Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair

Chapter 1
DEFINING ARAB NATIONALISM
The men and women of the nationalist generation who had sought the political unity of the Arab people must have cast weary eyes at one another when they heard their acknowledged leader call a truce with those they considered to be anti-unionists; they must have dropped their heads and thrown their hands in the air when he announced the onset of a new era where "solidarity" among Arab states would replace the quest for a comprehensive political unity. Had Gamal 'Abd al-Nasir, the President of Egypt and the hero of Arab nationalism, reneged on the principles of the Arab nationalist creed when in 1963 he declared that it was Arab solidarity "which constituted the firm basis upon which Arab nationalism could be built,"1 and that Arab solidarity would make "the Arab states stronger through their cooperation in the economic, military and cultural fields, and in the sphere of foreign policy"?2 The nationalist generation must have hoped and prayed that Nasir would reconsider, come to his senses, and retread the path of revolutionary Arab nationalism with its unequivocal commitment to organic Arab unity.
But their hero's intent was different, more complex, and more subtle. Nasir, after all, was both an ideologue and a politician. To him the path to Arab unity was fraught with both opportunities and constraints, and an organic unity of all the Arabs in one unified state would be the ultimate aim of a long and dialectical process consisting of "several stages."3 Arab solidarity constituted one of these stages; it was "a step toward unity."4 Solidarity was a pragmatic course of action when political constraints made impractical the aggressive pursuit of comprehensive Arab unity. But even when bending to political realities, the Egyptian president would reiterate the belief, shared by all Arab nationalists, that without the goal (or at a minimum, the aspiration) of Arab political unity, Arab nationalism would be a creed without a purpose, indeed without a meaning.5
To this, Sati' al-Husri, who, as we shall see later, was the foremost theoretician of Arab nationalism, would say, "Amen." Throughout his numerous writings on Arab nationalism, Husri never lost sight of the ultimate goal of the ideology he so vigorously propagated, namely the political unity of the Arabic-speaking people. "People who spoke a unitary language," Husri maintained, "have one heart and a common soul. As such, they constitute one nation, and so they have to have a unified state."6 In another instance, he wrote that the happiest of nations were the ones in which political and national boundaries were fused into one another.7 Husri considered the Arab states to be artificial creations of the imperialist powers. Driven by their imperial interests, these powers proceeded to carve up what essentially was a natural cultural entity with an inalienable right to political sovereignty. An intended consequence of this perfidious parceling of the "Arab nation" was to keep the Arabs politically ineffectual and militarily feeble. In one of his writings, Husri says that he is constantly asked how was it that the Arabs lost the 1948-1949 war over Palestine when they were seven states and Israel was only one? His answer is unequivocal: The Arabs lost the war precisely because they were seven states.8 The conclusion is unambiguous: To avoid losing future wars, the Arabs had to unite into one Arab state.
The founders of the Ba'th Party, the prominent Arab nationalist organization, felt the same about the connection between nationalism and organic political unity. The opening article of the party constitution promulgated in 1947 unequivocally declares: "The Arabs form one nation. This nation has the natural right to live in a single state. [As such] the Arab Fatherland constitutes an indivisible political and economic unity. No Arab country can live apart from the others."9 The party's founder and philosopher, Michel Aflaq, in his most important canonical document, posited the party's Arab nationalist creed as a mission to resurrect the Arab people, to revive their intrinsic humanity and creativity, which lay dormant because of the political divisions in the Arab world. And how was this to be accomplished? Aflaq's remedy was clear: by uniting these "artificial and counterfeit countries and statelets" into one Arab nation-state. Only then could the Arabs return to their true selves "their upstanding spirit, clear ideas and upright morality," and only then would "their minds be able to create."10 To Aflaq, therefore, Arab unity is not only an intrinsic element of Arab nationalism; it is also a necessary precondition for the revival of the Arab spirit and Arab intellect.