of seven Arab countries. But there is a different story that became pivotal in the shaping of modern pan-Arab nationalism, and collective Arab memory: "the great armies," mainly of Jordan, Egypt and Iraq were neither well-equipped nor really independent. The Jordanian army was under the command of the British military, while Egypt - under King Farouq – and Iraq - under King Faisal II - were acting under British political influence. Palestinians found no relief from the Arab armies who could neither prevent the dispossession nor loss of their homeland. Reasons for the defeat are not to be found in the alleged cowardice of Arab soldiers. Rather, they are linked to the continued legacy of colonialism and of Arab government complicity which rendered the intervention of these armies a tragic joke in Arab memory. Arab complicity In 1948, King Abdullah I of Jordan accepted a compromise allowing Israel's creation in return for Zionist and British approval of the continuity of the Hashemite Kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. Abdullah's father, Sherrif Hussein bin Ali, once the proud and patriotic leader of the 1916 Great Arab revolt, had


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adamantly refused to compromise on the question of Arab unity and argued vehemently for maintaining and securing the Arab identity of Palestine. His unwavering position on Palestine earned him the wrath of western powers who eventually exiled him to Cyprus; his leading role in ousting the Ottomans from Transjordan and ushering in the Sykes-Picot agreement all but forgotten. And in Egypt and Iraq, the pro-Western governments did not possess the wherewithal to act independently as they relied heavily on Britain. Egypt and Jordan would later actively strangle the continued Palestinian struggle to establish a Palestinian entity and identity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The suppression of the Palestinian movements and identity became prerequisites for the survival of both monarchies that would later become front lines states and the only Arab nations to have signed peace treaties with Israel. Rallying Cry The Nakba or catastrophe, which has come to symbolize the uprooting of Palestinians and the destruction of their towns and villages and substitution with Jewish immigrants and towns, has since 1948 became the rallying cry of Arab nationalism, both against Israel and pro-Western governments. The failure of Arab governments to prevent the Nakba gave impetus to the formation of an organized ideological pan-Arab nationalist movement. Nationalists labelled the defeated Arab governments "lackeys of imperialism" and called overthrowing them a prerequisite for stamping out colonialism and liberating Palestine. The two goals of bringing down western-backed governments and the liberation of Palestine became the rallying cries of all nationalist movements - from the Baath party to the pan-Arab Nationalist movements (Qawmeyoun Al Arab) and their offshoots. These movements did not believe Israel was founded to provide a homeland for Jews but for the creation, strengthening and maintenance of a colonial structure in the heart of the Middle East. Pan-Arab states The Nakba left the Arabs embittered and yearning for drastic change. In an almost domino effect, Arab governments fell to fiercely nationalistic movements shortly after the assassination of King Abdullah I in Jerusalem in 1951, by a young Palestinian nationalist. This was followed by the 1952 overthrow of Egypt's King Farouq and the emergence of the phenomena of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the 1958 overthrow of the monarchy in Iraq, and the establishment of the Baath party there and in and Syria. For these post-revolutionary governments, there was no stronger unifying cause for pan-Arabism than the liberation of Palestine. It provided a specific goal and was regarded as testimony against an entrenched colonialist dominance on Arab lands. Israel itself - seen as a foreign entity - built on the ruins of Palestinian homes and identity, became a physical manifestation of that colonial power. Birthing the PLO The Palestinian cause was seen as an integral part of the Arab goal of independence and unity. But it was not until Palestinians became disillusioned with the new pan- Arab nationalist regimes that they decided to take control of their own cause and establish their own liberation movement. However, this did not fully materialize until the real organizational break between a pan-Arabism movement and a separate Palestinian movement, in the wake of the resounding Arab defeat in 1967. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), created by Arab governments in 1964, was gradually taken over by independent clandestine Palestinian groups, led by Fatah. While the Nakba was the main impetus for pushing organized pan-Arab movements to the fore of Arab political life, the 1967 war was in effect the beginning of its decline and the emergence of a separate Palestinian movement.


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Opinion: Arabism's greatest loss - By Hassan Ibrahim

David Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, reads the Declaration of Independence on May14, 1948 during the ceremony founding the State of Israel [GPO/GETTY] What immediately stands out when reflecting on the plight of the Palestinians over the past 60 years is not only that they have been occupied and displaced, but that they are also being replaced by a totally different people brought to Palestine from the four corners of the globe. Their land, their belongings and even their culture and history, are being usurped by a different population. It is a painful repetition of the plight of native Americans we ignorantly refer to as 'red Indians'. The Israelis, who have become the new masters of the land, are Jewish immigrants that began populating Palestine in the early years of the last century. The Jews born in Palestine are called Sabra, while the rest migrated in successive waves under the British mandate which lasted from 1918 to 1948. Resounding victory? The State of Israel came into existence after a resounding victory over seven Arab armies in 1948. With their victory intact, the Zionist brigades - the haganah – later united with the Irgun terrorist organization to create the tzva haganah le Yisrael - the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). The IDF have become the most feared and "respected" military in the Middle East. Western countries, especially the US, continue to make sure that Israel is equipped with the latest weapons. Over the years, no country has had more access to US military technology and intelligence than Israel. And no country has had greater influence with the US electorate than Israel. The Jewish lobby in the US has influenced Americans with political aspirations to formulate the solid belief that their political successes are directly linked to winning the "fidelity to Israel" seal-of-approval from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. In return, Israel - as a western geopolitical construct - has time and again proven its credentials as a true representative of the western world's long arm in the region. Even with Arab countries producing more than 40 per cent of the global supply of petroleum, the US has never treated the Arab countries en par with the way it treats Israel. This policy of clear favoritism has alienated many an Arab country and created a realization in the Arab psyche, that Israel and the US are one and the same. Existential rejection Despite many attempts by so-called moderate Arab governments with ties to Tel Aviv to gently introduce Israel to their masses, Arabs overwhelmingly hate the Jewish state. It is not just a matter of political disagreement, or a temporary feeling associated with the progression of one political solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict to another. It is simply an existential rejection of the Zionist entity as a whole. The Arabs have


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always found the idea of a colonialist entity, empowered by the west and enforced on the Arab world, as a particularly bitter pill to swallow. But Israel is ironically the object of secret envy even among its Arab enemies. It is a well-to-do and vibrant society. In addition to prosperity brought about by an outpouring of aid from Western countries, the founding fathers of Israel emphasized the role of scientific and technological advancement. It has also turned its land into a real democracy - for the Jews - and built an egalitarian society that for its Jewish population is considered a paradise. Bewildered Arabs It was bewildering for the Arabs to watch the status of Palestinians living in pre-1967 Israel. Most of those Palestinians had citizenship rights and reaped some of the benefits enjoyed by their Jewish counterparts, such as free medical care, education and political rights. They were living better than many of their brethren in most sovereign Arab countries. Pro Israeli Arabs would in later years try to make the argument that it is better for the Palestinians to be ruled by the "benevolent" state of Israel than "waste their lives fighting a Herculean army that is impossible to defeat". Pro-Israeli Arabs also use phrases like "resistance is futile" and that peace has achieved more than all the Arab-Israeli wars combined. They deliberately ignore the fact that between 1978 and 2000 the Lebanese resistance effectively managed a war of attrition that eventually defeated Israel and forced it to withdraw its forces unconditionally. The pro-Israeli Arabs would retort by saying that it was not a victory for the resistance; rather it was Israel's political choice to pave the way for further deliberations between Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian president, and Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister at the time. The same argument came about after Hezbollah's resounding victory against the Israeli army in the summer of 2006. A militia fighting alone with weapons so less advanced managed to put to shame the Israeli army with its state-of-the-art arsenal. But pro-Israeli Arabs instead called the confrontation between Israel - that still occupies a part of Lebanon in the Shibaa farms – and Hezbollah an "not-calculated and irresponsible adventure". But the critics had to swallow their pride when Hezbollah's missiles started decking targets deep inside Israel. They eventually reneged not in support of Hezbollah but to save face with the Arab masses. Fidelity to Palestine It has become tradition to consider rejection of Israel as an integral part of what it means to be an Arab. That rejection of Israel is equaled by a "fidelity to Palestine" - not a part of Palestine or a fraction of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip interspersed by the wall built by Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister, but the whole of Palestine. No Arab nationalist can forget the list of tragedies caused by the loss of Palestine and the creation of Israel: massacre upon massacre, wars and defeats and blood that is still being shed openly under the guise of fighting the so-called "Palestinian terrorists". However, what is equally painful for many Arabs is that the cause of Palestinian liberation has been used as an excuse by many an Arab dictator to justify the oppression and lack of accountability to their own people. Every Arab government communiqué during the 1960's and 70's could not be considered credible unless Palestine was mentioned in the same context as the word 'liberation'. Even in this day and age, when catching up with the globalization train has become the motto of most Arab governments you will find it very hard to convince their public that forsaking Palestine is an acceptable concept. But without Palestine the notion of Arab nationalism becomes vacuous.


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Tracing Gaza's chaos to 1948 - By Mark LeVine

Flag of Israel flies over Gaza before the 2005 withdrawal [GALLO/GETTY] The roots of Gaza's misery today can be traced back to the late Ottoman period, decades before the war of 1948 transformed the Gaza Strip from a minor port and agricultural hinterland into one of the most overcrowded places on earth. It was then, in the middle of the first great age of globalization, that Gaza's fate was sealed, although it would take half a century for it to unfold. At the end of the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was undergoing a process of modernization that was opening provinces like Palestine to greater economic and cultural penetration by Europe. It was during this period - the heyday of high imperialism - that Zionism arrived on Palestinian soil. By the early 20th century, thousands of young and relatively unskilled East European Jews were arriving each year in Palestine desperate for work and housing. While Gaza was never a primary location for Zionist settlement, Gaza City had a small but longstanding Jewish community, and several settlements, including Kfar Darom, were established during the British mandate (1917-1948) period and re-established after 1967. Most of the young settlers who came during the first three waves of Jewish settlement, from the late 1880s until World War I, were unable to compete with the better-trained and cheaper Palestinian Arab work force, which itself was sustained by a larger Palestinian economy that had undergone a significant development, albeit with ups and downs, in the last century and a half. This reality led the emerging Socialist Zionist leadership to develop two strategies, the "conquest of labor" (kibosh ha-avodah) and when that failed, the "conquest of land" (kibosh ha-karka'a) to ensure the creation of autonomous, exclusively Jewish settlements that would be free of competition from non-Jewish workers. The bourgeois town of Tel Aviv, founded in 1909, copied the Jews-only policy of the first kibbutz, or collective agricultural settlement, Degania, which was founded the same year. Both sought to create modern exclusively Jewish environments that would, culturally, economically, and politically, be as autonomous as possible from the surrounding environment - the older Arab/Sephardi and non-Zionist Ashkenazi Jewish communities as much as from Palestinian Arabs. Transforming Zionism Crucially, this early competition for jobs and land helped transform Zionism, in the words of Israeli sociologist Gershon Shafir, into a "militant nationalist movement" by the time Tel Aviv and Degania were established. The exclusivist nationalism of the movement was exacerbated by the reality that Zionism, like American, Australian and South African nationalisms, was at the same time colonial. All were examples of "settler colonial" movements which were unique in their desire to replace rather than exploit the indigenous


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population of the colonised land. This strategy went well with the socialist ethos of the emerging Zionist leadership, which was ideologically committed to avoiding the exploitation of the Palestinian population. At the same time however, many senior Zionist leaders had experience working in Europe's African colonies, which would be put to use in developing Zionist policies in Palestine. Following the thinking of other colonial enterprises, Zionist leaders justified their project by arguing that Zionist Jews had the right to rule Palestine because they - not the Palestinians - had the ability to develop the land to its full potential and usher Palestine out of its supposed slumber and stagnation into the modern world. In response, the Palestinian nationalism that emerged soon after the first stirrings of Zionism was equally exclusivist in its claim to the right to rule Palestine. A "spirit of resistance" that had defined Palestinian responses to foreign incursions, whether by Napoleon's France or Muhammad Ali's Egypt, became evident as Palestinians harassed Europeans who bought land in the country even before the first Zionist settlements were founded. Conflict with Zionist settlers occurred almost from the start of the Zionist movement's colonisation efforts. Transition of rule Once Palestine transitioned from Ottoman to British rule, a zero sum conflict over the country's future was inevitable, especially when the level of Jewish immigration and land purchases increased dramatically in the 1920s and 1930s. The fact that the British government was, literally, "mandated" to facilitate the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine while merely protecting the existing civil and religious rights of the native population, exacerbated this situation. The very structure and aims of the British mandate necessitated that any independent Palestinian leadership should be crushed. Meanwhile, the most logical and "efficient" way to develop the economy would be through relying on the development programs of the Zionist movement, whose ideology, political and economic discourses appealed to European imperial sensibilities and to the powerful Christian Zionist impulses that had emerged in England in the latter part of the 19th century. Equally important, the Zionist enterprise brought a huge influx of capital into the country that enabled its development without great expense to the British tax-payer. Ironically, Zionist leaders like Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court justice, would argue that "no cordon sanitaire" could protect Palestine from the modern world that he believed only arrived with the Zionist movement and British rule. But in truth neither had brought modernity to Palestine because it had arrived decades earlier. The Zionists merely replaced an emerging and increasingly cosmopolitan Ottoman modernity, one which saw Palestine undergo a rapid development in the last decades of Turkish rule (in which Arab Jews and early Zionists, as well as increasing trade and contact with Europe, played a part), with a European, colonial modernity that would ultimately push Palestinians off of, and for more than half of them out of, their land. In the case of Gaza specifically, this meant herding Palestinians, first in 1948, then in 1967, and again during the Oslo decade of "separation" and "divorce" between Israelis and Palestinians, into a prison from which they are still trying to escape. Flood of refugees At the outset of the 1948 war, the population of the Gaza region was approximately 60,000 to 80,000. By the end of the hostilities, at least 200,000 refugees had flooded what would become the Gaza Strip, whose rectangular shape roughly corresponded to (but was smaller by at least a third than) the area of the Gaza District during the mandate period. The exact shape of the Gaza Strip was determined by the position of Egyptian and Israeli forces when the ceasefire was announced. The majority of the refugees came from the almost wholesale eviction or evacuation of Palestinian towns and villages from Jaffa southwards to Gaza City and the surrounding villages to the north and east that were depopulated during the war. These refugees were housed in the ensuing years in eight camps throughout the region, many of which were former British military bases. By 2000, the last year of the Oslo peace process, the number of refugees and their descendants had swollen to well over 400,000.


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The Gazan hijra Based on several years of fieldwork interviewing refugees in Gaza, Ilana Feldman, a New York University professor, describes the typical experience of becoming a refugee in the Gaza Strip in what has been described by many Gazans as the "hijra", (adopting the Islamic terminology for the flight of the still small Muslim community from Mecca to Medina in 622) as having "happened almost without awareness...." "They crossed no international border, but simply went down the road.... Few people imagined that they would be gone for longer than a few days or weeks," she wrote. In this thinking, Gaza's refugees were a microcosm of the larger Palestinian experience of the Nakhba, or disaster of the 1948 war. Unlike the West Bank, which was effectively annexed by Jordan in 1950 and its population offered Jordanian citizenship, Egypt maintained Gaza under military rule until a legislative council was elected in 1957. Moreover, unlike Jordan, Egypt had little ties with or concern for Gaza, and thus the Strip received little attention or investment in infrastructure between 1948 and 1967. Jewish settlements After its conquest by Israel, 17 Jewish settlements would be established inside the Gaza Strip between 1970 and 2000. While housing well under 10,000 settlers, the settlements came to dominate the geography of the Strip, securing access to much of the best land, water, and shore areas. Their presence justified the transfer of only 60 per cent of the Gaza Strip to Palestinian control during Oslo. The settlers, only half a per cent of the Strip's population, controlled 40 per cent of its territory and even more of its resources. This situation would not change significantly during the Oslo period, and when the last settler left, five years into the al-Aqsa intifada in September 2005, Gaza effectively became the world's largest prison.


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Countdown to Arab defeat - By Wafaa' Al-Natheema

Charred remains of Egypt's air force after Israel's pre-emptive strike on June 5, 1967 In November 1966, an Israeli contingent of some 400 men, 10 tanks and 40 armored vehicles attacked the village of Samu in the Jordan-controlled West Bank and destroyed some 100 buildings and killed many Arabs. This was one of many incidents of confrontation between Israel and Syria in the months prior to the war, and between Israel and the Palestinian fida'iyeen, or resistance fighters. In Rami Tai's 1997 book The Dayan Memoirs and interviews conducted in 1976, Moshe Dayan, Israel's defense minister at the time said that 80 per cent of these confrontational episodes were planned and executed by Israel. When asked if the Syrians initiated cross-border wars of attrition from the Golan Heights, he stated: "It went this way: We would send a tractor to plough some place where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end [the] Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. "And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was." Nasser under pressure In April 1967, one of these Israeli provocations became a full-fledged aerial battle with the Syrians. The Israelis shot down six Syrian planes, including one over Damascus. In depth June 5: At 10:10 GMT Israel launches first wave of attacks, leaving nearly 400 Egyptian aircraft destroyed and huge craters in the tarmac runway June 6: Israel captures Gaza Strip, defeating part of Egyptian army June 7: Israeli paratroopers seize control of Jerusalem's old city 40,000 troops and 200 tanks deployed against Jordanian army West Bank and East Jerusalem taken June 8: Sinai captured and Egyptian forces defeated June 9: Ground fighting between Israeli and Syrian forces continues in Golan region June 10: Israel defeats the Syrian army in the Golan Heights. Syria accepts a UN ceasefire resolution and Israel heeds UN warning not to advance into Syria. At this point Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt, was highly criticized for his ineffectiveness and was seen as simply an orator, and not a doer, for Arab nationalism and unity. As a result of the Israeli-Syrian tensions, and the criticism that followed by Syria and Jordan, Nasser expelled the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) from the Sinai Peninsula in May 1967. He then deployed 1000 tanks and 100,000 soldiers on the border and called for unified Arab action against Israel.


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Tensions soar U Thant, who served as secretary-general of the United Nations from 1961 to 1971, said in his memoir that the war could have been avoided had Israel simply re-stationed those UN forces on its side of the border. U Thant had suggested that Egypt pledge not to fire on foreign vessels that traverse the Straits of Tiran, the narrow sea passages, which separates the Gulf of Aqaba from the Red Sea. In return, Israel would refrain from sending Israeli flagged vessels through the strait. Egypt agreed, but Israel, determined to go to war, rejected the offer. On May 10, the Algerian representative serving as the chairman of the Arab group at the UN informed U Thant that Israel was to hold a parade in Jerusalem to mark the founding of the state on May 15. The Arabs at the time considered this yet another provocative measure to strengthen Israel's stance over Jerusalem and promote the Jewish campaign to make the holy city their capital. Earlier on February 6, Jordan complained about the same matter. Despite these protests and the intervention by the Secretary-General, Israel held the parade on May 15. As a countermeasure to the parade, the Palestine Liberation Organization organized demonstrations protesting Israeli provocations. "It was the season for an exchange of verbal threats, demonstrations, and parades across the border and high tension," wrote Indar Jit Rikye, the major-general in charge of the UN military forces at that time. Egypt blockade? According to Israeli and mainstream media claims in 1967, Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran thereby prompting a response from Tel Aviv. However, this was not true. In the first few days, the Egyptian navy did search ships passing through the straits. But a week later, they stopped. Rikhye stated in his book The Sinai Blunder that Egypt did not block the Straits of Tiran. Though it was obliged by international law to exploit and exhaust all diplomatic options before going to war, Israel refrained from seeking such solutions because its military was confident any engagement with the Arabs would be a walkover. Israel knew it could win a decisive victory very quickly and easily. Egypt decimated On June 3, two days prior to the war, Meir Amit, the head of Israeli intelligence, visited Washington to gauge possible US reaction in case of a military strike against Egypt. Despite US intelligence reports that Nasser was unlikely to attack, Washington gave Israel indirect signals to launch their preemptive strikes because the Americans feared Nasser's relations with the Soviets. On June 5, Israel launched an attack against Egypt's air force decimating the Soviet-made jet fighters. Jordan retaliated by attacking the Jewish sector in divided Jerusalem. But within three days the Jordanians were utterly defeated and lost all of Jerusalem. The war was fought between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The countries of Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Sudan contributed troops, weapons and financial aid. The war ended six days later on the Syrian borders. At war's end, Israel had gained control over the Gaza Strip and West Bank, the Golan Heights, eastern Jerusalem and the Sinai Peninsula.


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'They destroyed our lives' - By Laila El-Haddad in Gaza

Palestinian infrastructure and education declined significantly in Gaza following the 1967 defeat [GALLO/GETTY] Al Jazeera speaks to Ahmed Qandeel, a 67-year-old Palestinian, about his experiences during the 1967 war and how, he says, the ensuing occupation has led to the deterioration of education in Gaza. The war started on a Monday at 10am. I was a school supervisor at the time and the head of the Rafah educational department. I remember we were handing out and supervising the ninth grade exams. We heard the first bullets echoing from the east. We never expected this to happen because we thought we had the Egyptian forces behind us. But sadly, it turned out very differently. The occupation forces first entered Gaza from the east. Most people thought the Israeli troops were Iraqis. The Arab media was obfuscating the reality - they were saying things like: "The Arab armies have reached Beer il Sabi." [It was] all lies." A tank battalion was deployed inside Rafah and one boy tried to shoot at one of the tanks. He was gunned down immediately. He had never seen a tank in his life. Then, a checkpoint was set up near Khan Yunis further north. We weren't sure what to expect - some people even brought them food and water. Then the occupying troops surrounded the Shaboura camp in Rafah and hit it hard. We saw them coming. 'Scattered resistance' I was part of the Palestinian Civil Defence at the time. There was scattered resistance inside of Rafah, but it was limited in scope and lacked weapons. We heard lots of gunfire. Many young men were slaughtered as a result of taking part in the resistance. Many of the fighters were later exiled to Sinai. And soon, the house demolitions began. Entire families were forced out of their homes and their houses were destroyed to pave the way for wide roads suitable for their military vehicles. Shaboura camp, on Rafah's outskirts, was hit particularly hard. The Israelis reached this camp and demolished a series of homes there because they said it was a centre of resistance. After this, the resistance died down. They had no weapons and no outside support. Then the Israeli troops and administrators tried to calm things down so they could win people over and assure them that there was some stability. Worsening education They changed the currency that we were using. Curfews were imposed at night and during the day. Residents were asked to raise white flags on top of their rooftops. The Palestinian flag - or any reference to Palestine – was banned. Breaking this law would land you in military courts and, ultimately, prison.


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They tried to reopen schools, but they were in bad shape. But most significant of all, they tried to change our syllabi to the Israeli curriculum. The head of education at the time, Bashir il-Rayyis, refused to do so and the teachers went on strike. He insisted on maintaining the Egyptian curriculums and they did, they kept them until 1994. But they only used it selectively. Anything to do with Palestine or references to Palestinian history or culture, and even certain Quranic verses were tossed out in their entirety by the Israeli occupation forces. Teachers were subject to military trials and detention if they didn't abide by the Israeli rules. The level of education greatly deteriorated. The curriculum also needed to be updated and we were not allowed to do so under Israeli orders. It was an attempt to dumb down the Palestinian population. So people around us change, times change, and we stay in cocoons. Egyptian curriculums changed in Egypt itself, but the Israelis refused to allow [us] to change the curriculums the Palestinians were using. 'Dumbing down' The [Israeli] occupation resulted in the deterioration of our education system for 30 years, as well as of our culture and civilization. They forced a curriculum change and began to set guidelines for the kinds of teachers that were allowed to teach us. Ultimately, the point was to dumb down the Palestinian residents. Then, [Israel] opened the way for Palestinian laborers. Students began to leave school, and, due to poverty and rising unemployment, began working in Israel. As a result, we began to see new things. Hebrew began to spread by way of the laborers as well as a new culture and mannerisms we were not accustomed to. Slowly, the resistance began to resurface, but only as individual units. They begin to hit Israeli areas. So Israeli forces hit back hard at the refugee camps - under the guise of wanting to pave large roads in the camps. They hit Brazil neighborhood here in Rafah, demolished dozens of homes, and forced its residents out. In short, they destroyed our lives.


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Peace after the Yom Kippur War? The struggle to keep Palestine, the homeland of the Palestinian Arab people, an inseparable part of the greater Arab Nation is one of the main issues at the heart of the Question of Arab Unity. The two states - Arab and Jewish - as envisioned in the 1947 UN partition plan never came into fruition as Arabs and Israelis fought wars, gained and lost land and further plunged the region into conflict. Over half of the Palestinian population fled the violence or were expelled by Jewish settlers. Almost two decades after the war of 1948, the Palestinians found themselves still living in camps. New solutions were needed, and the Palestinians began to think about pro-actively tackling their problems. Could Arab Unity be forged through war against a common enemy? As the Palestinian Right of Return became an integral rallying call at the heart of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, the defeated powers of Egypt and Syria began to plan a military strategy to retake territory lost in the 1967 war. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president who was humiliated in June 1967, began a campaign to re-equip, retrain, and revitalize the Egyptian Army in hopes of eventually recapturing the Sinai Peninsula. Syria also began to retrain its military forces with an eye on securing the lost Golan Heights. On October 6, 1973, as Jews celebrated Yom Kippur, Arab forces - mostly comprising of Egyptian and Syrian troops - launched a surprise attack against Israeli forces. Crossing the Suez, the Egyptians breached the Bar-Lev defense perimeter, which Israeli tacticians had believed to be impregnable. Initially, the Arabs made remarkable gains on the battlefield. The Iraqi contingent – which consisted of 30,000 troops and 550 tanks - that was sent to assist the Syrians caught the Israelis completely by surprise, pushing back their counterattack forces. But within one week, Israel turned the tide, forcing Egypt and Syria to the verge of another massive defeat. International pressures and Cold War diplomacy between the US and the Soviet Union brought the war to an end on October 26. Though Egypt, Syria and Iraq suffered losses at the end of the war, the initial gains proved that the Arabs could win major battlefield engagements. These 'victories' provided the Arabs with psychological momentum, overturning the humiliations stemming from the 1967 defeat, and paving the way for diplomacy. Camp David On November 19, 1977, Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president, became the first leader to visit Tel Aviv and address the Israeli Knesset. He called for a full implementation of UN resolutions 242 and 338, which were considered the cornerstones of any Arab-Israeli peace treaty. By the time Egypt and Israel formally signed a peace treaty and opened diplomatic relations at Camp David in 1978, the Arab World had become fragmented. Suspicions that Sadat had betrayed the Egyptians during the 1973 War came to the forefront as Damascus and Baghdad accused Cairo of prioritizing its own interests while abandoning the rest of the Arab World. In 1979, the Arab League expelled Egypt. In 1982, Israel invaded and occupied Lebanon as Iraq and Iran were engaged in a bloody border war. In 1989, the Arab League reinstated Egypt in the hopes of unifying the Arab World. But a year later, another conflict, this time between two sovereign Arab states, would further split the Arab World.


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Israeli historian on Sadat's gamble - By Saeed Taji Farouky in London

Israeli paratroopers march along the Suez-Cairo road on the western bank of the Suez Canal during the Yom Kippur War. Israel reversed earlier Arab gains [GALLO/GETTY] In 1989, Benny Morris, the founder of Israel's New Historian movement, published The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, questioning the traditional Israeli view of the Middle East's longest conflict. In April, Morris will publish his latest book, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, about the creation of the state of Israel. Al Jazeera met with him at London's Jewish Book Week, held in late February, to discuss the impact of the 1973 Yom Kippur War on Arab unity. Al Jazeera: Why did Egypt's President Anwar Sadat launch the war of 1973? Morris: Sadat gambled correctly; he wanted to dislodge the logjam. He wasn't going to get Sinai back unless he did something hard and he decided a war would do it and he was right. It broke the logjam; he got Sinai back within nine years. So his calculation was correct. How did the war affect the philosophy of Pan- Arabism? The war eventually resulted in a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, which disunited the Arab world in various ways because a rupture between Sadat and [Syrian President Hafiz]al-Assad formed immediately at the end of the war. But the disintegration [of Pan- Arabism] began in 1920, it didn't begin in 1973. It began when different Arab national movements demanded their own sovereign territory as the Arab World supposedly was emerging as an independent entity which would have been unified according to the promises supposedly made by Britain to Hussein Ibn Ali [Sherrif of Mecca]. As soon as World War I ended, separate national movements began in the Arab world, each of them pulling in a different direction. Different interest groups in different Arab capitals wanted to rule over themselves - they didn't want some Bedouin from the Hijaz (Saudi Arabia) ruling over them. In Egypt the war is celebrated as a victory. That's dumb. 1973 was a great Israeli victory. Israelis ended up moving beyond the Golan Heights into Syria and badly beating Syrian and Iraqi armies in Syria. They managed to surround half the Egyptian army. The Arabs enjoyed a victory in the initial days but it was short-lived and the Israeli army recovered and managed to turn the tables. On the Arab side there was a state of elation because of the first three days and they forgot the rest of the war. If you look at Abdel-Ghani El-Gamassi's autobiography [Egyptian Chief of Operations during the war], he's got a map of the crossing of the canal but there's no map afterwards. They didn't want an extended war. How was the war viewed in Israel? Because of the initial Arab victories, Israelis became depressed. [The Six-Day War of] 1967 made them used to easy victories and this one was a difficult victory so it left a state of depression after the war. There were 2,500 Israeli dead, which Israel isn't used to. You know how many Israelis died in 1956 [the Suez War] in


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Sinai? 190 people. In 1967 how many Israelis died? 650-700 in the whole war, that's it. So in 1973, 2,500 dead was an enormous loss ... it left Israelis depressed. Did the war lead to Sadat's assassination? It probably played into it. He was probably assassinated mainly by the Gama'a [Al-Islamiyya Egypt’s outlawed Islamist group] because he was persecuting the Islamists. But in addition they didn't like him because he made peace with Israel. What are your personal thoughts on the concept of Arab unity? Is Arab unity so important? It is a myth, I don't know if there is anything good about Arab unity. Maybe disunity is better. You will have more freedom, and you will have different people going in different directions. A Western view would say that is better. In the West disunity is considered a positive thing: it leads to diversity which – in itself – is good.


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Camp David a blow to Arab unity - By Dina Abdel-Mageed

Omar Suleiman, left, Egypt's intelligence chief, with Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister. The 1979 treaty led to diplomatic ties between Israel and some Arab states [GALLO/GETTY] William Quandt, professor of political science at the University of Virginia, believes that by signing the 1979 peace treaty, then-Egyptian president Anwar Sadat correctly read the trends in the region. Quandt, who participated in the negotiations that resulted in a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, said the treaty was a blow to pan-Arabism, but was certainly not as fatal as the Arab defeat during the 1967 war. Quandt has authored several books on the Arab-Israeli conflict, including Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1967; Camp David: Peacemaking and Politics; and Decade of Decisions: American Foreign Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967-1976. Al Jazeera: Do you think that the 1973 war paved the way for the Camp David peace accords? Quandt: Yes, Sadat seems to have felt that he needed to prove himself on the battlefield before engaging in negotiations for a final agreement. The war also seems to have convinced him that he could not afford to subordinate Egyptian interests to a broader notion of pan-Arabism, nor could he count on the Soviets. Other Arab countries together with the Palestinians felt betrayed by Egypt's move. Did Sadat intend to make a separate peace with Israel? Or did he truly envision a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict as he announced? I cannot say what was going on in Sadat's head, but his initial commitment to a comprehensive agreement, or at least to general principles for peace that would be applied to each front, seemed genuine to me. But, as time went on and he became more aware of how adamantly other Arab countries opposed peace with Israel, he seems to have become more of an Egyptfirster. He also resented the fact that other Arab leaders were criticizing him for not being a good Arab, and he responded by treating them with contempt. How did the 1979 peace treaty affect inter-Arab relations? Pretty clear – Egypt was largely isolated; the Arab League was moved to Tunis; and Saddam tried to fill the vacuum by pretending to be the new Nasser. If Sadat had not signed the peace treaty, do you think that Arabs would have had a unified Arab stance? No, the Arab stance was fragile at best, and since the 1967 war there was little left of the big Arab unity project; maybe even after the break-up of the United Arab Republic, it was clear that integral Arab unity was not in the cards. Do you think that the peace treaty was a blow to Arab nationalism? Yes, but not the first, and not the most fatal – breakup of the United Arab Republic and 1967 were more significant.


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Less than 30 years after signing the 1979 peace treaty, almost all Arab countries have some sort of diplomatic ties with Israel. Do you think that Sadat was a visionary? I would not use the word visionary, but I think he correctly read the trends in the region – the decline of Soviet power vis-à-vis the United States; Israel as a fact of life; no real prospects for Arab unity; huge costs to Egypt of staying on a confrontational course. He was at least as much a realist as a visionary. In your opinion, who benefited the most from the peace treaty? Egypt – by ending the cycle of war with Israel; or Israel - by neutralizing a major Arab country? They both benefited, but probably Israel benefited more. Some observers describe the peace between Egypt and Israel as a "cold" one. Do you think that the peace treaty has served any useful purpose? Or has it merely alienated the ruling regimes from the masses? It has been good for those who crafted it – Israel, Egypt and the United States. Without it, there would have been more costly wars. But, no doubt, others in the region felt let down. But, the myth that Egypt would somehow lead the Arab world to the liberation of Palestine and the achievement of unity had always been mostly myth. Some people find it hard to give up the dream. But, that does not mean that clinging to the dream would necessarily make them happy. If Egypt had not signed the peace treaty, what would have been the situation in the Middle East today? Impossible to say.


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Palestinian refugees key to peace - By Adla Massoud

A Palestinian refugee in the Dehaishe refugee camp holds the original key and title deeds to the home his family abandoned during the 1948 Israeli War of Independence [GALLO/GETTY] According to some analysts, there are at least four-and-a-half million reasons why peace continues to elude the Middle East. That is how many Palestinians have become refugees since the creation of Israel in 1948. And until their plight is addressed, there can be no resolution to the Arab- Israeli conflict, say aid groups, political leaders and Palestinian officials. Christopher Gunner of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which is charged with Palestinian refugee care, told Al Jazeera: "They are an absolute integral part of the search for peace because it is quite clear having 4.5 million homeless and stateless refugees in this region makes it inherently unstable." Right of return Though the right of return has not been a focus of recent talks, an overwhelming majority of Palestinians believe that refugee rights must be fulfilled for any peace initiative with Israel to endure. According to an August 2007 poll by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre, nearly 70 per cent believe that refugees should be allowed to return to "their original land". This belief is based on a right of return clause found in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which declares that "Everyone has the right to leave any country including his own, and to return to his country." But because flooding Israel with millions of Muslim Arabs would change the country's demographics, Israeli officials across the political spectrum warn that the "right of return" is code for the destruction of the Jewish state. "I don't think you can wish them away and I don't think you can pretend they don't exist," Dennis Ross, former US peace envoy, said of the refugees. "What I think they don't have the option to do is return to Israel because that's a one state solution and not a two-state solution," Ross, who led Middle East peace negotiations in the 1990s, told Al Jazeera. In his book The Missing Peace, Ross blamed Yasser Arafat, then Palestinian Authority chairman, for the failure of the 2000 Camp David Summit. It is believed that the talks fell apart because of disagreement over the right of return issue. "When we were looking at the choices, we looked at the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, third countries as being one of the possibilities for resettlement and we were talking about creating a $30 billion fund for compensation or for support and repatriation and settlement," Ross said. But the proposed compromise offer ultimately proved unsatisfactory.


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Igniting the war The Palestinian refugee problem came into being in 1947, when Britain handed the increasingly vexing issue of a Zionist claim to Palestine over to the UN. The UN plan to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states was, not surprisingly, met with opposition by the Palestinians but warmly received by many of the nation's Jewish residents. The November 29, 1947 vote of partition, backed by the US and the Soviet Union while Britain abstained, ignited the war for Palestine. Arab opposition to the partition erupted into war between Palestine's Arab and Jewish inhabitants, which spread as the surrounding Arab countries attempted to defeat the newly established state of Israel following Britain's departure from the country in 1948. When the mandate expired, the Jews declared a state in accordance with the partition resolution, and the armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq invaded Palestine. The subsequent defeat of the Arab armies led to the exodus of 700,000 Palestinian and Arab forces. Palestinians refer to the 1948 events as al Nakba, meaning disaster. Most migrated to Gaza, which was under Egyptian occupation; to the West Bank, then part of the Hashemite Emirate of Transjordan (later the Kingdom of Jordan); to Syria; and to Lebanon. Speaking on their behalf On May 14, 1948, a Jewish state was declared. The pattern of Palestinian flight continued during the Six-Day War in 1967 and through today. Those who left are not allowed to return and are now classified as "displaced" persons. Attempts were made to resolve the problem through political discussions between Israel and its Arab neighbours during the spring and summer of 1949 and during the fall and winter of 1951, but they proved futile. At that time, the Arab states were the principal guardians of Palestinian interests - the Palestinians themselves were not a party to these talks as official participants. Various delegations of refugees tried to raise their concerns at the time, but were unsuccessful. Meanwhile, the number of refugees continued to grow, as did the funds UNRWA needed to take care of them. Since partition, the UN has accepted responsibility for care and maintenance of the Palestinian refugees. Today, UNRWA operates with a biennial cash and in-kind regular budget of more than $600 million. The agency's annual expenditure per refugee, however, has dropped from $200 to $70 because of rising costs of living and providing services, and the high growth rate of the refugee population. Out of focus In recent years, with attention focused on the question of a Palestinian state or other political entity, less emphasis has been placed on long-term prospects of resolving the refugee problem. But some observers, like Julie Peteet, an expert in refugee studies and Palestine at Louisville University in Kentucky, believe that the establishment of a two-state solution will lead to no resolution at all. "I think the only solution is a one-state solution," she told Al Jazeera. "Do I think it's possible? Almost impossible – but if only to resolve the issue with justice, it's to have one state, the state of its citizens, and that would include all the Muslims, Jews and Christians, all the Palestinians as well as the Israelis."


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Is right of return feasible?

The Arab defeat of 1948 led to the Nakba and created a Palestinian refugee crisis [Almisshal] Today, the Palestinian refugees number more than six million, comprising nearly one-third of the global refugee population. Al Jazeera interviewed Salman Abu-Sitta, general coordinator of the Right of Return Congress and founder of the Palestine Land Society (http://www.plands.org/pls.htm), on the issues surrounding al-Nakba and the fate of the refugees: Abu-Sitta has worked tirelessly for the Palestinian Right of Return for several decades, and has over 50 publications to his credit. Al-Nakba, Abu-Sitta says, was the "largest planned ethnic cleansing in modern history". Abu-Sitta is a refugee himself. He was nine years old when he was forced, along with the rest of his family, to flee their home in Beir al-Saba (Beersheba) in 1948. He has documented every detail surrounding the 1948 exodus and historic Palestine. His research has shown that there is ample space in present-day Israel to accommodate all Palestinian refugees. In this interview from his Kuwait office, Abu-Sitta reaffirmed that the Palestinian right of return is inalienable, non-negotiable, practical and feasible. Al Jazeera: Israeli politicians, as also some Palestinian politicians, argue that the implementation of the right of return would mean demographic suicide for Israel, that it is unrealistic and not practical. Abu-Sitta: There is nothing in international law or in our sense of morality that says racist or ethnic exclusive considerations should overrule principles of justice. Second, from a practical point of view, the Palestinians will soon be a majority in historic Palestine. They are now at parity. If we apply the principle which the Israelis desire, it means we give them a license to annihilate the Palestinians or expel them en masse, at any moment when they see that the [Jews] have become a minority. The Israelis and their supporters in the West must realize that if this principle is applied, they would not have the right they enjoy now in America and Europe where they, as a minority, can flourish and be successful, and no one says that if their numbers in neighborhoods exceed a certain amount they should be thrown out. In addition, as I said before, there is nothing called "Jewish State" even in the [UN] Partition Plan [of 1947]. There is the state in which the community can be dominant or visible but there is no law in the world which makes a particular community overrule the other community and puts them in a second-class position. Al Jazeera: Let's talk about feasibility then. How can the right of return be implemented? Abu-Sitta: The other day I received an email from an English friend of mine and he said "it seems that the Jewish National Fund (JNF) has stolen a piece of your writing", and I said "How?"


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He said "go to the website and you'll find that it quotes your statement about 80 per cent of the Jews still living in about 15 per cent of the area of Israel and the site calls for the Jews everywhere to come and populate Galilee and the Negev because they are still empty". I have found that 80 per cent of Israeli Jews live in 15 per cent of present-day Israel. Meanwhile, the land of the Palestinian refugees is controlled only by 1.5 percent of the Israeli population. And we have found by looking at maps, both old and new, that 90 per cent of village sites are still vacant today. We also have complete records of who the refugees are, where they are today, their original villages in Palestine, and location and extent of their properties. Now if they admit that and they are calling for more immigrants, to come to the homes and properties of the Palestinians, in the year 2005, that is a case of travesty of justice and no self-respecting civilized person in this world today should accept that. By what scale or measure is it that the refugees in Gaza live only five kilometers away from their homes, to which they cannot return, and Israel is seeking out obscure tribes in India and Guatemala, and bringing them over in a hurry to populate the land which belongs to the refugees? Al Jazeera: So, if it is feasible and practical, who is undermining it and why? Abu-Sitta: Let me remind you that refugees elsewhere have returned to their homes in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Iraq and very soon Cyprus. So, the only exception is Palestine. Why? The reason is obvious: the US supports Israel blindly and gives it political support, money and arms. It is no wonder therefore that US foreign-policy practice is abhorred by all Muslims and Arabs - because of its double standards. It's no wonder that their calls for democracy in the Middle East are not taken seriously - because if democracy is to prevail, then immediately the rights of those who have been oppressed must be upheld by the very same power which calls for democracy. In fact, the reverse is true. The rights of the Palestinians have been hindered and ignored by the US and Israel. In the case of South Africa, international pressure over the years had forced the Apartheid regime to collapse. Now I am confident, although it may take some time. The weight of public opinion and the increasing wave of boycotts and isolation of Israel will probably make the Israeli regime's ability to continue its racist policies untenable, if they want to remain acceptable in the world. This will take time because the US is always international censure, but in the end I have no doubt that justice will prevail and the Palestinians will regain their rights. Al Jazeera: In his pre-recorded speech on Nakba Day, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas told the Palestinian people: "Peace, security and stability in the Middle East are conditional on the finding of a just and agreed-upon solution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees, based on UN Resolution 194." He also rejected naturalization as an option. Do you think this represents a new, firmer stance on the refugee issue for Abbas, as many Israeli politicians read it, or was it a diplomatic way to say "we can't promise the full right of return"? Abu-Sitta: No Palestinian leader will remain in his position if he drops Palestinian rights, foremost of which is the right of return. If he is a leader of Palestinians, then he must address and defend their rights and to Palestinians this right is paramount, the right of return. I cannot imagine any leader dropping that right, just as I cannot imagine Sharon joining Hamas. That said, I must point out that the language of the Arab Summit peace initiative [of 2002] is somewhat confused - it agrees "to find an agreed, just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees in conformity with [UN] Resolution 194". To talk about finding a "just solution" as agreed upon in [UN Resolution] 194 is somewhat a contradiction in terms, because there is no need to find a just solution - it is already there. [Resolution] 194 has already determined what the solution is, and the international community has confirmed the meaning of the solution, which is the return of the refugees, therefore a "just solution" is not required. When we say "just solution", it means we will sit down and negotiate the meaning of a just solution and think of all kinds of alternatives which can be described as a "just solution". And that of course, knowing the Israeli method of stretching things out over the years, will never come to fruition. But the deal breaker is when the statement says "as agreed". As agreed by who? Probably as agreed upon with Israel. Since 1948, Israeli policy has been: Never to allow the Palestinians back to their homes because they want their homes to accommodate Jewish immigrants [settlers]. So if we expect an agreement with Israel on the return of the refugees, then we are just giving the Arab people a false impression. The statement [by Abbas] should be crystal clear: It has been repeated by the international community 135 times: the Palestinian refugees must return home. And that's that. There is no need for inventing convoluted statements which are politically nice but practically meaningless. Al Jazeera: What if Israel doesn't accept this solution? Abu-Sitta: The answer should be what was done in Kosovo and Bosnia. In all these cases the UN implemented the resolution even sometimes through force, using Nato soldiers under the banner of the UN.


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Now I'm not a dreamer - this is not possible given the position of the US. But I am certain that steady and rising pressure of world public opinion and some governments will make Israel a pariah state as Apartheid South Africa was made out to be. Al Jazeera: PLO legal adviser Michael Tarazi once told Al Jazeera: "We are not negotiating away [the refugees'] rights; we are simply negotiating the implementation of their rights. We are not insisting they all return; we are insisting they have a choice." Are options like compensation or resettlement acceptable alternatives to the right of return? Abu-Sitta: When people speak about these options, especially on the Palestinian side, I don't think they mean they will barter away inalienable rights as other objects. Human rights cannot be bargained away, and when you have a right, you are entitled to use it. If you do not use it, the choice is yours. But you cannot say you have this choice or that choice, and demand that I tell you right now which one I choose. A human right is something which is inherent in human dignity and respect for human beings. For example, a youth has a choice to go to high school. If he does not exercise this right,that does not mean it is annulled. There are millions of Turks in Germany and anyone can decide to return home anytime. Same thing with the millions of Greeks in the US, and the millions of Lebanese in Brazil. They can all go home when they decide to. Returning home is not a season ticket that expires. It is a right that can be exercised whenever you like. It cannot be offered for a specific period or against other choices, like compensation. There is no equivalence between the right of return and compensation. Customary compensation law is very clear: if you cause anybody harm, you have to compensate them proportional to the damage done, and for the Palestinians they insist on that after getting their right of return. In addition to all of those the reparations for war crimes must be paid. So of these three elements, right of return comes first. What we Palestinians are ready to do after we are guaranteed the right of return and compensation is to prepare a plan on how to return, when to return, and to where. I have put forth one such proposal in my book, From Refugees to Citizens at Home. Al Jazeera: You've also recently released an atlas that was more than 10 years in the making. Why did you write it, and why is it so significant? Abu-Sitta: In 1949, immediately after the hostilities, and the Nakba, [Israeli Prime Minister David] Ben Gurion formed a committee to erase all Palestinian, Arab and historical names of Palestine and replace them with Hebrew names. I say wiping out Palestinian, Arab and other historical names to mean that all the names that had been used by Palestinians for 5000 years is being erased. This was part of the effort to silence Palestinian history after they took Palestinian land and emptied the land of its people. The purpose of the atlas is to reaffirm this right and to record and document 40,000 names which were in use in Palestine in 1948 and prior. In this atlas we show the locations and the names of 1300 towns and villages, 10,000 religious, cultural and historic landmarks and 20,000 place names. These names are the vocabulary of Palestinian life. Before 1948, you could see the names of the wells, rivers, wadis (valleys), and of special places, historical events and local events. [The atlas] is so detailed that the karm, or garden, of an individual can be identified. So that is one purpose. The other purpose is looking ahead. This atlas should be the blueprint of a future Palestine – when Palestinians return and the young generation who have not seen their homes but heard about, it can navigate through it and find where their villages were and where their lands were, so they can reconstruct Palestine. Al Jazeera: Haaretz commentator Ari Shavit, in a column dated May 19, 2005, said: "There is only one way to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace: 1948 in exchange for 1967. The right of self-definition in return for a surrender of the right of return. The United States must confront Abu Mazen with a clear choice: a state or a dream; peace or return." What's your response? Abu-Sitta: This is like someone who has done you harm and then says: "I'll take away your children, but give you back your house, or I'll take your house and leave your children." There is no bartering if human rights are taken away from you. You cannot say you are allowed to breathe but you are not allowed to eat. That kind of argument is I should say, racist - because someone takes away many or all your rights and then says: "If I return one or two of them, then the rest of them are not yours anymore." There is no comparison or equivalence between a state of Palestine and the right of return. The state of Palestine was decreed in 1917 by the League of Nations under British Mandate Class A, which recognises the independence of Palestine after some administrative assistance. This state was prevented from coming into being because of the Balfour Declaration and the Zionist invasion of Palestine in 1948.


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Now this right remains with the Palestinian people in abeyance. The right to a state is a political right exercised by an authority over its people in a given piece of land, but the right of return is an inalienable basic right which cannot be negotiated or bartered away. It applies to every Palestinian who has been expelled or was forced to leave his home in 1948: he has the right to return to that place regardless of the sovereignty applied, whether it is Israeli, Palestinian, French, or British. Therefore the right of return legally applies regardless of the political composition of the country - whether it is one state or two states. This has been clearly stated in the Partition Resolution. So it's a big fallacy to barter the two and in fact morally wrong, legally invalid and politically wicked. Al Jazeera: After all these years, what's changed for Palestinian refugees? Legalities aside, is the right of return more or less realisble today, in 2005, and does it matter? Abu-Sitta: After 57 years, it becomes very clear that Israel is militarily too strong, that it is not willing to yield to the right of return, and that the US will continue for the foreseeable future to support it on this position. On the bright side the Palestinians not only have not forgotten their right, but now the right of return movement all over the world is stronger than ever. It is articulated by the third generation of refugees, who are confident, well-educated and quite efficient in whatever they do compared to their simple folks 50 years ago. Also, the world has now woken up, especially the Western world, and they do not really buy the Zionist propaganda like "Palestine is a land without people for a people without a Land", like "there are no Palestinians". If you compare these two situations you'll find that there is a stalemate: Palestinians cannot defeat Israel militarily, and Israel cannot eliminate the Palestinians completely. So what is to become of this stalemate in the future? The force behind Israel is finite in life, while the spirit and determination of the Palestinians coupled with support is an increasing, not diminishing, force. That is why I feel there is no doubt that justice shall prevail. This interview was originally posted on Al Jazeera on May 31, 2005


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Timeline: Palestine since 1915

Palestinians say their nation has been occupied for the past 60 years [GALLO/GETTY] No country in the Arab World conjures up more anger and passion in the Arab psyche than Palestine. Palestinians say it is nation of cultures and religions bound together by history and inalienable rights. Israelis say Palestine is a part of land that has been inherently bequeathed to them by God. Religion and culture have often intermixed with colonial influence and the Cold War with deadly effect. Since 1948, and again in 1967, millions of Palestinians have been driven from their homes and live in squalor in refugee camps which festoon the Arab World. In Palestine and Israel violence continues to drown any hopes of a negotiable peace deal to bring stability, security and a just peace to the region. Suicide attacks carried out by armed groups against Israeli military and civilian targets and the killing of thousands of Palestinians by the Israeli military in the past decade have embittered both sides and created nearly unwavering distrust. But the roots of the conflict pre-date the UN mandate which led to the creation of Israel in 1948. 1915-1916: Hussein-McMahon correspondence. Exchange of letters between Sherrif Hussein ibn Ali, ruler of Mecca and the Hejaz, and Sir Henry McMahon, the British high commissioner in Egypt, regarding the future political status of the Arab lands of the Middle East, with Britain aiming to bring about an armed revolt against Ottoman rule. McMahon, in his second letter of October 24, 1915, writes: "The districts of Mersin and Alexandretta, and portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, cannot be said to be purely Arab, and must on that account be excepted from the proposed delimitation. "Subject to that modification, and without prejudice to the treaties concluded between us and certain Arab chiefs, we accept that delimitation. "As for the regions lying within the proposed frontiers, in which Great Britain is free to act without detriment to interests of her ally France, I am authorised to give you the following pledges on behalf of the Government of Great Britain, and to reply as follows to your note: That subject to the modifications stated above, Great Britain is prepared to recognise and uphold the independence of the Arabs in all the regions lying within the frontiers proposed by the Sharif of Mecca." May 16, 1916: Sykes-Picot Agreement. Britain and France sign a secret pact outlining their spheres of control in the Middle East after the first world war. Palestine is designated for international administration pending consultations with Russia and other powers. The agreement is seen by Arabs as a betrayal of the Hussein-McMahon correspondence. November 2, 1917: Balfour Declaration. Arthur James Balfour, Britain's foreign secretary, sends a letter to Lord Rothschild, president of the Zionist federation, stating the government's support for the establishment of


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"a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, the area consisting of today's Israel, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jordan. The declaration reads: "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." 1918: In the aftermath of the war the sons of Hussein were made the kings of Transjordan (later Jordan), Syria and Iraq. July 24, 1922: The League of Nations gives Britain a mandate to administer Palestine. Britain expresses an interest in Zionism, and describes its intention to develop a Jewish state. 1929-1939: In large part because of the rise of fascism in Europe, about 250,000 Jews arrive in Palestine during this period. 1929: Arguments between Muslims and Jews over access to the Western Wall. More than 130 Jews killed and 339 wounded (mainly by Arabs), 116 Arabs killed and 232 wounded (mainly by British-led personnel). August 23: Arab rioters kill 67 Jews in Hebron. 1930-35: Violent activities of the Black Hand Islamist group led by Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam against Jews. 1936-39: Arab revolt to protest against Jewish immigration to Palestine led by Haj Amin al-Husseini. More than 5,000 Arabs are killed, mostly by the British. Several hundred Jews are killed by Arabs. July 22, 1946: Bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which housed the British civil, military and police command in Palestine, by members of Irgun, a Zionist organisation. Ninety-one people are killed, 28 British, 41 Arab, 17 Jewish and five from other countries. November 29, 1947: United Nations general assembly passes a partition plan dividing the British Mandate of Palestine into two states. Accepted by the Jewish leadership but rejected by the Arab leadership. 1947-1949: The Nabka, meaning "disaster" or "cataclysm" in Arabic. Up to 900,000 Palestinians flee or are expelled from their homes in the part of the land that becomes the state of Israel. April 9, 11, 1948: Deir Yassin massacre. Between 100 and 254 Palestinian villagers, mainly women, old people and children are killed during and after an attack on the village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem by Irgun members. May 15: Declaration of Israel as the Jewish state. British withdraw from Palestine. Arab-Israeli war. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Lebanon declare war on Israel. Egypt, Jordan and Syria invade Israel. April, 1949: Israel and Arab states agree an armistice. Israel has taken about 50 per cent more land than was originally allotted to it by the UN partition plan. 1956: Egypt nationalises Suez Canal (July 26). France, Britain and Israel plan invasion of Egypt. Israel invades the Sinai peninsula (October 29). Pressure from the US and USSR force France, Britain and Israel to withdraw. May, 1964: The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) is founded in Cairo by the Arab League. The PLO states its goal as the destruction of the Israel through armed struggle, and the restoration of an "independent Palestinian state" between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea. June, 1967: Six Day war. Israel launches a pre-emptive attack on Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Israel captures Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. In this year, Israel begins settlement programme in areas captured during the Six Day war. 1968-1970: War of Attrition. Limited war fought between Egypt and Israel in which Egypt attempts to regain the Sinai Peninsula lost in the Six Day war. The war ended with a ceasefire in August 1970 with the same frontiers as at the start. February 2, 1969: Yasser Arafat is appointed chairman of the PLO. 1972, September 5: Eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team and one German police officer are killed by Palestinian group Black September at the Munich Olympics. October 6, 1973: Yom Kippur war (October war). In a surprise attack on the Jewish Day of Atonement, Egypt and Syria retake the areas in Sinai and the Golan Heights that were lost in the Six Day war. Despite initial gains they are soon forced to retreat by Israeli forces. November 13, 1974: As thousands protest outside, Yasser Arafat makes his first appearance before the UN General Assembly, delivering his "olive branch and freedom fighter's gun" speech. November 22, 1974: The PLO is granted observer status at the UN. September 17, 1978: Menachem Begin, Israel's prime minister, and Anwar Sadat, Egypt's president, sign the Camp David Accord, with Israel agreeing to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for peace and a framework for future negotiation over the West Bank and Gaza Strip. March 26, 1979: Peace deal between Egypt and Israel. Egypt becomes the first Arab country to recognise Israel. Later in this year, Arab League suspends Egypt's membership of the league following Egypt's peace agreement with Israel. The organisation moves its headquarters to Tunis.


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October 6, 1981: Sadat is assassinated by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organisation, while reviewing a military parade, in retaliation for Sadat's recognition of Israel. June 6, 1982: Israel invades Lebanon to remove PLO fighters who it says are threatening its border. PLO relocates to Tunis as it is driven out of Lebanon by Israel during the six-month invasion of the country. Remains active in Lebanon but not to the same extent as before 1982. September, 1982: Sabra and Shatila massacre. Lebanese Phalangists (members of a Christian paramilitary group) kill up to 2,750 Palestinians in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. August, 1983: The Israeli army withdraws from most of Lebanon, maintaining a self-proclaimed "security zone" in the south. September 25, 1985: Three Israelis are killed on their yacht off the coast of Larnaca, Cyprus, by Force 17, a commando group from Fatah, the largest organisation in the PLO. October 1: Israel's Operation Wooden Leg attempts to kill Arafat with an air raid on his headquarters in Tunis. He survives, but 60 members of the PLO are killed including much of the leadership. December 8, 1987: First intifada (uprising) starts. Palestinians begin general strikes, riots and civil disobedience campaigns across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli army replies with tear gas, plastic bullets, and live rounds. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin creates Hamas from the Gaza wing of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. November 15, 1988: At a meeting of the Palestine National Council in Algeria, Yasser Arafat unilaterally proclaims a State of Palestine. August, 1990: The PLO supports Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Kuwait responds by severing ties with the PLO and cutting its financial backing. After Iraqi forces are defeated, Kuwait expels some 400,000 Palestinians who had been living in the emirate. October, 1991: The Madrid conference, hosted by the Spanish government and co-sponsored by the US and Soviet Union, begins. September 13, 1993: Oslo declaration of principles. PLO and Israel agree to recognise each other. February 25, 1994: Baruch Goldstein, an American-Israeli settler, enters the Cave of the Patriarchs, a religious site in Hebron, and kills 29 Palestinians, injuring another 125. October 26: Israel and Jordan sign a peace treaty ending 45-years of hostility. Israel agrees to recognise the special role of Jordan over Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. November 4, 1995: Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's prime minister, is assassinated by Yigal Amir, an Israeli orthodox Jewish student who is against the Middle East peace plan. Shimon Peres takes over as prime minister. July, 2000: The Camp David summit between Ehud Barak, Israel's prime minister, and Arafat, the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, aimed at reaching a "final status" agreement ends after Arafat refuses to accept a proposal drafted by US and Israeli negotiators. September: Palestinians riot after Ariel Sharon, of the Likud party in Israel, visits the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Second initifada begins. February 6, 2001: Sharon is elected the leader of Likud and refuses to continue negotiations with Arafat. June 1: A Hamas suicide bomber attacks a nightclub. Twenty-one Israelis killed, mainly teenagers, more than 100 injured. October 17: Rehavam Zeevi, Israel's tourism minister, is shot dead in Jerusalem by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. December: Sharon sends troops into Ramallah shelling and surrounding the Palestinian government's West Bank headquarters; Arafat is unable to leave. March, 2002: Israeli army launches Operation Defensive Shield, the country's biggest military operation in the West Bank since the Six Day war in 1967. In the same year, Israel begins construction of separation barrier between the West Bank and Israel, but for some of its length it serves to annex large areas of Palestinian land. March 27, 28: Beirut summit between heads of Arab nations to discuss plans to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Arafat is unable to attend as Israel will not guarantee he will be able to return. Arab leaders collectively offer Israel peace, recognition and normal relations in return for Israel's withdrawal from Arab lands captured since 1967, the restoration of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital and a "fair solution" for the 3.8 million Palestinian refugees. March 22, 2004: Sheikh Yassin, the founder and leader of Hamas, is assassinated by an Israeli helicopter gunship. April 17: Abd al-Aziz al-Rantissi, the co-founder of Hamas and successor to Yassin, is killed by the Israeli army. July 9: International Court of Justice rules that the Israeli separation barrier violates international law and must be removed. November 11: Arafat dies. January 9, 2005: Mahmoud Abbas is elected president of the Palestinian National Authority. January 10: Sharon creates government of unity with Labour and United Torah Judaism parties. August: Completion of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan from Gaza and four West Bank settlements.


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January 25, 2006: Hamas wins a majority of seats in the Palestinian legislative elections. The US, Israel and several European countries cut off aid to the Palestinians as the Islamist movement rejects Israel's right to exist. June 25: Palestinians cross the border from the Gaza Strip and capture Corporal Gilad Shalit, killing two Israeli soldiers and wounding four others. September: Violence erupts between Fatah and Hamas parties in the Gaza Strip. Abbas attempts to prevent civil war. Abbas's Fatah movement supports a Palestinian state alongside Israel, while Hamas rejects Israel's right to exist. October 1: Eight people are killed in Gaza in factional infighting between Hamas and Fatah as a new wave of violence erupts. October: A number of mediation conferences are held. Egypt and Qatar send their foreign ministers to meet with both sides. Other Palestinian groups like the Islamic jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine mediate between the two sides to stop the clashes. November 13: Following talks between Hamas and Fatah, both sides agree to form a unity government unaligned with either movement. Muhammad Shbeir, a Gaza academic who is close to Hamas but not a party member accepts, the offer to head the government. December 15: Hamas accuses Fatah of involvement in a gun attack on Ismael Haniya, Palestinian prime minister, as he crosses the border from Egypt into Gaza. December 16: Abbas calls for new elections as a solution to the ongoing crisis. January 21, 2007: Abbas meets Khaled Meshaal of Hamas in Damascus in response to an invitation by Bashar Al-Assad, the Syrian president. January 30: Fatah and Hamas reach a ceasefire agreement mediated by Egypt after a series of clashes that lead to the death of 32 Palestinians. Both sides welcome a Saudi initiative to meet in Mecca. February 8: Hamas and Fatah agree on a deal in Mecca to end factional warfare that has killed scores of Palestinians and to form a coalition, hoping this would lead Western powers to lift crippling sanctions imposed on the Hamas-led government. February 9: The Quartet welcomes the role of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in reaching the agreement to form a Palestinian National Unity government but later reaffirms that it must obey international demands to recognise Israel, renounce violence and abide by previous peace agreements. February 15: Ismail Haniya and his cabinet resign. Haniya is re-appointed by President Abbas and begins the process of forming a new Palestinian unity government. March 15: Palestinians reach agreement on the formation of the government. March 17: The new Palestinian unity government holds its first cabinet meeting in Gaza City, with ministers in the West Bank participating from Ramallah via video link. March: Israel refuses to talk to the coalition, saying it fails to meet international demands - renouncing violence, recognizing Israel and honoring past peace deals. March: Hamas-Fatah violence erupts in Gaza, leaving one Fatah fighter dead, and seven people wounded, in the first deadly clash between the two groups, since the unity government was formed. March: Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, describes Ismail Haniya, his Palestinian counterpart and senior Hamas leader, as a "terrorist". April: Israel plans Gaza invasion, a day after Ehud Olmert, Israeli prime minister, calls for a regional peace conference with Arab states. April: The US gives Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, $60m to boost his presidential guard and for other security expenses. The money would also be used for security improvements at Gaza's main commercial crossings with Israel, for logistics and communications equipment, and other security expenses. Several US legislators had held up the money, fearing it could reach Hamas, which formed a unity government with Abbas's Fatah party after months of negotiation. May: Israel presses ahead with air raids on Gaza, launching five attacks after dark. The strikes came after Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, said that Israel would continue its crackdown on Hamas following Qassam rocket attacks on Sderot that killed one Israeli civilian and injured one. June: Hamas issues Gaza arms ultimatum and tightens its grip and control on the territory. Abbas issues new government, and announces Salam Fayyad, an economist, as the emergency government head. Abbas swears in new emergency government, by passing Hamas. June: Palestinian aid embargo lifted. The US and the European Union resume aid to Palestine. Abbas announces it is time to resume peace talks with Israel. November: George Bush, US president, hosts peace talks between Palestine and Israel at Annapolis, Maryland, while Hamas still holds control over Gaza. January, 2008: Israel steps up military actions on Gaza and Hamas, killing seven Palestinians. Olmert vows to hit back after Hams rocket attacks in Israel. Israel continues powerful incursion on Gaza, leaving Palestinians in a humanitarian crisis without fuel, power, food and water. Palestinians blow up part of the border at Rafah, going into Egypt. The border breach came several days after Israel had imposed a complete blockade on Gaza, with Egyptian backing, in response to a rocket barrage from Gaza on Israeli border towns. Ismail Haniya, Hamas leader and one-time prime minister, has meanwhile said the group


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would not allow the border to be resealed. The border crossing had been opened on the orders of by Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president. It had allowed Palestinians trapped in Gaza to purchase important basic necessities that were unavailable due to the Israeli blockade.


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Has Israel succeeded as a state? - By Saeed Taji Farouky in London

Right-wing Israelis establish one of the first West Bank settlements on December 8, 1975 [GALLO/GETTY] As Israel prepares to commemorate its 60th anniversary in May, some academics, scholars and journalists are pausing to reflect on the ambitions and aspirations that fuelled the country's 1948 independence - and whether those reasons still resonate today. David Rubinger, an Israeli photojournalist who witnessed and photographed the country's birth in 1948, told Al Jazeera: "I will with absolute pride say never in history have 600,000 people achieved in 60 years what these 600,000 people achieved in 1948." "I think it's historically unprecedented. At the same time, I'm not proud of what Israel has done since 1967," he said. Rubinger was in London last week, along with other Jewish, Israeli and Palestinian historians, writers and journalists for Jewish Book Week, an annual event which was this year dedicated to "Israel at 60". He has enjoyed a ringside seat - camera in hand - at every major historical event that has shaped the country's history. Rubinger - whose first professional photograph depicted a group of young Jews celebrating the UN partition plan - remembers well the early idealism of those days, as well the difficulties that followed. "The early idealism of Zionism that this was going to benefit the Middle East didn't come true, unfortunately," he said. "The moment you become an occupying force, you lose your moral strength. I look at the Palestinians today and I say they may be suffering, but morally they're becoming stronger every day while we become morally weaker every day." Fighting for its soul But Menahem Brinker, founder of the Israeli peace movement Peace Now, believes that Israel's morality 60 years on is not in question. He says it is kept alive by the fact that many of its citizens continue to protest the occupation, even when protest is unpopular. "Morally it is not collapsing, [Israel] fights all the time for its soul," he said. "Israel has been in a crisis from the day it was born. It survives with the crisis." Benny Morris is an Israeli historian and the founder of the revisionist New Historians whose writing was – controversially - the first to re-examine many of the documents relating to the founding of Israel. Like Brinker, he disagrees with the continued occupation of the West Bank but feels Israel's morality is not at stake. "Occupying another people in general is immoral ... but I don't think that has turned Israel into an immoral country," he told Al Jazeera. "In some way you can blame Israel for maintaining the occupation, but in some way you can blame the Arabs for forcing Israel to maintain the occupation.”


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Zionism has failed Sari Nusseibeh, the president of Jerusalem's Al-Quds University and one of Jewish Book Week's two Arab guests, believes the Zionist project in Palestine has been a failure. "Did the Zionist project succeed after 60 years? My answer is no. Assuming that it was aimed at finding a secure haven for the Jewish people, I don't think it has because it is neither secure nor is it a haven nor is it now a place where only Jews live." "It is, as far as I'm concerned, a tragedy. I understand it is for Israelis a very beautiful thing, but this is life." But Morris believes that despite its shortcomings and the occupation, there are many positive qualities about Israel. He told Al Jazeera: "[Theodore] Herzl [the father of modern Zionism] and most of the founders thought they would be establishing a Western democracy, an enlightened area in an area which they thought was dark and barbaric.” "And they did establish a democracy. It's got a lot of problems, but it's also got a lot of light." He agrees with Nusseibeh that the original goal of Israel's founders was only partially achieved: "Zionism has been a success in that it established a state ... but it's a very dangerous place for the Jews. It's a place which is ultimately under existential threat. In that sense it didn't actually realize the dreams of the founders." 'Bloody birth' Nusseibeh, who has been involved in numerous peace initiatives and helped draft the Palestinian National Council's 1988 Declaration of Independence, also believes perceptions have changed, though there is still much more to be done, particularly on the Palestinian side. "Some 20, 30 years ago you had very few voices in Israel that were openly self-critical and they were not very popular in Israel," he said. "But I think people are coming to realize that Israel did not go through an immaculate conception. It was a bloody birth." "I think the Israelis are ahead of [the Palestinians] in terms of self-reflection," he adds. "With the Palestinians it’s still a process ... this kind of thinking is not something we engage in very much." For Morris, Israel's 60th birthday may not hold any special symbolism, but it does offer enough distance to closely re-examine the events of Israel’s establishment. "The closer you were to 1948, the more difficult it was to actually look at things objectively and critically. The further we are from 1948, the easier it is to take a step back and try to describe things truthfully." This emphasis on truth, in a history so often subject to interpretation, is raised many times during any discussion of Israeli-Palestinian issues. But, as Rubinger points out, it will always remain subjective and selective. "The best role you can play is telling the truth, but in the old days ... they could tell the whole story and go into the background," he said. "Modern journalism doesn't allow that. We're getting only glimpses of the truth."


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Milestones of war and peace

In this file photo, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat talks with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, left, and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres after they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prizes in 1994 [GALLO/GETTY] In the years following the Arab defeat during the Six-Day War in 1967, the UN and other groups worked to push the warring parties towards opening channels for duologue which would blossom into full-fledged peace treaties. The UN passed dozens of resolutions condemning the violence, tit-for-tat attacks between Israelis and the Arabs, and endorsed peace plans that have come and gone. The following are key events in the development - and ultimate failure - of several peace initiatives in the past 41 years. November 22, 1967: Following the Six-Day war between Israel and the Arabs, the UN Security Council passes resolution 242 and expresses "its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East, emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every state in the area can live in security". The resolution becomes the basis for all future peace treaties, agreements and accords. February 14, 1969: The fifth Palestinian National Council meeting convenes in Cairo. Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), is declared chairman of the executive committee, effectively becoming head of the Palestinian movement. June 25, 1970: William Rogers, US secretary of state launches an initiative for peace in the Middle East, later known as the Rogers Plan. It is described as an encouragement to Israel and the Arabs to move towards a just and lasting peace by means of a final settlement. Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt's president accepts the plan as a way of reducing Egyptian-Israeli hostilities. October 6, 1973: Egypt and Syria attack Israeli forces in the Sinai and Golan Heights on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, hoping to reclaim territory lost in the Six-Day war. They make initial gains but are forced to retreat after an Israeli counterattack. After regaining the territory, Israel's Prime Minister Golda Meir resigns. November 9, 1977: Anwar Sadat, Egypt's president astonishes the world when he turns up in Israel, the first Arab head of state to recognize and visit Israel. Addressing the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, Sadat urges that UN resolutions 242 and 338 be implemented by Israel to convince the Arabs to come to the negotiating table. Though Israel does not adopt the resolutions, Sadat's speech paves the way for the Camp David accords signed between Egypt and Israel under US sponsorship. The accords become the cornerstone for the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab country. It is signed on March 26, 1979, formally ending the state of war between the two sides. August 7, 1981: Fahd bin Abd al-Aziz, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince - later to become King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, announces an initiative for peace in the Middle East. The initiative consists of eight articles of intent, including an implicit recognition of Israel. It mentions the right to exist for all Middle Eastern countries, and is based mainly on UN resolution 242. The initiative calls for a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. (But Israel annexes East Jerusalem a year later.)


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In November 1981, the initiative is officially submitted to the first Arab Summit in Fez, Morocco, but fails to win majority approval. Fez hosts another Arab summit in 1982 and the initiative is resubmitted and is approved by an overwhelming majority. June 6, 1982: Israel invades Lebanon and occupies its southern region causing a furore in the Arab world. All diplomatic peace initiatives are suspended. The Israeli army allows the newly created Christian SLA (South Lebanon Army) to carry out massacres and commit human-rights abuses. November 23, 1984: The Palestinian National Council holds its 17th session in Amman, Jordan. King Hussein of Jordan delivers a speech urging conferees to agree on a Jordanian– Palestinian peace initiative, based on UN resolution 242. The Palestinian leadership, startling the world, announces that the PLO is considering dropping armed resistance against Israel and could agree to live side by side with an Israeli state if Israel were to pull out from the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. The Arab states start intensive diplomatic efforts to reach a compromise with Israel on this. In 1985, Jordan and the PLO agree on cofederalism in a bid to form a pan-Arab formula for peace in the Middle East. The formula stipulates that lands recovered from Israeli occupation would be annexed to Jordan under a federation system. But efforts collapse when Israeli warplanes bomb PLO headquarters in Tunis. December 9, 1987: An intifada (popular uprising) among the occupied Palestinian population begins. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, including women, children and teenagers take part. The symbol of the intifada becomes the stone-throwing children confronting the Israeli army. Between December 1987 and September 1993 (the Declaration of Principles Agreement) thousands of Palestinians are killed, with the UN reporting the Palestinian death ratio at 25 to 1 Israeli during this first intifada. March 6, 1991: The US, fresh from victory in the first Gulf war, announces an initiative for peace in the Middle East to take place in the autumn of that year. October 30: An international peace conference, co-sponsored by the US and the Soviet Union and with Israeli and Arab delegates, is convened in Madrid, Spain. The talks do not prove successful, yet it leads to secret meetings in Oslo, Norway, between the PLO and Israeli officials and makes promising progress. September 13, 1993: The PLO and Israel officially recognize each other by signing a Declaration of Principles (DoP) in Washington, DC. The agreement, drawn up in Oslo, stipulates that during a five-year interim period, Palestinians would gradually be handed the administration of the West Bank and Gaza, and continue to negotiate a permanent peace treaty to settle on the final status of the occupied territories. July 1, 1994: Arafat returns to the Gaza Strip, Palestine, after 27 years in exile and is to head an interim administration of the new Palestinian Authority. October 26: Jordan and Israel sign the Treaty of Peace in Araba Valley, Jordan, to become the second Arab state after Egypt to end the state of war with Israel. As in 1993, the peace treaty is backed by diplomatic moves by the US. September 24, 1995: Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres sign the Taba Agreement. The agreement sets up the mechanism for a transitional period towards Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, during which Palestinians will assume control over Palestinian towns and villages, and consequently ends a 28-year occupation there. November 4: Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by a Jewish extremist. Pere becomes prime minister. December 11: Peres spells out his notion of a "grand peace" based on Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights (occupied by Israel since the 1967 conflict), in return for full normalization of relations with Syria and the Arab states. Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian president, responds positively to the initiative. June 22, 1996: Arafat wins elections and is sworn in as Palestinian president. October 23, 1998: Following a 19-month deadlock, during which Israelis and Palestinians exchange accusations of disrupting the peace process, the Wye River Memorandum is signed in the US, promising Palestinians faster and further autonomy. A revised accord is signed in September kickstarting fresh talks. May 22, 2000: Battered by frequent attacks mounted year on year by Islamist resistance group Hezbollah (Party of God), Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Barak announces a hasty withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon, after 22 years of occupation. July 25: A marathon summit hosted by Bill Clinton, the US president, between Barak and Arafat at Camp David collapses when they fail to agree on, among other things, the future status of Jerusalem. September 28-29: In a highy provocative move, Ariel Sharon, the Israeli housing minister at the time, visits al-Aqsa mosque, sparking a violent reaction from Palestinians. The Palestinians are outraged that the man they hold responsible for the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon is visiting the Aqsa mosque compound. Violent protests ensue. The peace process in the Middle East receives a deadly blow as Israel reoccupies the Palestinian territories amid fighting between the Palestinian and Israeli army. A second Intifada begins which, according to Israeli human rights organization BTselem, kills 2171 Palestinians and 194 Israelis by October 15, 2003.


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October 17: Egypt hosts the Sharm al-Sheikh peace summit. The summit announces a plan to bring weeks of Israeli-Palestinian confrontation to an end. The plan does not succeed. May 21, 2001: George Mitchell, a former US Senator releases his long-awaited report (the Mitchell Plan) on the Middle East conflict. It calls for a ceasefire, confidence-building measures and, ultimately, negotiations. June 16, 2002: Israel begins construction of its wall to enclose the West Bank. September 20: Israel besieges Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah, demolishing most of his office complex and confining him there, while simultaneously embarking on a policy of extrajudicial assassinations and imprisonment of Palestinian leaders. February 26, 2003: Israel begins a series of incursions (repeated throughout the year) that lead to the reoccupation of parts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, inflicting widespread damage and heavy civilian casualties. February 27: The plan insists on Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories in return for Arab recognition of Israel's right to exist. A similar version but with reservations is adopted later by the Arab League. April 29-30 : Following the invasion of Iraq by the US and allied occupation forces, Arafat, under intense international pressure, allows the election of Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian prime minister to embrace a reform and peace agenda. The Israelis and Palestinians receive the long overdue, heavily promoted "road map" formula for peace, internationally backed by the quartet of the US, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations. June 4: Sharon and Abbas meet at Aqaba, Jordan, to discuss the implementation of the peace road map. March 22, 2004: Sheikh Yassin, the founder and leader of Hamas, is assassinated by an Israeli helicopter gunship. November 11: Arafat dies. January 9, 2005: Mahmoud Abbas is elected president of the Palestinian National Authority. January 25, 2006: Hamas wins a majority of seats in the Palestinian legislative election. The US, Israel and several European countries cut off their aid to the Palestinians as the movement rejects Israel's right to exist. February 8, 2007: Hamas and Fatah agree on a deal in Mecca to end factional warfare that has killed scores of Palestinians and to form a coalition, hoping this would lead Western powers to lift crippling sanctions imposed on the Hamas-led government. February 9: The Quartet welcomes the role of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in reaching the agreement to form a Palestinian National Unity government but later reaffirms that it must obey international demands to recognize Israel, renounce violence and abide by previous peace agreements. March 17: The new Palestinian unity government holds its first cabinet meeting in Gaza City, with ministers in the West Bank participating from Ramallah via video link. March: Israel refuses to talk to the coalition, saying it fails to meet international demands renouncing violence, recognizing Israel and honoring past peace deals. November: George Bush, US president, hosts peace talks between Palestine and Israel at Annapolis, Maryland, while Hamas still holds control over Gaza. January, 2008: Israel steps up military actions on Gaza and Hamas, killing seven Palestinians. Olmert vows to hit back after Hams rocket attacks in Israel. Israel continues powerful incursion on Gaza, leaving Palestinians in a humanitarian crisis without fuel, power, food and water.


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IV. Nasserism


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1948: A Cause for Unity?

Was the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 a cause for Arab unity? [AFP] In November 1947, the UN voted to divide Palestine in two. While the British accepted the resolution and made plans to withdraw, the Arabs and Palestinians rejected it. On May 14, 1948, the day before the British withdrawal, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, declared the creation of the State of Israel on the land granted by the Partition Plan. The next day, as the last British troops were leaving, war broke out between Palestinians and the Haganah. Seven Arab armies entered the war. Hani Abdel Hadi, from the Palestinian Strategic Studies Institute, says: "You could see Arab leaders interest in having a say in Palestine, since Palestine is the core of not the Arab-Palestinian conflict or Arab-Israeli conflict, but is the consciousness of the Arab world. He who governs Jerusalem, he who has a say in Palestine will have the upper hand in the Arab World." The Nakba After nine months of fighting the Arab armies, including the forces of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Transjordan, were defeated and the Israelis captured 75 per cent of Palestine, giving it an area one-third greater than the area assigned to them under the UN partition plan. The remainder of Palestine, namely the West Bank, was controlled by Jordanian forces, while the Gaza Strip was left under Egyptian control. This period is known by the Arabs as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Abu Talab, a Palestinian refugee, says: "The Arab army didn't help. When the Jews attacked, they ran for their lives before the locals had a chance to flee. They abandoned the country and its helpless population with no means of defense." Over 750,000 Palestinian refugees fled to neighboring Arab countries where they were housed in camps. The camps were crowded and unsanitary and the fate of the refugees lay in the hands of their hosts. The official policy of most Arab states was that the Palestinian refugees should be kept in a permanent state of readiness, prepared to return to Palestine at any moment. In December 1948, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 194 which recognised the right of refugees to return to their homes. Symbolic unity The occupation of Palestine and the plight of the refugees caused new awareness amongst ordinary Arabs. Now, more than ever before - united by tragedy - they began to think in collective terms. Fawwaz Traboulsi, a political analyst, says: "The tragedy of Palestine to begin with, became a rallying point for Arabs, in a sense became one form of Arab unity, you unite around Palestine.


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"Second, you can say the opposite. Palestine became a supplement or a displacement of a wish or a desire, which is not implemented, which is the desire for Arab unity. So the Arabs cannot be united effectively but they can be united symbolically around Palestine." The unanimity on the Arab street did not translate into concerted action. Preoccupied with managing the transition from colonial domination to independence, most Arab leaders were concerned with matters closer to home. One future Arab leader, however, gained his first battle experience in the Arab-Israeli war in 1948, and the defeat had a profound influence on him. Gamel Abdel Nasser became determined to solve the Palestinian problem and make Arab unity work.

Revolution bred by defeat - By Dina Abdel-Mageed in Cairo

Arab armies returned from the 1948 war with Israel feeling humiliated and defeated As the defeated Arab armies returned home having lost more of Palestine than had been originally appropriated by the 1947 UN Partition Plan, there was disquiet among the people of the region. The domestic unrest that followed the war reflected a profound sense of betrayal and humiliation - felt by both the masses and the army officers who had experienced the Nakba firsthand. Many Arab armies felt that they had been intentionally weakened by their own civilian governments and monarchies. Senior military officers began to feel the pulse of revolt within their own cadres and in the universities, mosques and villages. Revolution in the air The next two decades witnessed a wave of coups that toppled the old political regimes and brought the military to power in most Arab countries. Sami Moubayed, a Syrian political analyst, says the 1948 defeat went beyond discrediting the post-war governments and served as a catalyst in their downfall. Moubayed said: "The Syrian regime was the first to fall in 1949. Then, the second to crumble was the Lebanese government of Bishara al-Khury, which lasted until 1952 and was brought down by street demonstrations. Then came the famous July 26 Revolution in Egypt." In 1958, Abdel-Karim Qasim, a disgruntled brigadier-general, overthrew the British installed Hashemite monarchy in the first of what would become a series of military coups in Iraq. Leaders of successive military coups in Iraq would later sing from the same song sheet – one after another, they ascribed toppling the old regimes to the 1948 defeat in Palestine.


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Radwan al-Sayyid, a Lebanese political thinker, said: "Abdel-Salam Aref (the Colonel who toppled Abdel-Karim Qasim later) stated that the bungling in Palestine in 1948 was a major reason behind his coup d'état." The proverbial camel But some observers argue that al-Nakba was merely the straw that broke the camel's back, building on growing dissatisfaction and social disenfranchisement already prevalent in the region. "The 1948 defeat only magnified the reasons, and made it easy to pull off a coup," Moubayed said. Another problem was the fact that the upper-class civilian politicians were no longer able to inspire the masses who were now angry and pushing for independence. Moubayed argues that political leaders who had emerged as nationalist leaders in the 1920s and 30s had now grown old and their rhetoric had, after 1948, failed to galvanize Arab public opinion. "The people were looking for younger leaders who resembled them and were closer to their generation's worries," he said. The tame rebel Arthur Goldschmidt Jr, a professor of Middle East history at Pennsylvania State University, also believes that the ruling elites overestimated their control of the military establishment which was considered "too tame to rebel". "Contemporary observers expected the revolution to come from the Muslim Brothers, the Communists, perhaps a coalition of workers and students, or even the Wafd Party itself," he told Al Jazeera. However, developments in the region contradicted the expectations of the majority of people. Al-Sayyid argues that conditions which fueled popular revolts in other countries simply did not exist in the Arab World at the time. "Popular revolutions are usually carried out by labor movements or civil society organizations, which did not exist during that time," he said. "The army was the only entity that had enough discipline and was able to change the existing political order without allowing the country falling into turmoil." Foreign influence Some historians, however, also suggest that the US, which had emerged as the victor in World War II and was poised to enter a Cold War with the Soviets, was beginning to flex its influence in the oil-rich region. Moubayed said: "The Syrian coup of 1949 was the first covert operation outside the US for the newly created CIA." He added that the US had tried to pressure Shukri al-Quwatli, the Syrian president at the time, to accept the UN Partition Plan, ratify passage rights for a Saudi pipeline that was supposed to reach Sidon in Lebanon via Syria, and crush the communist party in Damascus. But Quwatli refused to give in to any of the US demands. "The CIA sent Miles Copland, the architect of the coup, and Stephan Mead, the US military attaché to Syria, [with] the following instructions: 'If you cannot change the board, then change the players'," Moubayed told Al Jazeera. Goldschmidt says the same theory can be applied to Egypt in 1952. He says British troops stationed in the Suez Canal made no efforts to prevent the 1952 revolution, which was effectively a bloodless coup. "Some of us wonder if the CIA might have at least facilitated the military coup of July 23, 1952," he said. No viable alternative While the revolutions and coups appeared to vindicate anger following the 1948 defeat they did not offer the region the type of alternative governance that Arab masses had been seeking. Al-Sayyid says the revolutions were "false medications". Within a few years of the coups, the hopes for democracy were dashed by the emergence of single-party regimes that harshly oppressed their opponents. The officer-politicians established themselves as the new aristocracy, and the social and economic reforms promised to the Arab World proved to be failures. Cultivable lands were spliced up and the number of government employees and university students mushroomed beyond the government’s capabilities. The anger over the defeat of 1948 would now be encapsulated within the zeal of socialist inefficiency and propagandistic diatribes. Two decades after the Nakba, the great revolution would culminate in yet another profound defeat. In 1967, Israel again emerged victorious after the Six-Day War against the Arabs.


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Arab Unity: Nasser's Revolution

Between 1952 and 1970 there was one man at the heart of the drive for Arab unity Cairo, the capital of Egypt, is the Arab World's largest city. Home to over 18 million people, it is often called the heart of the Arab World. It is also considered by many to be the cradle of modern Arab nationalism for it was in Cairo that the idea of a unified Arab nation found its greatest expression. Bloodless coup At the end of World War Two, colonialism still dominated large parts of the Arab World. Egypt was a monarchy under British rule and the base of Britain's presence in the Middle East. Egyptian discontent at still being a colony was rising and Egyptians felt angry and humiliated after their poorly-armed military lost the 1948 war against Israel. On July 23, 1952, a group of Egyptian army officers, calling themselves the Free Officers Movement, took power in a bloodless coup. At the forefront of the uprising was a charismatic young army officer called Gamal Abdel Nasser. This was the first military coup to happen in the Arab World and it set a precedent for many to follow. After assuming power, Nasser and the Free Officers formed the Revolutionary Command Council, which constituted the real power in Egypt. General Muhammad Naguib became Egypt's first president. However, it soon became clear that the revolution was driven by the charisma of Nasser, and his strong ideological notions. Conflict with Naguib over strategies soon resulted in his removal, and in October, 1954 Nasser was appointed president of Egypt. He was the first native Egyptian to rule Egypt in over 2500 years. Dia' El Din Mohammad Daoud, the secretary-general of the Nasserite movement, says: "Nasser was an ordinary man of the people, not a man of the upper classes, he came from the working classes, the father was a simple employee, his allegiance was always to the people, that's where he came from, that was his image." Vision Nasser set about changing Egypt. He had his own vision for both a new nation and the Arab World. Politically, he transformed Egypt into a republic, introducing centralized parliamentary rule, but he is better known for his domestic social programs. Nasser's aim was to improve the conditions of the peasant majority - establishing land reforms, free educational programs for boys and girls and developing the country's medical infrastructure. Egypt was captivated, and the Arab World watched closely as Nasser expanded on his brand of socialism. He believed that if the people had real equality they would feel more united and act as one entity. Saadedine Ibrahim, an Egyptian political activist, says: "One of the very early phrases that Nasser coined was addressing the common man: Raise your head fellow brother, the end of colonialism has come.' And that is the kind of language, message that echoed very deeply with the average man, because it was a simple language and people who were downtrodden, people who were beaten, mistreated, felt worthless,


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began to gain that kind of confidence, spirit that they didn't have before." Never before had an Arab leader achieved such popularity outside his own capital. Rarely had the population of an underdeveloped Arab World felt that they could participate in the future of their own nations. Winning Arab hearts Daoud says: "For the first time an Egyptian leader from the people and not from the upper classes, was able to win the hearts of the Arab people, there was now contact with various Arab forces and duologue, there was a common language, one with which all Arabs could identify, this paved the way for a common Arab strategy." Nasser's modern take on nationalism inspired Arabs, in a way which the Nahda, the Arab renaissance of the 19th century, had not. Nasserism had taken Arabism a step further. He believed Arabs would be stronger if united, that they shared a common struggle against colonial powers and that the liberation of Palestine should be an Arab duty. Nasser's vision extended far beyond Egypt. He believed that the lessons of the revolution should be applied in other Arab countries. His charisma and influence were so great that he inspired Arabs elsewhere to dream of a unified Arab nation. His defiant attitude towards Egypt's former colonial masters made him even more popular. Nasserism swept the region. Suez Canal crisis One of Nasser's main concerns was foreign occupation of Arab lands and it was events surrounding this issue which lead to a dramatic turn towards Arab unity. As early as 1954, he supported Algeria's struggle for independence from the French, by providing arms and military training to Algeria's independence movement. But liberating his own nation from occupation proved to be one of the milestones of his career. The British, who had originally agreed to remove their troops from the Suez Canal by 1954, still occupied it. At the same time Egypt desperately needed electricity and the Americans had promised Nasser over $200m to build a hydroelectric power station in Aswan - known as the High Dam. But the US was a strong ally of Israel who - by 1954 - occupied large parts of Palestine. Nasser's opposition to Israel and what he saw as US and European colonialism as well as his growing relationship with the communist block angered Western powers. The US refused to finance the dam. In response Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal on July 26, 1956 and turned to the Soviets for financial aid. The British and French no longer controlled this vital seaway. The old colonial powers were humiliated. Ibrahim says: "It was fantastic, we went down to the streets, it was late at night, it was summer... streets were full of demonstrations, joy, people cheering... it was like a festival, it was like a feast, a moment of victory again." What followed was military conflict between Egypt and a coalition of French, British and Israeli forces. The operation to take the canal was a military success but a political disaster for the coalition - the US fearing Soviet intervention imposed an end to the crisis but allowed Israel to occupy the Sinai. Arab hero Despite the military defeat, Nasser had forced the West into submission. The Arab World had a new hero. The Arab World now felt it could rally behind a strong leader. The effects of his revolution in Egypt soon spread to other Arab nations. In 1958, the Iraqi Free Officers' Movement, modeled around Nasser's revolution, toppled the monarchy. In Lebanon, events in 1958 led to a minor civil war between the existing regime and more revolutionary currents, influenced by Nasser's ideas. The US was asked to intervene. US forces landed on Beirut's shores in support of the local government but in the end it was Nasser who brokered a political agreement among the warring factions. But the most notable spread of Nasserism in 1958 came in Syria. A power struggle erupted within the military between Baathist and Nasserist currents. Fearing their country might be divided and that this could derail the drive towards Arab unity, a group of Syrian army officers asked Nasser to join Egypt with Syria. Nasser was reluctant as the two countries had different political systems and experiences; he preferred a federation of two states. But with increasing pressure to find a rapid solution to Syria's situation, Nasser finally agreed, stressing that the two nations would be ruled on his terms. The United Arab Republic (UAR) was born.


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Problems persist At the peak of his rule in the late 1950s, Nasser was the most important leader in the Arab World. He had succeeded in uniting at least one Arab nation with another, and ruled over both. He had outmaneuvered the old colonial powers and hastened their decline, restoring to the Arabs long lost feelings of pride, self confidence and above all, he managed to set the stage for the creation of an aspirational dream - a unified Arab World. The dream of Arab unity had taken a huge leap. But there were problems in the new Middle East. Jewish peoples had either been forced or persuaded to leave their ancestral homes in Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco and Syria and immigrate to Israel. The newly formed UAR was begun to tear apart under the dissent borne of suspicions and rivalries between the Egyptians and Syrians. The Arab World had a hero, but it had still not been able to win back Palestine. And while Nasser had won many political battles, he had yet to score a battlefield victory against the Israelis who had delivered a punishing defeat to the Arabs in 1948. Nearly 20 years later, the Arabs new-found sense of pride would come face to face with the harsh realities of yet another defeat.

The 1956 Suez War

An Egyptian naval gunboat patrols the Suez Canal. Nasser did not anticipate an attack following his nationalization of the vital waterway The second Arab-Israeli war, also known as the Suez War, broke out on October 29, 1956 when Israel, Great Britain and France launched a joint attack against Egypt aimed at instituting a 'regime change' and deposing Gamal Abdel Nasser, the country's charismatic leader. But this significant war failed to achieve its goals and marked the decline of Britain's colonial powers in the Middle East. It also brought home the realities of Cold War politics. Tensions first arose when Nasser struck an arms deal with Czechoslovakia – a move that worried Great Britain and the US who viewed it as a shift towards closer ties with the Soviet Union. The World Bank, prodded by the US, retaliated by withdrawing a loan to Egypt for the building of the Aswan Dam. In the ongoing tit-for-tat, Nasser surprised the world by nationalizing the Suez Canal, a vital waterway, and replacing the private Anglo- French Company which ran it.


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Surprise move In 2006, Adel Ezzat, who worked closely with Nasser, recalled the moments leading up to the nationalization decision. "Only three of us were in the know," Ezzat told AFP. He had been working with Mohammed Yunes, Nasser's adviser on petroleum affairs. "President Nasser had chosen us to carry out the nationalization," Ezzat said. "On July 23, 1956, I met Nasser for the first time during the celebrations for the fourth anniversary of the revolution. „The president whispered something in Yunes' ear," Ezzat recalls. "Over the next 24 hours, Yunes seemed agitated and preoccupied." "The next day, he summoned me and my colleague Abdel Hamid Abu Bakr in his office and locked the door behind us, which I found very odd. "'The president has tasked me with nationalizing the Suez Canal,'" he said. "This decision had to remain top secret." Egyptian commandos The three-man commando unit had 48 hours to plan the take-over based on little information. Little did they know the move would not only spark a war with the West but also reshape Egypt's economy by regaining control of the most crucial chokepoint in world trade. "All we had were a few publications on the canal given to Yunes by the president. We didn't even have a mole in the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez that ran the waterway," Ezzat remembers. The trio gathered a wider group of around 30, who were to break up into three groups tasked with overrunning the company's offices in Port-Said, Suez and Ismailiya. "We weren't armed. Our instructions were to carry out the operation peacefully," Ezzat told AFP. Launch signal Ezzat recalls that the signal for the operation's launch was when Nasser, who was delivering a speech in Alexandria, pronounced the words "de Lesseps", in reference to Ferdinand de Lesseps who founded the canal in 1869. "Our mission was so secret that the drivers who took us from Cairo didn't even know our destination. Except us three, the people who we were with didn't know. They had only been told to bring a few clothes." The three groups were only informed of their respective assignments upon arriving at the Al- Galaa military base near Ismailiya on July 26, at around 4:00 in the afternoon. "Some of them hesitated. They were afraid of the reaction of the British troops guarding the canal. But we refused to abandon our plan, history was on the march," Ezzat says. The three groups fanned out. They crept up to the Suez company's offices but stayed out of sight, as they listened to Nasser's speech, their hearts throbbing with anxiety. Peaceful operation "The president said 'de Lesseps'. Then he repeated it a second time, and a third, as if he feared we hadn't heard him." Ezzat says the commandos went in at around 7:00 pm, found mostly empty offices and simply informed the guards that they had come to nationalize the Suez Canal. No blood was shed. "The president then delivered his speech on the nationalization. People poured into the streets and their support gave us more strength," he recalls. At that moment, Egypt regained control of the 19th century canal for whose construction an estimated 125,000 Egyptians perished in forced labor. Secret tripartite strategy But Britain, as a former colonial occupier of the country, and France were determined to punish Nasser. Nasser quickly blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba, barring Israel's access to the Red Sea. While Great Britain saw the conflict as a means to regain lost ground, Israel sought to invade Egypt for economic and strategic interests. Paris on the other hand, had been angered by Nasser's support of the Algerian rebellion against French colonizers. France, Britain and Israel engineered a secret plan whereby the Jewish State would seize the Canal. Britain and France would then demand the withdrawal of both Israel and Egypt from the Canal Zone. If Egypt refused, as expected, Britain and France would intervene and force the Egyptians out. On October 29, Israel initiated the hostilities when it invaded Gaza and the Sinai, then, on October 30, moved to the Suez Canal zone.


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Attack denounced Outraged that the US was not informed of the secret attack plan and fearful that the Soviet Union - which had close ties with Egypt - would be drawn into the conflict, Dwight Eisenhower, then US President, sponsored a UN resolution denouncing the attack. It was passed on November 2. While the ultimatum to Israel and Egypt had been ignored as expected, British and French troops were busy trying to take control of the Canal Zone. On November 6, 1956, the US threatened to cancel vital loans to its European allies and a few days later hostilities ended. A ceasefire came into effect and a UN emergency force was stationed in the area; the Suez was returned to Egypt. While Nasser lost the war in military terms, he gained politically. The conflict marked the dramatic end of British and French influence in the region, and left the US poised to become the most influential power in the region. Nasser's 1967 Disillusion

Israeli troops guard captured Egyptian troops and Palestinians at the start of the Six-Day War on June 5, 1967 in Rafah, Gaza Strip. [GALLO/GETTY] By the late 1950s, Egypt's president Gamal Abdel Nasser was the Arab world's most powerful and influential leader. With his own brand of socialist ideology and political victories he impressed and inspired the Arabs, giving a new meaning to Arab nationalism. In the meantime, Nasser was also coming under increasing pressure to confront Israel. Arab leaders began doubting his sincerity in defending Palestine, the cause he claimed to support. Counting heavily on Arab support, Nasser's stated his intention to attack Israel, although militarily stretched to breaking point with a large part of Egypt's army fighting in Yemen. The Arab Defense Pact was put to the test in 1967, in what became known as the Six-Day War. In a preemptive strike on June 5, Israel destroyed most of Egypt's air force on the ground. Arabs refer to this as the Naksa – the Defeat. The Arab Defense Pact failed, and after six days of fierce fighting, Israel had seized control of Jordan's West Bank, Syria's Golan Heights and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. Nasser was humiliated. The military defeat of 1967 showed lack of coordination among Arab states, Arab land was lost, the common enemy was victorious, and it served a big blow to Arab self confidence.


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Divided Arab World It has now been 41 years since the war that changed the shape of the Middle East and the region is as divided as ever. A swift victory for Israel gave rise to the belief that the young Jewish state could not be destroyed by its powerful neighbors. But, for Arab nations, the shock and scale of the sudden defeat came as a huge blow. The year 1967 established the newly formed state as a first class military power with Israel, backed by powerful Western countries, almost tripling its territory. The Sinai was later returned to Egypt. However the West Bank, home to 2.4 million Palestinians, and the Golan Heights, a key source of water and fertile land, remain under occupation. Today, despite the military victory, many uncertainties remain. The unresolved fate of millions of Palestinians, the ongoing violence in Gaza, the recent war in Lebanon with Hezbollah and continuing rocket attacks on Israeli territory have shown all too sharply how many problems from the 1967 war remain unresolved. More than forty years later, a lasting peace in the region remains as far out of reach as ever.


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Inspired by the roots of Arab unity - By Abdulkarim Hani

Hani: The Arab League's creation is a "safe and sure step" for unity [GALLO/GETTY] If history is any indication, Arab Unity is not a lost cause. It is also not an age-old cause. The roots of Arab Unity were founded in the second half of the 19th century, which was marked by frequent nationalist uprisings in the Ottoman Empire's European territories. Most of these uprisings, which signaled the spread of national movements across Europe, resulted in independence from the Ottomans and the emergence of new independent states based on the ethnic configuration of the area. These events held repercussions for those in the empire's Arab region; people there had known themselves, and the world had known them too, as "Arabs" for centuries. But given the frequent European invasion of different parts of Arab-Islamic "countries" in North Africa, plus the emergence of the Young Turks Movement and their insistence on "Turkization" of all the nations that were left in the empire, Arab scholars and leaders had little choice but to follow course and work to achieve independence. Promises broken The desire for a unified independent Arab state prompted Arab leaders to join the Allies in the First World War after the negotiations of Sir Henry Mac Mahon with the late Sayyid Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca. Unfortunately, the Allies had different plans. Contrary to the assurances given to Hussein by the British, the Arab lands were divided between France and the UK. A share was also given to Zionists, as per the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, a secret treaty between British and French governments that defined their spheres of influence after the war. Many historians and scholars today point to the agreement, which Russian press printed in 1917, as the real cause behind instability in the Middle East. Following the war, several acts of resistance took place in the Arab lands that were now under French or British occupation. The Great Iraqi Revolution in 1920, considered a watershed because all factions of the country united for the first time under a common effort, and various uprisings in Syria and Palestine served as examples of the Arab quest for liberty, which continued until World War II. The Anglo-Iraqi War in 1941 and the overthrowing of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958 serve as further signs that the Arabs were struggling to achieve the unity that first prompted them to rebel against the Ottomans.


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Unity not dead It is important to note that when European forces invaded countries in North Africa, other Arab nations joined the resistance against the aggressors. A similar solidarity was seen during uprisings in the newly formed states after the Second World War, and is still demonstrated to a certain extent when volunteers join resistance movements in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon today. In the first half of the 20th century, the call to unite the new "states" created on Sykes-Picot lines continued in Iraq, Syria, and Palestine and beyond. Responding to calls for unity by Kuwaiti scholars, people held demonstrations there in the late 1930s to support uniting with Iraq. The events of 1958 prove that unity was not only a dream, but a living reality. In February of that year, Syrians and Egyptians chose in a referendum to unite their two countries and form the United Arab Republic (UAR). The new republic inspired popular support in different parts of the Arab world, but also attracted the enmity of many parties. That included neighboring Jordan, which felt threatened by the state, and Britain and France, because the new republic had shown the Sykes–Picot lines could be "trespassed" and the "sacred frontiers" could be wiped. In 1961, the union collapsed after a military coup in Damascus, funded by other Arab governments, and prompted Syria to withdraw from the state. The move was bitterly opposed by many Syrians, who demonstrated against that coup despite the force used by secessionists against them, actions that many regard as another "referendum" in support of unity. A league of their own The creation of the Arab League during World War II marked a new chapter in the efforts to fulfill Arab Unity. Many of the leaders who signed its "birth certificate" were known as advocates of unity – the league's first secretary general, one of the most prominent Arabists in Egypt, was among the many Egyptian enthusiasts who had volunteered to fight against the Italian invasion of Libya at the beginning of the 20th century. To many, the Arab League fosters cooperation but doesn't promote the loss of self-rule, represented a safe and sure step on the long road to unity. Since its inception in 1945, the league has established several important programs, including the Organisation of Economic Unity, the Common Defence Pact, specialized organizations in transport, communications and health, and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development. These organizations and others, which are governed by specialized ministerial councils, could serve as effective unifying tools that help tremendously in paving the road towards a smooth union. The call for unity is still alive, and will continue to live in the hearts and minds of Arab people, languishing at times but rekindling at every setback that confronts an Arab state.


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Arab Unity: The end?

Infighting, political disputes and alliances with foreign powers have led to a very visible disunity at the Arab League summit in Damascus [AFP] The Arab League – ideally a symbol of unity – has often served as an arena for regional disputes. The league was established in 1945 with the goal of strengthening ties among member states and coordinating policies for their common good. But in reality, Arab League meetings have too often been marked by heated disputes and divisions between individual members. Has the dream of Arab unity run out of steam? As the 20th Arab Summit gets underway in Damascus, Arab governments appear more divided than ever. Previous Arab summits have exposed cracks in unity and nationalism, but this year the differences have become more public - and pronounced. Nearly half of the 22-member Arab League is represented in Damascus by low ranking official delegations. Lebanon is boycotting the sessions entirely. Some commentators have blamed US influence on its Arab allies as one of the reasons behind attempts to scuttle the summit. Others have blamed Iran. Dangerous crossroads Observers of Arab history believe the divisions come while the Middle East stands at its most dangerous of crossroads. The peace process between Israel and the Palestinians remains as elusive as ever; human rights organizations say the people of Gaza are on the verge of a catastrophe as the Israeli-enforced economic blockade continues. Political infighting and armed clashes between Fatah and Hamas have also taken their toll. Iraq, on the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion and occupation, is falling apart as the much-feared sectarian warfare enters a new dimension - fierce fighting between rival Shia factions and the Shia-led Iraqi government. Lebanon is without a president and internal political disputes have boiled over into the international sphere with France and the US blaming Syria and Iran for much of the country's woes. Algeria and Morocco still have ongoing disputes over the Western Sahara. Sudan has been unable to bring stability to Darfur as tensions soar with neighboring Chad. Somalia enters its second decade of disarray with the central government in Mogadishu unable to assert control on armed tribes. This is the Arab nation of 2008.


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Disunity and inaction Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan president, poured contempt on fellow Arab leaders at the Damascus summit, which has been overshadowed by the absence of several key leaders. Gaddafi asked: "How can we accept that a foreign power comes to topple an Arab leader while we stand watching?" He said Saddam Hussein, the executed Iraqi president, had once been an ally of Washington, "but they sold him out". "Your turn is next," Gaddafi told the Arab officials gathered for the conference, some of whom looked stunned while others broke into laughter at his frankness. In his speech, the Libyan leader also criticised Arab disunity and inaction on the region's multiple crises. "Where is the Arabs' dignity, their future, their very existence? Everything has disappeared," he said. "Our blood and our language may be one, but there is nothing that can unite us." Hoping for unity But Ahmed Bin Hali, a senior Arab League official, played down differences and said that there will always be diverse political currents in the Arab nation. "The Arabs, in co-ordination with the Iraqi government, must open a discussion with the US - with the inclusion of Turkey and Iran - to stabilise Iraq," he told Al Jazeera. He said that the Damascus summit will provide Arab leaders a chance to overcome their differences and stabilise relations. Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, the Qatari prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, said Arab League summits provide member states the opportunity to air their differences and to try to bridge the gaps that may exist between them. He said he disagreed with the concept of boycotting the summit. "If we have differences with Syria, we will face Syria and discuss these differences," Sheikh Hamad said recently. The Arab World is being brought together in a shared cultural and political experience by trans-national media based on fast evolving satellite technology. Pan-Arab media are creating platforms for dialogue and for shared experiences - and in the process are bringing Arabs together. Slogans like the "Arab Street" are being bandied about and the ordinary citizen is voicing discontent with the state of the world around him. Building on a common language and traditions, the people of the region are sharing their experiences in ways that were unimaginable even a decade ago. The proliferation of independent media means hard-hitting realities are often televised and reported immediately. And Arab audiences have access to an instant and up-close view of the daily struggles, squabbles and suffering of their fellow Arabs. But this has lead to accusations that the new media has been a force of disunity in the region. The language of pan-Arabism - By Ahmed Janabi Abdel Nasser's passion for Arab unity won him unprecedented popularity. When it comes to the Arab world, the start of the 20th century was nothing less than stormy. Political unrest and a clash of interests between Britain and France, then the world's most dominant colonial powers, and the Arabs prevailed. Arab opposition to Ottoman rule started in the 19th century in response to a series of Ottoman regulations which the Arabs saw as a bid to black-out the Arabic language and identity. As Ottoman domination started to decline towards the end of the First World War, Arabs hoped that they would finally win their independence. They were shocked to see their land falling instead to the invading European armies, in particular the British and French. As huge invading armies swept across their lands, Arabs realized that the only way to confront such overwhelming power was to unite. Unity swiftly became the dream of Arab public opinion. Catchy slogans, poetry, literature and songs hailed unity as a dream across the Arab world.


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Popular phrases Subhi al-Asmar, 82, a Palestinian refugee in Ain al-Hilwa refugee camp in Lebanon, recalls: "We were schoolchildren in Akka. Nearly on a daily basis there were demonstrations and protests against British occupation and increasing Jewish immigration to Palestine. "Akka's narrow streets used to host a sea of men marching and chanting: 'Unity, unity from Taurus to Rafah.' They meant unity of the historical Grand Syria [currently Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan]." During the 20th century, slogans calling for unity started to appear across the Arab world and several attempts at unity took place, particularly after Gamal Abdel Nasser, the godfather of Arab unity, became the Egyptian president in 1956. In 1962, monarchy was abolished in North Yemen, which from 1958-1961 had been part of a confederation with Egypt and Syria called the United Arab States, and Abd Allah al-Sallal became the first Yemeni president. Huge pro-unity demonstrations welcomed the installation of al-Sallal, who was a member of Nasser's Egyptian pan-Arab Free Officers movement. Female demonstrators who gathered at the airport on November 3, 1962, to welcome him urged unity between Egypt and Yemen, chanting: "Unity, unity Sallal. Unity, unity Nasser." In 1958, the United Arab Republic (UAR), which briefly united Egypt and Syria, was created. Prior to that time and during the preparations for the UAR's establishment, many demonstrations took place in Syria where the popular chant was: "Unity, unity with brown Abdel Nasser." The word "brown" had a symbolic meaning as brown skin was considered to be a distinctive Arab feature. Although Arab unity is no longer publicly promoted by current Arab governments, it still features in spontaneous popular demonstrations. The day Baghdad fell to the invading US forces in April 2003, the streets of Cairo were packed with demonstrators chanting: "Where is the Arab army?" Palestinian demonstrators reacting to Israeli attacks often chant: "Where is the Arab blood? Where is the Arab anger?" Official slogans In the second half of the 20th century, pro-unity leaders assumed power in several Arab countries, including Nasser in Egypt, Shukri al-Quwatli in Syria, al-Sallal in North Yemen, Ahmad ben Bella in Algeria, Muaamar Gaddafi in Libya and Abd al-Salam Aref in Iraq. Those leaders were backed by popular support for Arab unity and many official slogans were adopted to demonstrate the governments' pro-unity stance. Mottos such as "Arabs' oil for Arabs" and "the land of Arabs is for Arabs" started to be uttered by high-ranking officials and written on government buildings. The phrase "from the roaring [Atlantic] ocean to the defiant Gulf" - indicating the stretch of the Arab world from Morocco in the west to the Gulf in the east – appeared widely in government media, and was, in turn, widely adopted by the people. The Arab Baath Socialist party - its slogan "An eternal ideal of one Arab nation" – was established in 1947 and ruled Iraq for more than three decades, remaining in power in Syria today. The party's stated objectives were unity, freedom and Socialism and those words were written on every Iraqi government building until the end of Baath rule in 2003. Songs of unity Song lyrics designed to fuel the passion for Arab unity have been around for decades. One of the most famous across the Arab world was written by the Syrian poet Fakhri al-Baroudi:

Arabs' homeland is my country From al-Sham [Greater Syria] to Baghdad

From Najd [Saudi Arabia's central desert] to Yemen From Egypt to Tetouan [a Moroccan city]

No one can separate us Religion would not divide us

The tongue of dha [Arabic uniquely contains the letter dhad] brings us together Since Ghassan and Adnan [ancient fathers of the Arabs]

We had a civilization and we are going to revive it Even if the devils of man and genes stood against us

Come on my people Climb the glory by acquiring knowledge

And sing my people "Arabs' homeland is my country" Arabs' homeland is my country

From al-Sham to Baghdad"


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Abd al-Halim Hafidh, an Arab idol equivalent in popularity to Elvis Presley in the US, sang My Grand Homeland in the 1960s. Songs which take Arab unity as their theme continue to appear. In the 1990s an operatic song titled Arab Dream was performed on stage by singers from the 22 Arab countries. While a younger generation of singers has continued the tradition of unity songs, their tone has changed. Where the songs of the second half of the 20th century reminded Arabs of their former glory and urged them to revive their golden past, recent songs blame Arabs for their state of powerlessness. One of the best known, Wain al-Malaien? (Where are the millions?), was performed by the Lebanese singer Julia Butrus in 1997. It blamed Arabs for their weakness in aiding the Palestinians and urged them to unite against their enemies. Sabri al-Ramahi, an Iraqi radio director, told Al Jazeera: "It was prestigious for singers to sing about unity. People used to enjoy those songs; it fueled their passion and made them feel united, especially as they were broadcast all over the Arab world."


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V. Islamism


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The two 'isms' of the Middle East - By Christian Porth in Beirut

In the post-Ottoman Arab World, pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism emerged as competing ideologies [GALLO/GETTY] As the Ottoman Empire began to lose its hold on the Middle East to European powers, the concept of Arab unity was resurrected by two competing ideologies: Pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism. Pan-Arabism appeared most publicly during the struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1916-1918. Sheriff Hussein ibn Ali of Mecca, who with British support rose up against Ankara, was the first to advocate a framework of pan- Arabism with his desire for a united Arab state spanning from Aleppo to Aden. At the beginning of the 20th century, pan-Arabism came to permeate much of the Arab world with the goals of unity of the Arab peoples and fight against colonialism. Shafik Masri, a professor of international law in Beirut, sees a distinction within pan-Arabism. "With pan-Arabism you have to look at two domains: the conceptual and the practical. "Most intellectuals believe in pan-Arabism as a kind of civilization, as a kind of cultural belonging; as a heritage to which these intellectuals accepted and were pleased to interact with." It was not until the 1930's, however, when buttressed by serious and systematic intellectual thought which combined elements of Marxism coupled with a vision of an Arab nation, that the idea of pan-Arabism really took root. The 'Awakening' George Antonius's 1938 work The Arab Awakening argues that the earliest manifestations of this ideology were predominantly the work of Lebanese and Syrian intellectuals. Ideas about the role of an all-encompassing Arab entity were mainly influenced by Western thought and through Western institutions, in particular at the Syrian Protestant College (now the American University of Beirut). It was here that scholars like Nasif al-Yaziji and Butros al-Bustani sought to respond to the emphasis then being placed on Turkish and Islamic identities by emphasising Arab history, culture and the Arabic language while de-emphasising religion as a source of political and national unity. Michel Aflaq and Salah ad-Din al-Bitar, the former a prominent Syrian intellectual and the latter a Syrian politician, were two of the foremost pan-Arabists of the early 20th century. In the 1940's Aflaq and al-Bitar founded the Baath or 'renaissance' party which represented the pinnacle of intellectual triumph for the pan-Arab movement. It was, however, rather short-lived as political considerations overrode ideological consistency. Because the Baath movement was secular in nature, Aflaq paid lip service to Islam but in actuality relegated it to a historical force without a contemporary role.


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"The connection of Islam to Arabism is not, therefore, similar to that of any religion to any nationalism. The Arab Christians, when their nationalism is fully awakened and when they restore their genuine character, will recognise that Islam for them is nationalist education in which they have to be absorbed in order to understand and love it to the extent that they become concerned about Islam as about the most precious thing in their Arabism," he wrote in 1943 in his In Memory of the Arab Prophet. With Islam aside, Aflaq was able to define a romantic and vague definition of nationalism, one that was entirely secular. Solution is Islam In stark contrast to calls for pan-Arabism through greater Westernisation, modernisation and secularisation, pan-Islamism arose almost concurrently as an alternative to those concerned by the increasingly secular language and nature of pan-Arab discourse. A young graduate of Dar al-Ulum University in Cairo, Hassan al-Banna spent four years in Cairo witnessing and distressing over what he viewed as the breakdown of traditional Muslim society. The son of an imam, al-Banna took it upon himself to promote a return to traditional Islamic principles among the children and adults he taught. He believed that Islam had lost its social relevance because of the twin corroding effects of Westernisation and secularism and felt that the Islamic scholars at Al-Azhar University had failed to oppose the marginalisation of Islam within Egyptian society. Al-Banna decided that the only appropriate response was to organise and in March, 1928, along with six employees of the Suez Canal Company, he founded the Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian city of Ismailia. Soon enough, individual country chapters of the Ikhwan were popping up all over the Middle East. Political Islam revived Originally founded to promote an Islamic revival, the Muslim Brotherhood quickly became a political force - first in Egypt and then throughout much of the Middle East. Ahmed Mousalli, a professor at the American University of Beirut and an expert on Islamic movements, does not see a contradiction between pan-Arabism and pan- Islamism as expressed by Hassan al-Banna. He says: "The Muslim Brotherhood would have no problem with pan-Arab ideals, since it also meant one step closer to Arab unity. "The main branches of the Muslim Brothers and other mainstream Islamic groups do not reject nationalism, but rather secularism. In fact, pan-Islamism of this type was able to promote both Islamic and national unity." Radicalisation The problem, in Mousalli's mind, was the radicalisation of these Islamic movements, particularly by the heavy hand of the state - especially in Egypt. He says: "The difficulty, however, was the way it developed newer, more radicalised generations of the Muslim Brothers, highlighted most notably by Sayyed Qutb, [who] rejected nationalism. "This led to the rise of ideologues who believed that nationalism was essentially paganism." Mousalli suggests that the problem is not irreconcilable. "There's actually more unity than not between Islamists and Arabists, it’s just there is extremism – on both sides - who take issue with each other." Even given the tensions that exist, there is hope for a certain level of "rapprochement" between Arabists and Islamists. Mousalli says: "There is more harmony now, especially because most regimes in the Arab world are no longer nationalistic. In fact, the Islamic Nationalist Congress has already met at least five or six times. Both sides also agree on general principles and now basically all of their enemies are the same."


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Analysis: Nationalism vs Islam? - By Basheer Nafi

Islamism and Arab nationalism have been, and still are, the most powerful movements in Arab political and cultural life

Understanding the relationship between Islam and Arab nationalism has always been problematic. The separation between Islamists and Arab nationalists, and the period of their political conflict, is a relatively recent development in Arab history. In the early 1950s, a series of military coups brought young Arab nationalist officers to power in many Arab countries, including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Algeria. It was during this period that Arab nationalism, expressed in exclusive, radical and even socialist discourse, became the official ideology of the Arab states. But the military background of the ruling forces, their fragile base of legitimacy, and the sweeping programs of modernization and centralization they pursued, turned the Arab nationalist entity into an authoritarian state. One of the major results of this development was the eruption of a series of confrontations between the Arab nationalist regimes and the Islamic political forces, in which questions of power, identity and legitimacy were intertwined. Rise of Islamism One of the first confrontations came in 1954, when Egypt embarked on a desperate drive to destroy its Islamic opponents. Thousands of Muslim activists were jailed, often without trial, and subjected to East German methods of torture and psychological destruction, while eminent ulama - Muslim intellectuals - were executed or forced to live in permanent exile. Supported by scores of nationalist intellectuals and brandishing a utopian project of socialist development enveloped in anti-imperialist rhetoric, the Arab state accused its Islamic opponents of being reactionary, employing religion for political purposes and serving the interests of foreign powers. The Islamists, in turn, depicted Egypt's radical regime and its supporters in a monochromatic picture of a deliberate war against Islam and the Islamic identity of the Arab peoples. Both views were essentially self-serving, non-historical and fell captive to the contingencies of political conflict, but memory is often made as much of the legend as of the real. For a long period of time, The Arab Awakening of George Antonius (1938) represented the dominant paradigm in understanding the formative stages of Arab nationalism, not only in academic circles but also within the ranks of Arab nationalists. Followed by Albert Hourani's Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (1962) and Hisham Sharabi's The Arab Intellectuals and the West (1970), Antonius underlined the secular nature of Arab nationalism, while giving


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little consideration to the role played by the Muslim intellectuals in shaping the early Arabist vision. Later works have, however, shattered the dominance of the "secular version" and illustrated the close relationship between the rise of the Arab-Islamic reform movement and the emergence of Arab nationalism in the early decades of the twentieth century. Asserting Arab identity In many respects, Arab nationalism (or Arabism as it was then called) was the political expression of the reformist discourse of Rashid Rida, Abd al-Rahman al- Kawakbi, Tahir al-Jaza’iri, Abd al-Hamid al-Zahrawi, and their students. For the Arab-Islamic reformists, Arabism was meant to reassert the Arab identity, seen by increasing numbers of the Arabs as the answer to the Ottoman failure to defend Islam and protect the Arab and Muslim lands. In this sense, Arabism was not only defined in Islamic terms, but was also envisioned as inseparable from the Islamic revival. During the inter-war period, although students of the Arab-Islamic reform movement continued to play a major role in the Arab anti-imperialist struggle, the gradual transformation of the social and intellectual making of the Arab elites contributed to the evolvement of an exclusive, ethnically based Arabist narrative. In the face of the Arabs’ failure to establish their united and independent state after World War I, young Arab nationalists, like Darwish al-Miqdadi, Zaki al-Arsuzi, Edmond Rabat and Qunstantin Zurayq, graduates of the American University of Beirut and French and British universities, sought to re-emphasize the project of Arab unity by employing the power of an imagined ethnic essence. The French bombardment of Damascus in the mid 1920s, the British disregard of the Arab opposition to the Jewish immigration into Palestine, and the brutal crushing of the Palestinian revolt of 1936-39, as well as the imperialist divisive policies in Morocco, all contributed to intensifying the Arab feeling of defeat, and thus to the radicalization of the Arab nationalist discourse. Laying the foundation In the face of what appeared as the destruction of the Arab nation and precluding its revival at the hands of the colonial administrations, the Arab intellectuals of the 1930s and 1940s responded by laying the foundations of an exclusive Arab nationalist ideology. The inclusive outlook of the early generation of Arabists, which allowed Arabised Kurds, such as Muhammad Kurd Ali and Khayr al-Din al-Zirikli, to carry the banners of the Arab movement, was replaced with defined linguistic, ethnic and geographical borders. And while Islam had been the ultimate goal of the Arab-Islamic reformists, Islam was now conceived by Sati' al-Husari and Zaki al-Arsuzi, and many others of their generation, as a mere validating element of Arab nationalism. But since the top priority for all shades of the Arab political forces during the inter-war period was national liberation and independence, it was not until the early 1950s that the divisive political climate would develop. Even the Islamic vision of the Young Muslim Men Society and the Muslim Brotherhood was colored with a strong belief in Arab unity and Arab identity. With the rise of the Baath Party, the Arab Nationalist Movement (Harakat al-Qawmiyyin al-'Arab), and the Arab-nationalist military officers, the divorce between the Arab nationalists and Arab Islamists reached a critical stage. Inter-Arab conflict Years of inter-Arab conflicts re-enforced the political division and laid heavy layers of amnesia over the formative period of Arabism and its inextricable association with the Arab-Islamic reform movement. Both the Arab Islamists and Arab nationalists moved to legitimize their existence by rewriting their own history in isolation from the history of others, or even by de-legitimizing the other. The defeat in the June 1967 war was a turning point in the Arab political and cultural configuration. The defeat was not only seen as the ultimate failure of the Arab state, but also signaled the beginning of the end for the alliance between the Arab nationalist intellectuals and the ruling clique. For the great majority of Arab intellectuals, disengagement from the state looked as the only way for survival. While the nationalist intellectual joined the opposition camp of Arab politics, the state entered a post-nationalist age, in which crude ideological control and authoritarian policies were replaced with a limited political and economic openness, anti-imperialism turned into various degrees of association with the western powers, and Arab-Israeli conflict into Arab-Israeli negotiations and peace treaties. If it had ever been, Arab nationalism was no longer in power, and as the Arab intellectual moved away from


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the state, his discourse grew more and more to resemble that of his Islamist counterpart. Convergence The holding of the first Arab Nationalist- Islamist Conference in 1994 was partly the result of this key shift in the position of the Arab nationalist intellectual vis-à-vis the state. It was also born out of a growing realization on the part of a great section of the Arab Islamists that the optimism of the late 1970s and 1980s was largely premature. Throughout the Arab world, the spectacular rise of Islamic political forces was adding a new dimension to the Arab political and intellectual divisions; yet, the 1979 victory of the Islamic revolution in Iran proved hard to repeat. Equally important was the fact that although the Islamists had the masses on their side, they lacked influence among the Arab elite circles, and were largely unable on their own to break the political impasse impeding the process of democratic transformation in most Arab countries. An Islamic-nationalist convergence could bolster the legitimacy of the Islamic project and broaden its base of representation. Both sides were also aware of the formidable challenges facing Arab societies as a consequence of the Middle East peace process, the increasing integration of the Arab markets in the world economy, and the rising tension in Arab-Western relations. The Arab nationalist-Islamist convergence, however, is not the end of history. Although the bitter legacy of the years of inner conflict has almost totally been avoided, one might say that a deep but an unacknowledged sense of suspicion is still lingering on the horizon of Arab political and intellectual life. New chapter Equally significant is the absences of any serious attempt to (re-)define the relation between Islam and Arab nationalism, or to formulate a theoretical framework for a common agenda, especially in regard to the state in question, democracy and the place of religion in Arab society and politics. Yet, the meeting of the Arab nationalists and Arab Islamists has opened a new chapter in modern Arab history. In many respects, Islamism and Arab nationalism have been, and still are, the most powerful movements in Arab political and cultural life. It is true that neither holds power in any of the Arab countries, but their influence in society and within civil organizations is beyond doubt. For the increasing diversification of Arab cultural systems during the past few decades, nationalism and Islamism can no longer claim to possess an exclusive hold over the Arabs' imagination. All this, however, should in no way diminish the importance and meaning of their convergence for the future course of Arab politics and culture. For more than half a century, the Arabs have lacked a solid, durable level of consensus, a middle ground, around which the political process normally revolves and in which political stability is anchored. Although not yet very clear, the Islamist-nationalist convergence has a great potential to develop such a consensus.


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Fahmy Howeidy 'Islam larger than Arabism' - By Dina Abdel-Mageed in Cairo Fahmy Howeidy, a prominent journalist and Islamist thinker, says that Arab unity is important because it is a step towards a greater Islamic unity. While acknowledging the importance of nationalism, Howeidy argues that the "cloak" of Islam is larger than that of Arabism. Trained as a lawyer, and having authored several books on Islam in Afghanistan, Iran, Bosnia, China and Senegal, Howeidy has been a leading proponent of the concept that Islam should be the cornerstone of social politics. He is a member of the International Union for Muslim Scholars. Al Jazeera: The idea of Arab nationalism was partially introduced by a group of Syrian and Lebanese Christians. Do you think that it was meant to be an alternative to Islamic unity? Howeidy: The idea of Arab nationalism was introduced at a time when Arabs were fed up with the Turkish presence. I believe that it was not directed against the region's Islamic identity; rather, it came as a response to the adoption of the idea of Turkic nationalism by the Ottomans, which came against the backdrop of a growing discontent with the performance of Ottoman governors, especially in the Levant region. Thus, the Arab reaction took two forms: at the political level, they revolted against the Ottoman rule, and at the cultural level, they developed the idea of Arab nationalism. Perhaps some of those who first introduced the idea had anti-Islamic feelings; however, most of them dealt with it as a national issue. How has Islamism affected the quest for Arab nationalism and unity? The effect of Islamic movements differs from one Arab country to another, depending on the democratic status. In some countries such as Morocco, Yemen and Lebanon, Islamic movements have more freedom. And the stronger [the] democracy is rooted, the more moderate Islamic movements are. Moderate Islamic movements attempt to establish good relations and to start a dialogue with nationalists. An example of such a dialogue is the National Islamic Conference in Beirut [in December 2004]. Focusing more on the Arab dimension, moderate Islamic movements believe that Arab unity is the base that should be fixed first. However, given the fact that moderate Islamists are not part of the political process, their influence is limited. On the other hand, extremist movements, which totally oppose nationalism, clash not only with nationalists, but also with moderate Islamists. We are not against the ideals of Arab nationalism; however, we believe that it is only a phase, not the ultimate goal. It is also important to note that the calls for Arab unity caused a surge in the nationalistic feelings of other ethnic groups, such as the Kurds and the Berbers. At the same time, there was an intentional marginalization of Islam – the single common feature among the different ethnic groups. In other words, weakening Islam unleashed nationalist strife. According to Gamal Hemdan (a prominent Egyptian geographer), the "cloak" of Islam is larger than that of Arabism; it is easier to convince people to rally behind Islam than to convince them to do so behind Arabism. The expanse of Islam in the Arab world is bigger than that of Arabism. It is possible to create a society with an Islamic cultural orientation that encompasses various religious groups, which has been the case throughout Islamic history. The Islamic civilization was not established by the hands of Muslims alone - Jews and Christians made significant contributions as well. I remember [the late Egyptian finance minister] Makram Ebeid's famous statement in 1940: "Religion-wise, I am a Christian, and nation-wise, I am a Muslim." Why do we not adopt the paradigm of 'majority rules, minority rights' like the Americans? Do you think that Islamism is on the rise because of the disillusionment with Arab nationalism? I do not think that Arab nationalism has failed because the failure of Egypt or a single experiment does not represent the failure of the whole project. Arab nationalism and unity were put to the test in Egypt, and – to a lesser degree – in Syria and Iraq. I believe that such experiments failed as a result of tyranny, not as a result of a problem inherent in Arab nationalism. And the same thing applies to Islamism. Ideals are the criteria against which we judge the reality and not the opposite. However, I believe that Arab nationalism lost its glamour after the death of [the late Egyptian president Gamal] Abdel Nasser and the defeat [in the Arab-Israeli war] of 1967. Nasser's project died with him because it was not established upon democratic ideals. If such a project had been carried by strong parties, institutions and civil society, it would have lasted. But, today, the Nasserites are a small party. It is totally unrealistic to discuss Arab unity today, given that we are incapable of uniting political forces within individual states. Yet, I still believe that Arab unity is an essential step towards Islamic unity. Islamic movements have different ideas and world visions. Do you not think that such differences can affect or have affected the unity of Arabs? Apart from extremists, I do not believe that there are substantial, permanent differences among moderate


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Islamic movements. It is the same Islam everywhere, but it accommodates the peculiarities of each society. The Justice and Development Party in Turkey, for instance, has taken its name from the Justice and Development Party in Morocco. Differences do not constitute a problem. There are different factions within the same religion. In Islam, for instance, there are different schools of jurisprudence. What is really important is establishing a truly democratic society. What about the status of minorities under such an Islamic society? First, the size of religious minorities in the Arab world is smaller than that of ethnic minorities. The fear of religious persecution and fanaticism is the product of the last 20 years only. During the 1942 elections, for instance, one of [Muslim Brotherhood founder] Hassan al-Banna's representatives was a Copt. The current fear, which is growing against the backdrop of the rise of Islamism, is the result of the activities of extremists on both sides, external intervention, and fanaticism. I also believe that some governments, like the Egyptian one, for instance, spread fear among religious minorities on purpose in order to discredit the Islamist option. They tend to convince religious minorities that if Islamists ascend to power, they will be persecuted against and they will be forced to pay the jizya [a tax which, according to Islamic law, is imposed on non-Muslims living under Muslim rule] and so on. Second, minorities have never been a problem. They did not flourish except under Islamic rule. When the Jews, for instance, faced persecution at the hands of the Spaniards after the fall of Andalusia, they fled to the Ottoman Empire. Do you think that there is a contradiction between Arab and Islamic unity? Ideas should not clash. It is not necessary to categorize everything into wrong and right. There can be two rights. There are different levels of unity: national, regional, Arab, and Islamic, and we need all of them. Both the Arab and the Islamic strategic depths are important. The nation should have two bases of support: Arab and Islamic. And by unity here, I do not mean a single ruling system; rather, I mean political, economic, and military coordination. Today, we are facing challenges that are beyond ideological affiliations, such as the occupation of Palestine, backwardness, and so on. We should all cooperate to achieve our big goals regardless of our ideologies. Today's challenges are much bigger than ideological differences. So, what is the point of breaking the unity of the national front? I have no problem whatsoever with the secularism that is reconciled with religion. In Turkey, for instance, now secularism is being reconciled with religion. I believe that the relationship between Islamism and all the other intellectual and political trends depends on the future of democracy. The success of such a relationship can only be achieved in a democratic environment. Which is more feasible: Arab or Islamic unity? I hope for Islamic unity, but, there is a big difference between dreams and political realities. I do not think that either of them is feasible today. What is really important is creating a truly democratic society in which people can coexist despite their differences.


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Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood - By Atef Dalgamouni

Hassan al-Banna was assassinated in 1949 but his writings influenced a new cadre of Muslim Brotherhood members

Initially established in a small town in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna, a school teacher, in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood has grown into a global organization and is regarded as the oldest organized Islamic movement in modern history. Al-Banna, who was born in 1906 and had a religious upbringing, was influenced by earlier Muslim scholars such as al-Afghani, al-Kawakibi and Muhammad Rasheed Reda, who wrote on the status of the Arab and Muslim worlds and the urgent need for reform. Al-Banna wanted to revive the Islamic Ummah - nation - and re-establish it once again as a world leader rather than a follower of nations. He stated that the Brotherhood's goals were to establish an Islamic state based on the principles and edicts of the Quran, as well as the sunnah, the oral traditions and actions of the Prophet Muhammad. He also firmly espoused his opposition to authoritarian rule, which was enshrined in one of the first basic tenets of the Brotherhood: "To confirm unequivocally that people are the source of all power so that it is not permissible for any one individual, party, group or institution to claim the right to authority, or to continue in power except with the consent of the people." Methodology Al-Banna saw in Islam a perfectly formulated methodology to ensure a healthy, happy and prosperous livelihood for the Ummah; Islam was not merely a religion as it was understood in the west, but a complete way of life. Islam defined the relationship between man and God, man and fellow man; it also dealt at length with such issues as politics, economics, and the environment. For the Brotherhood, Islam is a social system for the benefit of mankind not just the adherents of the faith. Al-Banna also said that one of the principle goals of the Brotherhood is to get rid of all foreign occupations of Muslim lands and the elimination of western influence on Muslims. In more recent times the Muslim Brotherhood group has vehemently opposed the Israeli occupation of Palestine and US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. This is exemplified in the group's slogan: "Allah is our aim, the Prophet is our leader, the Quran is our Constitution, and Jihad for the sake of God is highest desire". Changing stages Throughout its 80-year history the Brotherhood has been impacted by three principal transformative stages. The first - considered its founding stage - when al-Banna laid down the main principles of the movement


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which spread across Egypt and spilled over into other parts of the Arab World lasted from 1928 to 1949. During this stage, Al-Banna formed a highly secretive armed wing of the Brotherhood which influenced the behavior of the group as a whole. Al-Banna was assassinated in 1949, which ushered in the second stage of the Brotherhood's development. The Brotherhood worked closely with the army officers and civilians who participated in the 1952 coup that overthrew the Egyptian monarchy. But soon after, the coup leaders turned against the Muslim Brotherhood and outlawed it and other political movements and parties. For the next 20 years, the group faced numerous crises including political persecution and imprisonments, chiefly during the 1950s and 60s, under Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president. In 1954, Nasser survived an assassination attempt which he blamed on the Brotherhood and he moved to quickly jail hundreds of its members. The persecution of the Islamist group pushed many members to flee Egypt to other Arab and Muslim countries, thereby extending the Brotherhood's influence regionally, and then, globally. In 1966, Sayyid Qutb, a senior Muslim Brotherhood member was executed by the Egyptian government. A prolific writer, Qutb's ideologies would survive him and influence the rise of a newer, more radicalized offshoot of Islamists. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, currently al-Qaeda's second-in-command, is thought to have been influenced by the execution of Qutb. Reform In 1970, Nasser died and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat. The third stage of the Brotherhood's development began in 1971 and lasts to this day. During this period, the Brotherhood began to reform and adopt increasingly more moderate political positions to appeal to a wider range of people. The senior leadership in the group came to realize that staying outside the political scene is not benefiting the movement so they decided to form civil political parties to run for elections in Egypt and Jordan. Though the constitutions in both the countries prohibited religioun-based parties from participating in parliamentary elections, civil political parties were exempted. As a result, throughout the 1990s, the Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan gained significant foothold in political associations and unions. In recent parliamentary elections in both the countries, the Brotherhood fielded independent candidates and won the largest share of seats since 1928. However, the trend was reversed during parliamentary elections in Egypt in 2005 and 2006. The Brotherhood accused the Egyptian government of vote-rigging. This scenario was repeated in Jordan where the Brotherhood accused the government of vote fraud during the parliamentary and municipal elections in 2007. But Hamas, the Islamist resistance movement in Palestine which considers itself an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, won a stunning victory in legislative elections in January 2006. The poll victory stunned the US and Israel who moved quickly to isolate Hamas financially and politically. Non-violence As the Brotherhood transformed itself into an effective political outfit, it also outlined its rejection of all manners of violence. One of the recently adopted tenets states: "… We reiterate our rejection of any form of violence and coercion as well as all forms of coups which destroy the unity of any nation ... these methods would create a great crack in the wall of political stability." The ideology of the Brotherhood also differs greatly with the one espoused by al- Qaeda. The Brotherhood members distance themselves from the acts and tactics of Al Qaeda. Human rights are endorsed by the Brotherhood in its published documents. On the women's rights issue they have shown a great deal of openness and enlisted women to run for parliamentary elections. In its March 2004 reform initiative, the Brotherhood declared: "Our only hope to achieve progress in all the aspects of life is by retuning to our religion and implementing our Sharia ... We have a clear mission-working to put in place Allah's law, on the basis of our belief that it is the real, effective way out of our problems domestic or external, political, economic, social or cultural. "This is to be achieved by forming the Muslim individual, the Muslim home, the Muslim government, and the state which will lead the Islamic states, reunite the scattered Muslims, restore their glory, retrieve for them their lost lands and stolen homelands, and carry the banner of the call to Allah in order to make the world happy with Islam’s blessings and instructions." However, there are members within the Brotherhood who believe that the group should abandon politics and re-focus on providing social services.


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Some principles of the Muslim Brotherhood:

- Total commitment to, and the respect of, the principle of power exchange through free and fair general elections

- To confirm the freedom of personal conviction (religious convictions) - To confirm the freedom of establishing religious rites for all heavenly religions - To confirm the freedom of opinion and the right to publicize it, and to call, peacefully, to it, within the

limitations of the moral values of society that are detailed in the first section of the constitution. - An important consideration in ensuring the above is the freedom of owning and using the different

mass media outlets - The right of every citizen( man or woman) to take part in parliamentary elections - The right of every citizen to become a member of the parliament through elections - The army must stay clear of politics, concentrating only on protecting the country’s external security,

and that it should not be used, neither directly or indirectly, by the governing authority in enforcing its wishes and control, or in prohibiting people's rights.

Profile: Sayyid Qutb - By Ahmed Janabi Sayyid Qutb is regarded as the theorist of the Muslim Brotherhood Group in Egypt. Despite his execution in 1966 his name still represents a symbol of modern Islamic ideology, which does not neglect original Islamic teachings but argues that Islam was created as a complete way of life suitable at nay point in history. Many of the group's theories, philosophies, systems, and concepts are based on his thinking. His books and writings are considered a reference point to understand the ideology of the group [Muslim Brotherhood], which has been influential in the Arab and Muslim scene despite the continuous campaigns by successive secular Arab governments to silence it, which has sometimes resulted in eradication campaigns most notably in Egypt and Syria. Philosophical disagreement Sayyid Qutb was born in Assiut, Upper Egypt on 9 October, 1906. He graduated from the College of Arts at the Cairo Science House in 1933, and started his career as a government employee in the ministry of education. In 1948 he was sent to the US for further study, returning to Egypt in 1950. His career was marred by serious philosophical disagreements with the minister of education. This resulted in him tendering his resignation in 1952. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood Movement in 1953, and became chief editor of the movement's mouthpiece Al Ikhwan (Brotherhood) newspaper. First arrest Between 1951 and 1956 Sayyid Qutb wrote several books and research papers in which he argued that Islam was a complete way of life, and put forward clear ideas about the erroneous beliefs of many of the prevailing social, political and economic injustices and argued that there was a need for Islamic reform. In 1954 Egyptian president Jamal Abd al-Nasir was addressing a huge crowd in al-Manshiya city, when a man suddenly emerged from the crowd of men and fired several bullets at the president. Nasir escaped the assassination attempt. Investigations revealed that the man was a member of Muslim Brotherhood group. Egyptian intelligence authorities blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for the attempt and claimed there was a plot to overthrow the government. Qutb was arrested along with many members of the group.


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He was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment with hard labour. He remained in Jarah prison near Cairo for about 10 years after which due to his deteriorating health, he was released when the then Iraqi President, Abdul Salam Arif, intervened. Second arrest and execution In 1965 he published his well-known book, Mallem Fi al-Tarik (Milestones), which led to his re-arrest. He was an outspoken opponent of what he called a rule based on the association of partners with God and called for the oneness and sovereignty of God. Milestones included a strategy for Islamic groups to seize power. He stressed that Muslims would not succeed in recapturing power unless they followed the basic teachings of Islam which is the holy war (Jihad). This notion made many western thinkers label him as the "philosopher of terror". He also objected to the adoption of a western way of life in the Muslim world saying it would lead them to ignore the oneness of God. Sayyid Qutb got a short, quick trial and was sentenced to death. The sentence was based on many excerpts from his book Mallem Fi al-Tarik (Milestones). Despite appeals from many organisations and societies in the Muslim world to president Nasir to pardon Qutb, the execution was carried out by hanging on August 29, 1966. Qutb left behind 24 books, including several novels, several books on the literary arts’ critique, on the education of adults and children, and several religious books, including the 30 volume Commentary of the Quran (Tafsir).

1967 and the rise of extremism - By Abdel-Rahman Hussein and Firas Al-Atraqchi

Israeli armor advances against Egyptian troops at the start of the Six-Day War June 5, 1967 near Rafah, Gaza Strip [GALLO/GETTY] More than 40 years after Israel defeated the combined armies of Jordan, Syria and Egypt in the 1967 war, some Middle East analysts argue that the conflict has helped to fuel the rise of Islamist ideologies. Prior to the war, Arab nations such as Egypt, Iraq and Yemen overthrew monarchies and established military-backed socialist governments. Arab nationalism and unity were touted as the ideological instruments to liberate occupied Palestinian lands and guide Arabs towards modernity. But the speed of Israel's victory shocked the Arab world and shattered the idea of Arab military might, as well as the region's military governments. Huda Awad, a member of the Egyptian Council for Foreign affairs, told Al Jazeera: "What happened in 1967 shook the military prestige in the Arab world." "The cradle of authoritarianism was rocked and that repealed its legitimacy."


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Nationalism defeated Amr Al Shobaky, an Egyptian political analyst and columnist believes that such a "devastating defeat" effectively ended the dream of Arab nationalism. "Before the 1967 war," he said, "we were looking at an entire political model, an entire ideology based on socialism. It wasn't just Egypt as a country that lost the war, but the political ideas upon which the country was based." The defeat caused a transformation in the Arab body-politic and the public quickly began contemplating alternatives to nationalism. In the post-1967 political atmosphere, three theories emerged to explain the root causes for the defeat. The first, also known as the Marxist approach, faulted Nasser for not being sufficiently socialist. The second theory cited the lack of libertarianism in the region as the reason for the defeat. "The third explanation," says Shobaky, "was the Islamic one, which stated that the defeat came as a result of the Arabs' deviation from the religious path of Islam." Rallying call In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was the largest organisation seeking to create an Islamic theocracy. Members were routinely arrested and jailed but they maintained an uneasy relationship with the Nasserite government. In 1966, however, Sayyid Qutb, the spiritual founder of the Brotherhood was executed. Ayman al-Zawahri, then a 15-year-old junior member of the Brotherhood and aspiring medical student, would later recount in his book Knights under the Prophet's Banner that the execution inspired him to form an underground network which sought to replace President Gamal Abdel Nasser with an Islamist caliphate. But it would be the 1967 defeat that would serve as a rallying call for al-Zawahri and provide him new recruitment avenues. Birthplace of Al-Qaeda The execution of Qutb and the 1967 defeat became fixations for al-Zawahri and reinforced his view that the secular political system was bankrupt. Many other Islamists felt the same way. In interviews, diaries and trial testimony they would recount how defeat at the hands of the Israelis injured their pride, culture and identity and left them feeling betrayed. Fawaz Gerges, an expert on Islamic jihadist organisations and author of The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global, says the 1967 defeat and its aftershocks "can be considered the most pivotal event which helps us understand why Islamic militancy has become a potent force in the region". "Every single one of the Islamic Jihadists I interviewed said 1967 marked a watershed [moment] for them - a brutal awakening that Arab socialist leaders had deceived them, Gerges told Al Jazeera. The 1967 defeat, Gerges argues, gave way to a profound change in the Middle East as Islamism began to emerge as the dominating ideology. As increasing numbers of disillusioned nationalists abandoned socialism in favour of Islamism, the power of religious groups began to grow. By 1978, al-Zawahri had become a leader of a core faction within Islamic Jihad calling for the violent overthrow of the Egyptian government and liberation of Palestine. In 1981, members of Islamic Jihad assassinated Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president, who had signed a peace treaty with Israel two years earlier. The ensuing state crackdown on the group forced many - including al-Zawahri, who was not implicated in the assassination - to flee to Central Asia where they waged "holy war" against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. When the Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan in the early 1990s, a new Islamist infrastructure - al-Qaeda - began to fill the political vacuum. In 1998, al-Zawahri and Osama Bin Laden consolidated their influence in Afghanistan and beyond and issued a fatwa titled "World Islamic Front against Jews and Crusaders" which called for the overthrow of governments considered friendly to the US. The fatwa also called for worldwide attacks against US interests and liberation of occupied Arab land. Forty years later Some Arab analysts believe the social, political, and economic challenges which emerged immediately following the 1967 war have prevailed and still haunt the Middle East today. Despite the victory of radical Islam over nationalism, the end of the tunnel is no closer today than it was 40 years ago, they say.


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Diaa Rashwan, Middle East expert at the Al Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, says the Arabs have not yet made substantial gains following the 1967 war or been able to overcome its disruptive aftershocks. "Syrian and Palestinian lands occupied by Israel after the war are still under occupation today. Only Sinai has been returned, and at a very high price. "The Palestinian refugees expelled from the lands occupied in the 1967 war are still displaced. Until their status is permanently resolved, along with the return of the lands taken, the effects of the war will linger." Nationalists to Islamists As increasing numbers of disillusioned nationalists abandoned socialism in favour of Islamism, the power of religious groups began to grow. By 1978, al-Zawahri had become a leader of a core faction within Islamic Jihad calling for the violent overthrow of the Egyptian government and liberation of Palestine. In 1981, members of Islamic Jihad assassinated Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president, who had signed a peace treaty with Israel two years earlier. The ensuing state crackdown on the group forced many - including al-Zawahri, who was not implicated in the assassination - to flee to Central Asia where they waged "holy war" against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. When the Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan in the early 1990s, a new Islamist infrastructure - al-Qaeda - began to fill the political vacuum. In 1998, al-Zawahri and Osama Bin Laden consolidated their influence in Afghanistan and beyond and issued a fatwa titled "World Islamic Front against Jews and Crusaders" which called for the overthrow of governments considered friendly to the US. The fatwa also called for worldwide attacks against US interests and liberation of occupied Arab land.


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Iran and the Shia legacy The Iranian influence on Shia communities in Iraq, Lebanon and other parts of the Muslim world has become a serious concern of the governments and people of Arab and Muslim countries. Accusations against Iran, of meddling in Arab countries' internal affairs using its influence among Shia Arabs, have been surging in the light of increasing indications that Shia Iran is promoting its sect among Sunni Arabs to boost its regional role. In Jordan, a predominantly Sunni Muslim country, members of parliament have voiced their fears of some active Shia agents working on convincing poor Jordanian families to embrace the Shia sect. Khalid al-Bazaiya, a Jordanian MP, told Aljazeera.net: "We informed the prime minister. I cannot say we have the material evidence yet, however, we cannot say the Shia missionary activities do not exist in Jordan." According to the Iraqi ministry of foreign affairs, many Iraqis were banned from entering Jordan in the past two weeks because they were Shia. Labid Abbawi, deputy minister of foreign affairs, said on Tuesday: "Iraqi nationals have been asked whether they were Sunni or Shia by Jordanian borders agents. We had dealt with this issue some months ago, and the Jordanian authorities responded quickly; we do not know why the same thing is happening again." Serious turn The accusations took a serious turn when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia confirmed his awareness of the Iranian activity in this regard. King Abdullah told al-Seyassah, a Kuwaiti newspaper, last month: "We are keeping an eye on the process ... However, we believe that these bids will not fulfil their target, because the vast majority of Muslims are Sunni, and they will not give up their belief. There are conferences being held to bridge the gaps between Muslim sects, I hope they would be good enough to clear things so each party would know its limits." At the Doha Conference for Dialogue of Islamic schools of thought in January, there was a fierce confrontation between Sunni and Shia scholars. Sunni speakers blamed Iran for sowing seeds of sedition in Arab countries, while Shia speakers argued that all Muslims' efforts should be united against Israel. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, head of the International Federation for Muslim Scholars, criticised Iran for trying to promote Shia beliefs in Sunni Muslim countries, and said that such attempts might provoke resentment against Shia. He said: "It is not right for a sect to try to promote its belief in a country that fully embraces different sect. What is your interest in going to a Sunni country like Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Algeria or any other Sunni Muslim country, and try to convince people to convert to Shia? How many will give up their belief? Eventually, you will be cursed and people will hate you." Muhammad Hussain Fadl Allah, a Shia Lebanese cleric, said in a speech read on his behalf by his son Ali that Muslims must be brave enough to jump over their differences and sit together to talk and reunite again. Seeking stable ties Iran has consistently denied the accusation and blamed the acts on some Iranian non-official organisations. Some Shia leaders believe that it is not the right time for Iran to get engaged in such acts. Sheikh Hadi al-Khalisi, a London-based Iraqi Shia Muslim scholar, told Al Jazeera: "Iran has recently closed a newspaper [Siasat Rouz] for insulting Sunni Muslims. This shows how Iran cares at least in the time being for a stable relations with Arab countries. "Some non-governmental Shia organisations might get involved in such acts as the case in al-Khartoum's book exhibition, when the Iranian government denied anything to do with those insulting books." Ahmed al-Katib, a senior Shia thinker and writer of the book The Development of Shia Thought, agreed with al-Kahlisi and said he believes that Iranian intelligence may take the opportunity and benefit from Shia missionary acheivements. He said: "I went to Sudan in 1986 to spread Shia beliefs in that country, and I succeeded to establish a Shia movement in Sudan that is active until this day. I was a member of the Islamic Labour Organisation, a Shia Iraqi opposition organisation based in Iran. "The Iranian government did not send me, and my work was purely religious, however, we cannot prevent the Iranian government from benefiting from our achievements, by trying to win the sympathy of those who convert to Shia."


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Lessons from the past Some political analysts believe that the reasons behind Iranian interest in embracing the Shia sect are rooted in a desire to revive Persia's ancient glories, and territorial ambitions. Salah al-Mukhtar, an Iraqi thinker, said Iran's internal and external interests oblige it to stick to the Shia sect. Al-Mukhtar said: "Persians constitute only half of Iran's population. They are not a huge majority; they want something to keep other Iranian ethnicities like Arabs and Azeri united within Iran. "Externally, the current Iranian regime has learnt from the mistakes of past Iranian rulers. The late Iranian Shahs Reza Pahlavi and his son Mohammad based their rule on nationalism, which put them in direct confrontation with Arabs, who are also proud of their nationalism. "Added to that, the history of hostility between Arabs and Persians prevented any positive communication with a Persian Iran. The current Iranian rulers have used Shia Muslim belief to win Arab and Muslim support, they are using it to sneak into Arab communities and marginalise them." In North Africa Accusations against Iran have appeared in Arab media, where writers reported incidents of Iranian missionary activities trying to convince the Arab Sunni majority in several countries to convert to the Shia sect. Echorouk, an Algerian newspaper, reported recently that a number of parents in Tibsa Province had written a letter to the education department giving warning of Shia beliefs being fed to their children at school. The parents urged the authorities to deal with attempts by some Shia teachers to promote their belief among schoolchildren. Algeria is a predominantly Sunni Muslim country. Iran's influence has increased greatly in Iraq since the US invasion in 2003, and in Lebanon after Hezbollah's war with Israel last summer, when the group, which has been publicly endorsed by Iran, achieved some remarkable military gains. Timeline: Iran-Arab relations

A damaged portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini on a building shelled by the Israeli military in southern Lebanon in 2006 [GALLO/GETTY] Iran and its Arab neighbours have maintained a wary, yet stable relationship throughout the 20th century. However, relations deteriorated rapidly during and after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Neighbours such as Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain accused Iran of inciting their Shia minorities. When Iraq invaded Iran


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in 1980, Saddam Hussein, Iraq's former president repeatedly said he was fighting on behalf of Arab states against Iranian expansionism. Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, relations between Iran and the Arabs plummeted even further. In 2005, as sectarian war appeared to rip Iraq apart, Saud al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, said US policy in the country was benefiting Iran. "We fought a war together to keep Iran out of Iraq after Iraq was driven out of Kuwait. Now we are handing the whole country over to Iran without reason," al- Faisal said in 2005. Relations between Iran and the Shia Hezbollah movement of Lebanaon on the one hand, and Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia reached boiling point in July 2006 when Tehran accused the Arab states of allowing Israel to invade Lebanon. But in late 2007, relations between Iran and the Arabs suddenly changed with foreign ministers exchanging visits to better ties and sign business and security pacts. Timeline: Arabs and Iran 1969: Iran drops its claim on Bahrain. 1971: Iranian forces occupy three islands, including the strategic island of Abu Musa at the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz, claimed by both Tehran and the United Arab Emirates. The UAE agrees to share control of Abu Musa but continues to call for the return of the other two islands - the Lesser Tunb and the Greater Tunb. March 1975: Iraq and Iran sign an agreement mediated by Algeria ending all outstanding border disputes. Iraq makes territorial concessions, chiefly relinquishing demands for the Shatt-al-Arab waterway shared by both countries in the Gulf. In return, Iran stops supplying Kurdish separatists with arms and money for their war against Baghdad. October 1978: In further observance of the 1975 agreement, Iraq's government asks Ayatollah Khomeini, the leading Iranian cleric, to leave Najaf after spending 14 years in exile in the country. Khoemini leaves for Kuwait where he is denied entry and diverted to Paris. January 1979: Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran is ousted from power. Anwar Sadat, Egypt's president angered Khomeini by providing a home for the exiled shah. Iran then severed all ties with Egypt. February 1979: Khomeini returns to Tehran and is installed as leader and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran. November 1979: Iranian students storm the US embassy and take several Americans hostage. The siege lasts 444 days and comes to be known as the Iran Hostage Crisis. September 1980: Khoemini calls for Iraq's Shia to rise up against the Saddam Hussein government. Saddam responds by annuling the 1975 Algiers Agreement. Both countries shell each others' borders. Iraqi military forces invade on September 22. Saddam, says he is fighting Iran on behalf of other Arab states, who viewed the country as a threat to stability. Almost all Arab countries, except Syria and Libya, support Iraq logistically and financially. 1980: The UAE submits its claims on Abu Musa to the UN. In the same year, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain form the Gulf Co-operation Council in response to Iranian threats. October 1981: Anwar Sadat is assassinated by Islamic Jihad members. Iran symbolically dedicates a street to Khaled el-Islambouli, Sadat's assassin. July 1987: More than 400 Iranian pilgrims are killed during the Hajj in Mecca when they clash with Saudi security forces during an anti-Iraq and anti-US demonstration. July 1988: While protecting Kuwaiti oil tankers in the Gulf, US Navy cruiser Vincennes shoots down an Iranian civilian airliner killing 290 passengers August 1988: Iran and Iraq sign a UN-brokered ceasefire ending their war. Some two million soldiers and civilians are killed and wounded during the eight-year conflict. July 1989: Saudi authorities execute 16 Kuwaiti Shias alleging they plotted a number of bombings which killed two pilgrims in Mecca. Riyadh blames Tehran for the attacks. August 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait. Iranian policy-makers adopt a sense of pragmatism and opt non-involvement. January 1991: Saddam Hussein revisits the Algiers agreement and concedes the Shatt-al-Arab waterway to Iran. April 1992: Iranian forces take full control of Abu Musa. In the years following the defeat of Iraqi forces in Kuwait, the US adopts a dual containment policy targeting Iran and Iraq. Nevertheless, Iranian leaders begin a new wave of diplomacy to improve relations with Arab governments. Once considered a hostile neighbor, Iran has seen its influence grow in the political spectrum of the Middle East. In recent years, it has supported movements countering what it calls US interventionist policy. Iran is known to support Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and according to the US military, Shia militias in Iraq. As a result, Iran is now regarded a major player in the geopolitics of the Middle


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East. The inclusion of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, its president, in the meeting of the GCC in 2007 reflected a concerted effort on the part of Arab states to recognise Iran's influence as a rising power.

Profile: The Mahdi Army

The Shia group has been labelled by the US as one of the biggest threats in Iraq [AFP] The Mahdi Army is an armed group loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shia leader from a dynasty of revered clerics persecuted under Saddam Hussein - Iraq's former president. The group was formed in 2003 to protect Shia areas due to the collapse of public order in the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq. Its members are often popular in neighborhoods they control because the group offers services that the Iraqi government is often unable to provide. "This is an army of volunteers ... They are clerics at night and heroes during the day," Abu Bakr, a resident of Baghdad's Sadr City district, said. "This army is helping society. They clean the streets, protect our schools and distribute fuel and gas." Sadr City is one of the group's strongholds and there the Mahdi Army has banned black markets, which are rampant in the rest of the capital, and members man strict neighborhood security checkpoints to search for car bombs. "Ask anyone around," one of its fighters said, "they will tell you that without our presence, they will not be able to sleep at night, [and] students will not be able to go to school, like in the rest of the capital, where people are scared." Anti-US stance The Iraq Study Group, also known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission, last year estimated that the force had 60,000 members, but others put the number much larger, saying that the Mahdi Army is present in every city and town - from Baghdad to the southern border with Kuwait. Al-Sadr is against the presence of foreign troops in Iraq and has demanded a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces. He told Al Jazeera that the Mahdi Army will only disarm when an administration that can "get the occupier out of Iraq" is present. The Mahdi Army is capable of "liberating Iraq", he said, maintaining that the US-backed government is as "distant" from the Iraqi people as Saddam Hussein's. Many Sunnis are fearful of the group, which they accuse of carrying out a relentless campaign against them. Abdullah, a Sunni student in Baghdad, told Al Jazeera: "If anyone from them [the Mahdi Army] recognised that I am Sunni, then I will be targeted."


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The group is accused of infiltrating the security forces and its members have reportedly used police uniforms to set up fake checkpoints and hunt down Sunnis. The Mahdi Army had in the past concentrated on fighting US troops, and on two occasions sent aid to Sunni fighters in Fallujah during military offensives led by US forces. But that support dried up in February 2006, when the Askari mosque, a holy site for Shia Muslims in Samarra, was bombed. Within hours of the bombing, young people were riding around the capital on the back of pick-up trucks, parading guns and vowing revenge. Al-Sadr, however, insists that Sunni fighters are allies of the Mahdi Army and that he stands with them politically. "I am an admirer of the Sunnis and one of them," he told Al Jazeera. Accused of being influenced by Shia neighbour Iran, al-Sadr says he has told the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, that he does not approve of the "political and military interests" that Tehran's government has pursued in Iraq. Mahdi Army commanders, though, say they have accepted arms and cash from Iran. Unchecked force Al-Sadr withdrew from public view in 2008, in part to study to become a religious authority like his ancestors. He says, however, that he maintains control of the group through a ruling committee. Nuri Al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has been reluctant to confront the Mahdi Army. Politicians loyal to al-Sadr form a 30- member bloc in the Iraqi parliament. Last year saw a significant drop in violence across Iraq, largely due to a ceasefire between the government and the al-Sadr's followers, according to the US military. However, a recent bout of fighting between Mahdi Army and government forces broke out on March 25, after hundreds of al-Sadr supporters in the southern city of Basra were arrested for what US commanders say were ties to Iran and for attacks on American soldiers. Al-Sadr's followers accused rival Shia parties in the government of trying to crush their movement before provincial elections this fall. After six days of clashes, which left almost 300 people reported dead across the southern part of the country, Mahdi Army fighters were ordered off the streets by al-Sadr. The Mahdi Army and its leader have been branded by the US as one of the biggest threats in Iraq, and whether al-Maliki will be able to subdue the group remains to be seen.


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Palestinians see Nasrallah as new hero - By Rachel Shabi in Ramallah It's impossible to speak with Waleeed Ayyoub without constant interruptions. The 33-year-old artist in Ramallah is busy dealing with requests for the fastest selling portrait in the West Bank - that of Hassan Nasrallah. "Nasrallah is a hero, I want to hang his picture in my salon," says Mohammad Taha, 27, who has come from Jerusalem to buy one of these ubiquitous posters from Ayyoub. Portrait posters of the Hezbollah leader are hanging everywhere in Ramallah, covering the walls and shop fronts and plastered across T-shirts and demonstration banners. Before the Israel-Lebanon war broke out, Ayyoub was selling from his stock of hero portraits, such as Che Guevara, Yasser Arafat, Fidel Castro, Egypt's late leader Abdel Gamal Nasser and Jesus. On the day of one of many Ramallah demonstrations against the Lebanon war last week, Ayyoub says he sold around 1,000 posters of the Hezbollah leader. Hit song Meanwhile, Ramallah's hit song of the summer, blaring out of shops and streets stalls on a loop, is "The eagle of Lebanon," in praise of Nasrallah. One music store reports receiving scores of requests for the CD each day and there are numerous stalls selling the disc along Ramallah's main streets. All over the city, secularists, Christians and Muslims alike refer to the Hezbollah leader as Palestine's newest and truest hero. "I am secular in principle," says Zakariya Muhammad, a Ramallah-based writer. "But Nasrallah's war is a resistance war against Israel and against the US attempts to reshape the Middle East in their interests." Sufian Adawi, a money-changer in the city centre, was one of the first to put a photo of Nasrallah in his shop window when the war broke out. "He is the symbol of victory, a leader of the Arab resistance," he says. "This is the first time that the Arabs are fighting properly and are strong against Israel." 'Superhero' Many voices in Ramallah echo this sentiment, agreeing that Hezbollah's 26-day resistance to the Israeli army elevates Nasrallah to the league of superhero. "He is different to other heroes because he stands up to Israel, he isn't scared and he doesn't stay quiet – he takes action," says Nadia al-Khatib, 16. The West Bank city currently holds daily demonstrations against the war and has unofficially renamed one of its main streets Bint Jbeil, in solidarity with the Lebanese village that has seen fierce clashes between the Israeli army and Hezbollah fighters. Some Israeli newspapers have argued that support for Hezbollah could manifest in a greater motivation for attacks on Israel from the West Bank. One Israeli newspaper last week reported the Israeli police in a high state of alert and the West Bank in full closure because of warnings related to "suicide bombings, high trajectory weapons attack, and kidnapping attacks." Increased attacks A spokesman for the Israel army says: "Over the last couple of weeks we have seen an increase in terror activity emanating from the West Bank and we think that this is linked not just to support for Hezbollah but also to Hezbollah encouraging this type of activity." The spokesman adds: "We believe that Hezbollah are interested in a third front being opened [in the West Bank] and are supporting - we even think financially – terror activities." According to the Israeli army, six suicide bombers were intercepted in the last two weeks, three of them on Israeli territory. But Fatah leaders in Ramallah think it unlikely that political alliances would be formed on the back of popular support for Hezbollah. "The Palestinian people would support any side or any party that stands in the face of the Israeli occupation," says Mohammad al-Hourani, Fatah member of the Palestinian parliament.


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He adds: "People may side with Hezbollah because of solidarity and sympathy. But that doesn't mean that people want to be a part of Hezbollah." Wide appeal Back at Manara square in Ramallah, Waleed Ayyoub is still selling the Nasrallah images to "all people of all ages - even little children." He is especially proud of a sale made to an Arab-Israeli woman from Haifa, fleeing the Katyusha attacks on her city. The artist intends to donate profits from poster sales to charities helping Gaza and Lebanon. Explaining why Nasrallah has such appeal in the West Bank, he says: "We are always looking for someone to help us, to save us, to free us. In Palestine, we can't find a hero like Nasrallah."


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List of Contributors

Author Workbench

Ahmad Atif Ahmad Ahmad Atif Ahmad is an assistant professor of Islamic studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Indlieb Farazi Independent iournalist

John Tolan John Tolan is a Professor of Medieval History at the University of Nantes (France). He is the author of Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008), and St Francis and the Sultan: An Encounter Seen Through Eight Centuries of Texts and Images (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008; French edition published in Paris: Seuil, 2007).

Firas Al-Atraqchi Firas Al-Atraqchi is a Muslim Canadian journalist living on the Pacific Coast.

Zyad Tariq Rasheed Al Jazeera correspondent

Ahmed Janabi Ahmed Janabi is an Iraqi journalist based in Qatar.

Dina Abdel-Mageed Dina Abdel-Mageed is the editor of the special coverage of Iran on IslamOnline.net's Muslim Affairs section and a freelance journalist. A graduate of the American University in Cairo, she holds a BA in political science with a specialization in public and international law. She has written articles for several online and print publications, including the Edinburgh Middle East Report and the Middle East Times

Abdul-Ilah Saadi Independent journalist

Rachel Shabi Rachel Shabi has written on social and campaigning issues for The Guardian Weekend magazine, G2 and Comment. She is currently in Tel Aviv researching a book about the Arab-Jews of Israel. She was born in Israel to Iraqi parents, and grew up in the UK.

Lamis Andoni Lamis Andoni is a Middle East consultant for Al Jazeera and independent journalist who has been covering the Middle East for 20 years. She has reported for the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times and the main newspapers in Jordan. She is a professor at the Graduate School in UC Berkeley.

Hassan Ibrahim Hassan Ibrahim is an Al Jazeera political analyst who has covered the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war.

Wafaa' Al-Natheema Wafaa' Al-Natheema is the founder of the Institute of Near Eastern & African Studies (INEAS) in Massachusetts. An author and filmmaker, she has just released a documentary film on former Iraqi president Abdul Rahman Aref and is currently directing documentary films on Jewish and Druze Arabs. http://www.ineas.org/

Laila El-Haddad Laila El-Haddad: Palestinian journalist, filmmaker and photographer based between Gaza and the U.S; http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com

Saeed Taji Farouky Saeed Taji Farouky is a freelance journalist, photographer and documentary filmmaker who specializes in the politics and culture of the Arab World. His work has been published by The Observer, The Telegraph, The Independent, Reuters, BBC Online, The Economist Group, Aljazeera online and Open Democracy, amongst others. He is also co-director of the documentary production company Tourist With A Typewriter, and a consultant to the Board of the Arab British Centre. http://www.taji.co.uk/

Adla Massoud Adla Massoud (born Beirut) works as a freelance journalist based in New York City. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adla_Massoud


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Abdulkarim Hani Abdulkarim Hani is vice chairman of the Movement of Arab Nationalist Current. He formerly served in the Iraqi Ministry of Health and as a minister of labor and social affairs.

Christian Porth Independent journalist see The Daily Star

Basheer Nafi Basheer Nafi is an academic and historian. His latest publications include: Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century (in association with Saeed Taji-Farouki), and Iraq: Contexts of Unity and Disintegration.

Atef Dalgamouni Al Jazeera Network, Qatar

Abdel-Rahman Hussein Independent Journalist

Mark LeVine Mark LeVine is professor of history at UCI Irvine and author or editor of half a dozen books dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and globalization in the Middle East, including Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine, Reproaching Borders: New Perspectives on the Study of Israel and Palestine, Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil, and the forthcoming An Impossible Peace: Oslo and the Burdens of History.


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A Question of Arab Unity With the fall of Iraq to American and Allied forces and the possibility of a showdown between Christianity and Islam, is the Arab World on the brink of an abyss if it does not fulfil the promise of Arab unity? Arab unity has been a dream and a promise since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, so why has this dream not been fulfilled in the last 100 years? What is the history behind its rise and fall? In this series we will investigate The Question of Arab Unity from the 'Nahda' - the Arab cultural renaissance of the 19th century through to the turbulent and often disappointing 20th century and today's bewildering array of dictatorships, political ideologies, teetering democracies and monarchies. Episode 1: Why Unity? The Arab World is a loose, yet complex amalgamation of 22 countries in which a pan- Arab identity is the ideal proclaimed by leaders and masses alike. In the early 20th century, an independent Arab world started to emerge from decades of colonial supremacy in the Middle East and North Africa region. In those days, the race for statehood among fledgling Arab countries was taken over by a hasty struggle for unity. 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 that an Arab association of some sort was necessary for an Arab revival. The mix of anticipated independence and Arab nationalism steered efforts among Arab states toward a new regional order; one which today we call the Arab World. But was there ever a 'unified' Arab world? The story of the struggle for Arab unity is entangled with the modern history of the Middle East and both are steeped in conflicting ideologies, revolution, oppression, betrayal and war. Arab unity was intended as a way of ridding the Arab East of Ottoman occupation and - for Christian proponents at least - of creating a secular society in which Muslim and Christian Arabs would be equal. This introductory episode tackles issues like identity, loyalty and self determination and asks the question, will Arabs ever address the gap between the reality and dream of unity? Watch part one of Why Unity? on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUZhfv-68Fs Watch part two of Why Unity? on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUZhfv-68Fs Episode 2: Unity Betrayed The Ottoman empire had ruled the Arab World for 400 years, the final straw coming in the late 19th century when Turkish efforts to centralize control led to strong anti- Turkish feelings. The Arab cultural renaissance, known as the Nahda, developed in response and revived in people a sense of identity. But a looming World War was about to reveal the fragility of the intellectual renaissance on which the Arabs based their hopes of closing the gap between the dream and reality of unity. With the 1916 Arab Revolt, it seemed that dream was going to be fulfilled. However, European colonialism stopped the dream and divided the region. But were the Arabs really united in the first place? This episode examines the decline and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, as well as growing European colonial interest in the region, expressed in the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 and the 1917 Balfour Declaration which paved the way for the future state of Israel. It also explores the 1916 Arab Revolt, led by Sherif Hussein of Mecca and his sons, aided and abetted by Britain and TE Lawrence. Watch part one of Unity Betrayed on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbGl_vXUAyk Watch part two of Unity Betrayed on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FVRRqNsjOU


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Episode 3: Trials and Tribulations The end of World War I left the Arabs feeling betrayed. Their dream of a new Arab Kingdom had not materialised; Britain and France had instead divided the region between them. As the promises of the past receded and their sense of fragmentation increased, Arabs began to turn to new political ideologies - charting a path for the Arab Nation in the hope of addressing the gap between the reality and dream of unity. The defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the Islamic Caliphate by the newly secular Turkish state forced the Arabs to reconsider their personal and political identities. The 1920's and 30's saw the rise of a multitude of secular ideologies like communism and socialism. And it was at this time that the importance of the idea of a secular Arab Nationalism began to emerge. In Lebanon in 1932, Antoun Saadeh founded the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), dedicated to recreating what Saadeh termed 'natural' Syria: Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Cyprus and parts of Iraq and Turkey. He rejected both language and religion as defining characteristics of a nation, thus setting himself apart from other Arab nationalists, believing that people should be united by history, geography and cultural heritage instead. In Syria in 1947, Michel Aflaq and Salah Bitar founded the Baath party, a pan-Arabist party rooted in both socialism and nationalism which would eventually only have genuine appeals in Syria and Iraq. Although ostensibly a secular party, Baathism differed from the SSNP in positing religion, specifically Islam, as the greatest achievement of the Arabs and as the source of the Arab World's eventual regeneration. With the fall of Saddam Hussein after the American invasion in 2003 and the current political and economic pressures on Syria, what remains of these visions of Arab unity? In this episode we ask; how much did either party contribute to the concept of Arab unity and how much did they detract from it? Watch part one of Trials and Tribulations on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgM-6e5pnH0 Watch part two of Trials and Tribulations on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IWN1Z5_MuQ Episode 4: A Cause for Unity The fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I left the Near East divided into spheres of colonial influence. In a secret agreement known as Sykes-Picot the Allies namely France and Britain, carved the Arab World between them, even though Britain has actually promised independence to the Arabs who had helped them oust the Turks. While Lebanon and Syria were controlled by the French, Palestine was taken by the British who had assured Sherif Hussein, leader of the 1916 Arab Revolt, that after the war Palestine would be part of an independent greater Arab Kingdom. At the same time, however, they promised Lord Edmond Rothschild, a prominent member of the World Zionist Organisation a homeland for the Jewish people. The resulting 1917 Balfour Declaration, which paved the way for the creation of the state of Israel, brought about the single biggest crisis the Arab World has faced in the modern era. The struggle for Palestine in one of the main issues at the heart of the question of Arab unity. Everywhere you go in the Arab World, it is the constant refrain, whether in discussions of democracy, identity or even religion. In theory then, it presents the perfect opportunity for Arab states to work together, if only to help out a brother nation in distress. It is not just the human tragedy of the Palestinians that has affected the Arab World but also the historical, cultural and religious significance of Palestine and specifically Jerusalem. In this episode we look at how in practice, the conflict has been as divisive politically as it has been unifying emotionally. While in theory subscribing to solidarity and unity with the Palestinians, many Arab states have either made false promises or else withheld aid for personal political gain. From Nasser to Assad and Hussein, the region's strongest leaders have all sought in different ways and for different reasons, to shape the resolution of this conflict. Can solving the Palestinian problem ever address the gap between the reality and dream of Arab unity? Watch part one of A Cause for Unity on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t3kfyL_P5E Watch part two of A Cause for Unity on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbjoH0DS5Pw


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Episode 5: The Unity Experiment Between 1952 and 1967, the drive for Arab Unity was at its strongest. This period gave new meaning to Arab nationalism. It was an age of solidarity and the pursuit of unity through mass political movements. It was an era dominated by a leader the likes of whom the Arabs had not seen in a long time. On July 23, 1952, a group of officers in the Egyptian army calling themselves the Free Officers Movement took power in a bloodless coup. Under the leader of the coup, a charismatic officer called Jamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt became a republic. In 1956 Nasser ordered Egyptian forces to take control of the Suez Canal, a vital artery for the transportation of goods and petrol to the Western World. The British and French technicians guarding the waterway were expelled and although Nasser lost the ensuing war which pitted Egypt against France, Britain and Israel. American and Soviet pressure forced a retreat of European troops from the Suez, leaving Israel in control of the Sinai Peninsula. Nasser introduced a new way of thinking. Arabism - or Nasserism as it is often called – fed the principals of Arab unity making the peoples of Egypt and the Arab world feel they shared a common cause: freeing all colonized and occupied Arab lands. The high point of Arab unity came in 1958 when Nasser proclaimed political unity between Egypt and Syria. The United Arab Republic lasted only until 1961, falling apart amid Syrian recriminations of Egyptian high-handedness. This is the only example of Arab Unity and seen as a dark time by the Syrians. A populist, often autocratic albeit charming leader, Nasser's centralized and increasingly policed state eventually became the model for many emerging Arab states and statesmen. In this episode we ask the questions; did Nasserism distort the Arab World's search for unity by encouraging the veneration of authoritarianism? Do Arab leaders, amongst them Nasser himself, offer more than the cult of personality? What happens to the state or to notions of unity when a leader's feet are found to be made of clay? Watch part one of The Unity Experiment on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDbXkFy4Lfk Watch part two of The Unity Experiment on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGthUd4FK-Q Episode 6: Disillusion By the late 1950s, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt's president, was the Arab world's most powerful and influential leader. With his own brand of socialist ideology and political victories he impressed and inspired the Arabs, giving a new meaning to Arab Nationalism. But Nasser's very success, begged the question – does unity need a collective effort or could the Arab Nation be built by a single leader? Nasser's drive for unity with Syria would answer that question. Pan-Arabists promised that the fusion would bring liberation, stability and prosperity. But in the hands of actual practitioners it seemed to be converted to a tool of domination, wielded in this case by the Egyptians over the Syrians. Disillusion set in. In the end, it was the fragile United Arab Republic that suffered. The merger of Nasser and the Baath turned into a struggle for control within the camp of Arab Nationalism. The union did not release the pent-up potential that only the combining of Egypt and Syria could tap. In the meantime Nasser had come under increasing pressure to confront Israel. Arab leaders began doubting his sincerity in defending Palestine, the cause he claimed to support. Counting heavily on Arab support, Nasser's stated his intention to attack Israel, although militarily stretched to the breaking point with a large part of Egypt's army fighting in Yemen. The Arab Defence Pact was put to the test in 1967, in what became known as the Six Day War. In a pre-emptive strike on June 5, Israel destroyed most of Egypt’s air force on the ground. Arabs refer to the Six Day War as the Naksa – the Defeat. The Arab Defence Pact failed, Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine was occupied and Syria lost the Golan Heights. Nasser was humiliated. The military defeat of 1967 showed lack of coordination among Arab states, Arab land was lost, the common enemy was victorious and it served a big blow to Arab self confidence. In this episode we look at what is left of Nasserism and discuss the implications of the defeat of 1967 which worked its way deep into the collective Arab psyche. Two voices were raised in opposition to Arab


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nationalism. One spoke the language of allegiance to individual states. The other spoke of loyalty to a universalist Islam. Watch part one of Disillusion on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnb-NlJ3_0Q Watch part two of Disillusion on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4mtpoGGROo Episode 7: The Jewish factor The struggle to keep Palestine, an inseparable part of the greater Arab nation, became one of the main issues at the heart of the Question of Arab Unity. And with the creation of Israel in 1948, the two states envisaged in the United Nations partition-plan did not come into being. Over half of the Palestinian population fled or were expelled. The Palestinians found themselves still living in camps almost two decades after the war of 1948. New solutions were needed. The Palestinians began to think about solving their problem by themselves. So could Arab Unity be forged through war against a common enemy? In this episode we follow the history unity in this period through the Arab-Israeli conflict up to first the Madrid conference and then Oslo accords. The Madrid conference in 1991 symbolized another turning point in the slow fragmentation of Arab Unity. Israelis, Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians and the Palestinian delegation met to negotiate a joint settlement. Though the Madrid conference was considered a failure, the reality of Israeli- Palestinian negotiations – once completely unthinkable - highlighted a fundamental shift in Arab thinking towards Israel. The Palestinian cause was being transformed from an ideological contest into an inter-state conflict. And by 1993, Israel and the PLO unilaterally signed the Declaration of principles in Oslo, formally recognizing each other's existence. In the long term, Oslo too was considered a failure. The Palestinians never became truly independent. Israeli troops largely remained in place and the Palestinian authority was ultimately proven to be ineffectual. The result has been the creation of a Palestine that is superficially at the heart of Arab unity and the reason that more Arabs give than any other, for their opposition towards the West and simultaneously of the creation of a Palestinian identity that was one of the first to break away from the wider Arab world. Watch part one of The Jewish factor on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qrcykw1nKMw Watch part two of The Jewish Factor on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMM_w35zE0 Episode 8: Holy Unity The collapse of Nasserism as a uniting force and the inability to regain the territories lost in wars with Israel led to the questioning of the secular ideologies that have dominated regional politics since WWII. With many governments finding it increasingly difficult to fulfil their promises of prosperity and national strength in the face of globalization and increased foreign intervention, Islamist movements, long suppressed are gaining political ground and mass public support. In this episode we ask could Islam be the factor which unites the gap between the dream and reality of Arab unity? In Egypt's 2006 polls, the Muslim Brotherhood made a strong showing, while the authorities watched with great concern. It is this movement that is at the origins of Islamist movements in the Arab world. We talk to members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo asking the modern generation of Islamists about their understanding of Arab unity and how it applies to Islamic unity? And what this mean for non-Muslim Arabs? The foundations for the spread in Islamism have long been laid: opposition to Colonialism and the West and wide discrepancies in living standards in most Arab societies as well as political repression, have all resulted in frustration. But most importantly, it is the lack of faith in Arab Nationalism since the defeat of 1967, and in the ruling regimes of the Arab World that have played a major role in the increasing popularity of Islamist movements. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, many young men from all over the Arab world joined the battle against Soviet forces, calling themselves 'Afghan Arabs'. In fact it was not the term 'Afghan' that united all these men, it was the Jihad against what they termed 'Infidels', in other words, non-Muslims.


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Many returned to their home countries with the aim of setting up an Islamic state. Islam, for these men, was seen as the main unifying factor for the Arab World. We ask the question 'why do they think Islam, not Arabism is the answer?' In the final analysis we ask can Islam encompass the necessary social and political forces that make Arab Unity less of a dream and more of a reality? Watch part one of Holy Unity on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbg5egUrc8M Watch part two of Holy Unity on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFVY5gbT2VU Episode 9: Disunity? Fifty five years ago, the voice of the Arabs or Sawt Al Arab radio was launched in Cairo, broadcasting the revolutionary ideology of Egypt's new leaders – the Free Officers who had overthrown the monarchy. Taking advantage of cheap transistor technology the Egyptian regime was able to get its message across the Arab World. And by using a combination of emotional Arabist rhetoric and popular singers like Um Khalthoum, the voice of the Arabs emerged at a critical moment in the history of Arab unity. In this episode we explore the relationship between Arab regimes, Arab media and the question of Arab unity in a time when the idea of Arab countries unifying - culturally if not politically - seems to be undergoing a revival. The Arab world is being brought together in a shared cultural and political experience by transnational media based on fast evolving satellite technology. Pan-Arab media are creating platforms for dialogue and for shared experiences - and in the process are bringing Arabs together. Slogans like the 'Arab Street' are being bandied about and the ordinary citizen is voicing discontent with state of the world around him. Building on a common language and traditions, the people of the region are sharing their experiences in ways that were unimaginable even a decade ago. The proliferation of independent media means hard-hitting realities are often televised and reported immediately. And Arab audiences have access to an instant and close-up view of the daily struggles, squabbles and suffering of their fellow Arabs. But this has lead to accusations that the new media has been a force of disunity in the region. How will the regimes of the region cope with new platforms of expression available to their citizens? And will these changing structures of communication re-awaken the sense of common destiny Arabs feel? This fast-developing information age is likely to present new opportunities for Arab audiences, and new challenges to Arab regimes. So will a pan-Arab media – addressing itself to a global Arab audience – prove to be an agent of harmony or discord?

Watch part one of Disunity? on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oSsH2rFvzk Watch part two of Disunity? on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSMFyWj96Sg

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