Arabs (57 page)

T
he entire Arab world was stunned by the magnitude of the Palestine disaster. Yet in this moment of crisis, Arab intellectuals proved remarkably clear-sighted about both the causes and the consequences of the loss of Palestine.

Two critical works appeared in the immediate aftermath of the first Arab-Israeli War that set the tone for Arab self-criticism and reform. The first was written by Constantine Zurayk, one of the great Arab intellectuals of the twentieth century. Born in Damascus in 1909, Zurayk had completed his B.A. at the American University of Beirut, his M.A. at the University of Chicago, and his doctorate at Princeton—all by the age of twenty-one. He spent his life between academic and public service in Lebanon and Syria, and wrote a string of hugely influential works on Arab nationalism. It was Zurayk who gave the 1948 war its Arabic name, al-Nakba, with his influential tract
Ma’nat al-Nakba
(or, “The Meaning of the Disaster”), published in Beirut at the height of the war in August 1948.
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The second landmark book was written by a Palestinian notable named Musa Alami. The son of a former mayor of Jerusalem, Alami studied law at Cambridge before entering service with the mandate government in Palestine. He rose to the rank of Arab secretary to the high commissioner and crown counsel before resigning in 1937 at the height of the Arab Revolt, to enter private practice and support the nationalist movement. Alami represented Palestinian aspirations in the London conferences of 1939 and 1946–1947 and served as Palestinian representative to the formative meetings of the Arab League. His March 1949 essay
’Ibrat Filastin
(“The Lesson of Palestine”), reflected on the Arabs’ total defeat and the route to national regeneration.
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Both authors recognized that the loss of Palestine and the creation of Israel opened a dangerous new chapter in Arab history. “The defeat of the Arabs in Palestine,” Zurayk warned, “is no simple setback or light, passing evil. It is a disaster in every sense of the word and one of the harshest of the trials and tribulations with which the Arabs have been afflicted throughout their long history—a history marked by numerous trials and tribulations.”
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Arab failure to confront this new danger would condemn them to a future of division and rule, not so unlike the colonial era from which they were only just gaining their independence.

Given the similarities in their diagnoses of Arab ills, it is not surprising that Alami and Zurayk recommended similar cures. The spectacle of Arab divisions impressed on both men the need for Arab unity. The post–World War I settlement, and the
partition of the Arab world between Britain and France, had fragmented and weakened the Arab nation. The Arabs, they argued, would only realize their potential as a people by overcoming the divisions of the imperial order through Arab unity. They recognized the contradictions between narrow nation-state nationalism (e.g., the distinct nationalism of Egyptians or Syrians) and the broader Arab nation to which they aspired. Zurayk believed formal union was impossible in the short term, given deeply entrenched national interests among the newly emergent independent Arab states. So, in the first instance, Zurayk called for “far-reaching, comprehensive changes” to the existing Arab states in advance of the long-term goal of unity.
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Alami placed his hopes in an “Arab Prussia” that might, through force of arms, achieve the desired unity.
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The role of Arab Prussia would appeal to a number of nationalists in the upper ranks of Arab armies, as the military men prepared to take their place on the political stage in the aftermath of the Palestine disaster.

In their response to the Palestine disaster, Alami and Zurayk both called for nothing short of an Arab renaissance as prelude to Arab unity, and as a prerequisite for the redemption of Palestine and Arab self-respect in the modern world. Their books enjoyed wide circulation and were hugely influential, precisely because their analyses reflected the spirit of their times. Arab citizens had grown deeply disenchanted with their rulers. The old political elites, who had led the struggle for national independence, had grown tainted by association with their imperial masters. They had been educated in European universities and spoke their language, they dressed in Western clothes, they worked through the institutions imposed by colonialism—all in all, they reeked of collaboration. They bickered over small gains, and their worldview had been narrowed to the borders of the states the imperialists had imposed on them.

Politicians in the Arab world had lost sight of the greater Arab nation that still inspired so many of their fellow citizens. The bankruptcy of their politics had been revealed to all through the disastrous Arab performance in Palestine. Hence the remedies proposed by Alami and Zurayk, of a greater Arab nation composed of empowered citizens facing the challenges of the modern age with the strength of unity, struck so many Arabs as the obvious solution to their present weakness. The lesson of Palestine was that divided, the Arabs were sure to fall, and only if united could they hope to withstand the challenges of the modern world.

The times were changing. Arab rulers were gravely weakened by their failures in Palestine. A new generation was rising to the call of Arab nationalism and took their own governments as their first targets.

A
rab defeat in Palestine and the emergence of the state of Israel completely destabilized the newly independent Arab states. The months immediately following
al-Nakba were stained by political assassinations and coups in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.

Following the Palestine disaster, Egypt was thrown into political chaos. For a new religious party, the loss of Muslim land to create a Jewish state was nothing short of a betrayal of Islam. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood had been founded in March 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, a primary school teacher in the Suez Canal city of Ismailiyya. Al-Banna was a charismatic reformer who fought against the Western influences that he believed were undermining Islamic values in Egypt. Between European-inspired reforms and British imperialism, al-Banna argued, the people of Egypt had “departed from the goals of their faith.”
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What began as a movement for the renewal of faith within Egyptian society evolved into a powerful political force that had, by the late 1940s, come to rival in power the established parties, even the Wafd.

The Brotherhood had declared the Palestine War a jihad and dispatched battalions of volunteers into Palestine to fight against the creation of a Jewish state. Like the other Arab volunteers in the Liberation Army, they had underestimated Jewish strength and organization. Unprepared for battle, they were equally unprepared for defeat. They saw the Arab failure in Palestine as a betrayal of religion and pinned the blame on Arab governments generally and on the Egyptian government in particular. They returned to Egypt to organize demonstrations and accused the government of responsibility for the defeat.

The Egyptian government took quick action to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood. In the closing months of 1948, the organization was accused of fomenting riots and plotting the overthrow of the Egyptian government. Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi, who had declared martial law, approved a decree dissolving the Muslim Brotherhood on December 8, 1948. The assets of the society were frozen, its records seized, and many of its leaders arrested.

The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna, was left at liberty, and he tried to reconcile extremists inside his own movement with the government. His efforts were undermined by intransigence on both sides. Prime Minister al-Nuqrashi refused to meet with al-Banna or to make any concessions to the Brotherhood. Extremists within the society resorted to violence. On December 28, the Egyptian premier was gunned down while entering the Ministry of Interior, shot at close range by a veterinary student who had been a member of the Brotherhood since 1944. Al-Nuqrashi was the first Arab leader to fall in the tense aftermath of the Palestine disaster.

The government never arrested Hasan al-Banna for al-Nuqrashi’s assassination. The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood took little comfort in his freedom, knowing that so long as he was at liberty he would be at risk of a retaliatory assassination. Al-Banna tried to negotiate with al-Nuqrashi’s successor but found all government doors closed to him. He protested the Brotherhood’s innocence of all attempts to overthrow the political system, but to no avail.

On February 12, 1949, Hasan al-Banna was shot and killed outside the headquarters of the Young Men’s Muslim Association. It was widely assumed that the assassination had been ordered by the government with the support of the palace. The two political murders in the space of six weeks raised political tensions in Egypt to unprecedented levels.

 

In Syria, the Palestine disaster provoked a military coup d’état. President Shukri al-Quwwatli had long feared that his army would overthrow him, and on March 30, 1949, his fears were vindicated. Colonel Husni al-Za‘im, army chief of staff, led a bloodless coup described by veteran Syrian political Adil Arslan as “the most significant and strangest event in recent Syrian history.” In his diary, Arslan elaborated: “The general public celebrated, and the majority of the students took the opportunity to hold demonstrations in the streets. However, the political elites were struck silent with anxiety over the fate of their country.”
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Syria’s political elite were anxious to preserve the young Syrian republic’s democratic institutions. They feared military dictatorship, and with good reason. Though al-Za’im’s government lasted less than 150 days, his coup marked the entry of the military into Syrian politics. Except for a couple of brief hiatuses, military men would remained in control of Syria for the rest of the century.

One of the strangest aspects of al-Za‘im’s rule, according to his foreign minister, Adil Arslan, was his willingness to come to terms with Israel so soon after Syria’s defeat. The armistice between Syria and Israel was concluded by Husni al-Za’im’s government on July 20, 1949. Behind the scenes, al-Za‘im was willing to go far beyond an armistice, to pursue a comprehensive peace treaty with Israel. With the full support of the U.S. government, al-Za’im relayed a series of proposals to Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion through the Syrian team at the armistice negotiations. Al-Za’im offered full normalization of relations between Syria and the Jewish state—an exchange of ambassadors, open borders, and full economic relations with Israel.

Al-Za‘im’s proposal to settle up to 300,000 Palestinian refugees in Syria attracted the attention of both American and UN officials. It was already clear that the refugee problem would prove the greatest humanitarian issue and a major sticking point in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Al-Za’im sought U.S. development assistance for the Jazira District, north of the Euphrates River, where he proposed to settle the Palestinians. He believed that the injection of Palestinian labor and American funds would help modernize his country and develop its economy.
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The Israeli prime minister had no interest in al-Za‘im’s offer. Despite the best efforts of the Truman administration, UN mediator Dr. Ralph Bunche, and the Israeli foreign minister, Moshe Sharett, Ben-Gurion refused to meet with al-Za’im or even to discuss his proposals. Ben-Gurion insisted the Syrians sign an armistice first.
He knew that al-Za’im wanted to adjust Syria’s boundaries to divide the Lake of Tiberias between Syria and Israel, which Ben-Gurion rejected out of hand. The Israeli prime minister was in no hurry to conclude peace deals with his Arab neighbors, and he certainly did not want to set a precedent of making territorial concessions to secure peace. If anything, Ben-Gurion worried that the boundaries of Israel, as reflected in the armistice agreements with its Arab neighbors, fell well short of the needs of the Jewish state.

When Ben-Gurion refused to meet with al-Za‘im, the U.S. administration suggested a meeting between the foreign ministers of Syria and Israel. The U.S. ambassador to Damascus, James Keeley, approached al-Za’im’s foreign minister, Adil Arslan, to propose the meeting. Arslan was the scion of a princely Druze family who had entered government under al-Za‘im with some misgivings. In his diary he described the colonel as both a friend and a madman, though Keeley’s proposal, recorded by Arslan in his diary on June 6, 1949, convinced him that al-Za’im had lost his bearings.

“Why do you want me to agree to hold a meeting with [Israeli foreign minister Moshe] Shertok,” Arslan asked the U.S. ambassador, “when you know that I have never been fooled by the bluffs of the Jews, and I am the last among the Arabs to make concessions to them?”

“Your question forces me to give you a candid reply,” Keeley responded, “though I am not at liberty to discuss the matter, which remains secret. However, as I know you are an honourable man, I would ask for your word to keep the matter secret.”