Rethinking Pan-Arabism: an analysis of the challenges of a Utopian ideology

ABSTRACT

Through a systematic analysis, this study explores the feasibility of turning the Pan-Arabism ideology into a reality. We trace five challenges to the ideology, dividing them into inherent and secondary difficulties. Two inherent challenges made pan-Arabism almost an impossible idea from its outset. The first is religion and sectarianism, and the second is tribalism. The secondary challenges, which include the struggle over leadership, contesting Arab and non-Arab ideologies, and the attitude toward Israel, hampered the realization of the idea. Reviewing the causes of the collapse of the pan-Arabism ideology leads us to conclude that this notion was a mere unachievable dream. Moreover, even as a propaganda tool, pan-Arabism is veiling the aspirations and ambitions of different Arab politicians.

Introduction

The Arabs form one nation. This nation has the natural right to live in a single state and to be free to direct its own destiny […]. The Arab fatherland constitutes an indivisible political and economic unity. No Arab country can live apart from the others.¹

These statements were the fundamental principles of the Arab Baʿth Party. Pan-Arabism, the aspiration to unite the Arab world into a single state, was its central tenet. The Baʿth Party was not alone. The notion of unification ignited the imaginations of Arab intellectuals and politicians. The pan-Arabism idea was rejuvenated when Egypt and Syria united into one state between 1958 and 1961. However, that unification only exposed the Arab world’s weakness instead of leading to strength.

In 1978, the late historian Fouad Ajami courageously and eloquently argued that pan-Arabism had ended. He alleged that ‘Pan-Arabism’s retreat began in 1967 after the Six Day War, which marked the Waterloo of Pan-Arabism.’² While we agree with Ajami that pan-Arabism ended, our main claim is that the idea was already dead long before 1967. We assert that the pan-Arabism idea died at birth because of various challenges it could not overcome.

The Arab Spring invigorated the Pan-Arabism idea. The fact that Arabs all over the Middle East chanted the same slogans of change led observers and researchers to redefine the notion of Pan-Arabism. Instead of a political idea, it became a sentiment, a new consciousness, especially among Arab youth who connected through the media and social networks. According to Youssef Mohamed Sawani, some analysts define this new Arabism as ‘McArabism, Virtual Arabism, Arab Public Sphere, a New Arab Street, Popular Arabism,’ and more.³ Although we agree with Sawani’s statements, we argue that Pan-Arabism was always a sentiment, a utopian notion, without much possibility of taking shape.

Our study aims to explore the feasibility to turn the Pan Arabism idea into a reality. We are offering an analysis which is composed of different topics – all of them relevant to support our argument, that eventually, Pan-Arabism was and remain a romantic vision and failed to consolidate a united political entity. The existing literature regarding Pan-Arabism deals with the historical, philosophical, and political origins of Arab nationalism and pan-Arabism.⁴

However, no methodical research has categorized and analyzed the reasons for its failure. We aim to fill that gap and examine, through a systematic analysis, whether the pan-Arabism idea ever had a chance to take shape. We trace five challenges to the notion, dividing them into inherent and secondary difficulties. Two inherent challenges made pan-Arabism almost an impossible idea from its outset. The first is religion and sectarianism, and the second is tribalism. Other secondary challenges, namely the struggle over leadership, contesting Arab and non-Arab ideologies, and the attitude toward Israel, hampered the realization of the idea.

The article will outline the critical events in Pan-Arabism’s history, from its outset as an idea in the mid-19^th to the attempts to accomplish it through the unification of Egypt and Syria in 1958. Then the different obstacles to Pan-Arabism will be observed, first the inherent ones and then the secondary ones. Each of these obstacles can hamper and even impede the fulfillment of Pan-Arabism, all the more so by combining all these factors together.

The history of Pan-Arabism

Pan-Arabism is the belief that Arabs form one nation and should be united under some sort of political entity within the Arab homeland. It is the idea that the boundaries dividing the existing Arab states are artificial and should be abolished. It should be mentioned that throughout the years, political unification transformed into emotional unification, namely, highlighting the historical and language bonds, as well as the shared destiny of the Arabs and not necessarily the aspiration to form a unified Arab state.

Pan-Arabism is stemmed from Arab nationalism, which according to Rashid Khalidi, ‘ … can be summarized as the idea that the Arabs are a people linked by special bonds of language and history (and, many would add, religion), and that their political organization should in some way reflect this reality.’⁵ Both notions, Arab nationalism, and Pan-Arabism, are relatively new phenomena in the Middle East. Its origins can be traced to the 19th century. However, it began to take a political form in the 20th century.

The first forerunners of Arab nationalism were Arab Christians who operated in today’s Lebanon and Syria. They opened a new era in Arab history called the Nahḍa, the renaissance. These forerunners initiated an Arab cultural campaign reviving the Arabic language as a common denominator with their Muslim Arab counterparts. The Nahḍa was characterized by adapting the Arabic language to the modern era and translating western literature, both poetry and professional. According to Bassam Tibi,

The revitalisation of Arabic also meant the revitalisation of the national culture, and thus the creation of a new national identity, which pushed religious identity, formerly the substance of the Arabs’ loyalty to the Ottoman Empire, into the background.⁶

At first, these forerunners, encouraged by American Protestant missionaries, began translating the bible and religious texts into Arabic. Soon, their writings became more nationalist. Buṭrus al-Bustāni, one of the first Arabism precursors, tried to invigorate the Arab people to acknowledge their glorious past, to the achievements of the Arabs, Muslims, and Christians alike. Bustāni wrote mainly about Syria and not the whole Arab homeland. According to Eliezer Tauber, ‘Butrus al-Bustāni may therefore be considered the first of the Syrian nationalists in the modern age.’⁷ However, Bustāni’s works influenced other Arab intellectuals.⁸

In her pioneering research, Sylvia Haim tried to trace the origins of Arabism. She argued that Arab nationalism was a new idea among young Christians (Fāris Nimir, Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf, Ibrāhim al-Yāziji, and Shāhin Makāriūs) who strived to end the Ottoman Empire’s control in Lebanon, ‘and to end Muslim supremacy over the Christians,’⁹ already in the 19^th century. Nimir asked for Lebanese Muslims’ assistance, but the latter refused to collaborate with the Christians against the Ottomans. For our study, it is an early obstacle for consolidating Pan-Arabism. According to Haim, when these Christian Arab nationalists called the Muslims to awaken and discover their Arab origins, it was not a nationalist appeal. ‘Rather it is an appeal by a Christian[s] to Muslims to adopt certain European political ideas; these ideas, if accepted, would end the inferior position of the Christians and raise them to equality with the Muslims.’¹⁰

Another Arab intellectual was Ibrāhim al-Yāziji, who considered the Arabs as one nation with a magnificent past. He called the Arabs to awaken and understand that Europe had an outstanding debt to the Arabs. Europe flourished because the Europeans borrowed their knowledge from the Arabs. In order to revive their glories, the Arabs must rid themselves of the Ottoman burden. This cultural phase did not take the form of political activity. Arab nationalism remained mostly a Christian-Arab endeavor. Although Muslim Arabs resented the Ottomans, they did not try to rebel. However, the events of the first decade of the twenty-century led Muslim Arabs into action.¹¹

The Young Turks Revolution in 1908 was a watershed in Arab nationalism history. The new regime in the Ottoman Empire began a process of Turkification of the empire, preferring Turks over others, favoring the Turkish language at the expense of other languages. As a result, Muslim and Christian Arabs joined forces, establishing secret and public societies within the Ottoman Empire and outside the empire’s borders. These societies aspired to cultural autonomy in the Arab areas of the Ottoman Empire. In 1913, the Arab movements organized an Arab congress in Paris. The speakers in that congress distinguished an Arab identity, regardless of religious affiliations, calling for equality within the Ottoman Empire and a decentralized administration. Interestingly, they referred only to the Asian Arabs, excluding Egypt and North Africa from the Arab nation.¹²

World War I was an opportunity to fulfill Arab Nationalism ideas. In 1916, an Arab revolt against the Ottomans erupted. It was under the leadership of the Hashemite family of the Hijaz and with British support. The Hashemites claimed they represented the Arabs and wished to establish an Arab state connected to Britain. They aspired that the Arab state should include the Arab territories of the Fertile Crescent and the Arab peninsula, bordering Ottoman territories (modern Turkey of these days) in the north, Persian in the East, the Indian Ocean in the south, and the Red Sea and the Mediterranean in the west. Hussein, the head of the Hashemite family, would serve as an Arab Califate, with political authority only in the Hijaz, and as a symbol to the entire Arab state.¹³

The Arab aspirations encountered France and Britain’s colonial interests. These powers divided the Arab territories between them through different agreements and arrangements, such as the Sykes-Picot agreement and the Mandate system, a division that eventually led to the establishment of Arab states, shattering the dream of a united and unified Arab state. The Arab Middle East fell under Britain and France’s domination.¹⁴ However, the idea of Pan-Arabism did not vanish. Its followers continued their activity in the newly formed Arab states. Also, a new invigoration to the Pan-Arabism idea began in Egypt, first in an intellectual manner and later in a political form.

Egypt was under British domination and strove for its independence. In the period between the two World Wars, different national and religious currents existed in Egypt. Aside from particularist Egyptian national aspirations and Pan-Islamic notions, there were also Pan-Arab beliefs. Egyptian textbooks published in the interwar era praised the Arab nation, finding its origins in the ancient times of Hammurabi (1810–1750 BC), long before the advent of Christianity and Islam, when Arab tribes migrated to the Fertile Crescent. They considered Hammurabi, as well as Amalek, ‘definitely or probably, to be Arabs.’¹⁵

In the early 1940s, Britain allowed Egypt to act more independently in its foreign and Arab relations. It heralded the Egyptian Wafd party, the ruling party at that time, to become more active in the Arab arena. During 1942 and 1944, under the leadership of Egypt, the heads of the Arab states convened to discuss the option of uniting the Arab states. However, none of the Arab states was willing to give up their authority and independence. These discussions ended with the decision to establish the Arab League, an institution that gathers the independent Arab states but does not obligate them to action and cannot enforce its will upon them. The establishment of the Arab League can be considered only lip service to the Pan-Arab idea.¹⁶ Egypt, however, did not say its last word concerning the unification of the Arab world.

An essential development regarding Pan-Arabism occurred in Syria. Two teachers, Mishel ʿAflaq (an Orthodox Christian) and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Bīṭār (a Sunni Muslim), established the Baʿth (rebirth) party in 1940. The party raised the banner of Pan-Arabism, adhering to abolishing the artificial borders that divided the Arab world and founding a unified Arab state. Gradually, their party gained power by incorporating junior officers of the Syrian army and peasants, spreading its propaganda to other Arab states.¹⁷

The next phase of the history of Pan-Arabism came with the incumbency of Gamal Abed al-Nasser in Egypt. Nasser aspired to unite the Arab world under his leadership. Nasser used a religious term (ʾUmma) and made it a non-religious (secular) one.¹⁸ He failed because of too many disagreements, ideologies, national interests, and struggles between leaders over dominance and hegemony in the region. His Pan-Arab propaganda, which he spread in the Arab world, gained a hearing within the Arab public. Nasser’s main achievement was the establishment of the United Arab Republic, the unification of Egypt and Syria into one state, in 1958. Nevertheless, this unification was short-lived. It was not a unification on an equal footing but Egyptian domination over Syria. The United Arab Republic dissolved in 1961 and was the last attempt to establish a united Arab state practically.¹⁹ From that point on, it seems that Pan-Arabism became a utopian ideal without any serious attempt to accomplish it.

Religion and sectarianism

The idea of pan-Arabism was to create an Arab nation (ʾUmma ʿArabiyya) founded on an ethnic and geographical basis, not a religious one. The first adherents of Arab nationalism in the mid-19^th century were Christians, such as Buṭrus al-Bustāni and Najīb ʿĀzūri. They tried to find a common denominator with their Muslim neighbors. Instead of religious affiliation, they wanted to gather around the idea of Arabism.²⁰ Many of their 20^th-century philosophical successors, such as George Antonius, the author of The Arab Awakening,²¹ Qunsṭanṭin Zurayq, an Arab-Syrian professor at the American University of Beirut, and Mishel ʿAflaq, one of the founders of the Baʿth Party, were also Christians. Although they lived in different periods, they had the same motive: to achieve equality with their Muslim counterparts by associating with a mutual secular idea. Their efforts notwithstanding, it seems that Arabism and Islam are almost synonymous.²²

The identification of Arabism with Islam stems from the fact that there is no concrete and consolidated Arab history. When Arab ideologists trace the origins of the Arab nation, they usually find Islamic references.²³ According to the Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi, Arab ideologists define four stages in Arab history. The first is the pre-Islamic era, in which the Arabs were disunited. The second is the Arab-Islamic era, characterized by unity, strength, and glory. This era ended with the elimination of the Abbasid Caliphate and the Arab leadership of the Islamic nation. The third stage is an era of decadence in which ‘the Arabs fell under Turkish or Persian rule and were politically and culturally dormant.’²⁴ The fourth stage is the Arab awakening (the Nahḍa) which began in the mid-19^th century and continued into the 20^th century.²⁵ According to Salibi,

The undeniable fact remained that the Arabs owed their stature in world history mainly to Islam. Moreover, the only political unity of which the Arabs had any historical experience was the one which had been imposed on them by Islam. Otherwise, their history had always been one of baffling diversity, strongly marked by tribal and regional particularism.²⁶

Another Lebanese historian, Samir Kassir, indicated a quite different division. He stated that ‘the main school of Arab historiography, established by the original twentieth-century Arabist, Syrianist and Lebanist nationalists, divides Arab history into three periods.’²⁷ The first is the golden age that began with Islam under the Arabs’ rule, the second is the age of decadence that lasted until the 19^th century, and the third is the renaissance that began in the same century. According to this notion, the pre-Islamic era was meaningless. Arab history began with the advent of Islam.²⁸

However, some Arab ideologists romantically tried to give more meaning to the pre-Islamic Arab era. According to Sāmī Ignace, a politician of Iraqi origins with Pan-Arab tendencies, Arab history began well before Islam. He claimed that

The history of our illustrious Arab nation extends over thousends of years, and goes back to the time when the peoples of Europe lived in forests and over marshes, in caves and in the interstices of the rock; at that time our own ancestors used to set up banks, sculpt statues, and lay down canons and code of law; they invented then the first principles of medicine, geometry, astronomy, the alphabet, and the numerals […] [W]e find that everything makes us lift our heads high when we consider the histories of the Semitic empires forms in the Fertile Crescent – the Chaldean, the Assyrian, the African, the Pharaonic, or the Carthaginian. All these things must persuade us that the civilizations of the world at the present time are based on foundations laid by our ancestors.²⁹

These endeavors notwithstanding, while Islamic history is not dependent on Arabism, the latter heavily relies on Islam. This was well-known to Arab Christian ideologists. According to Qunsṭanṭin Zurayq, for example,

This religion [i.e., Islam] has influenced every aspect of our Arab culture, for we cannot today understand our ancient Arab heritage, be it in philosophy or science or art, except after a deep study of the tenets and laws of the Muslim religion, and after reaching a correct understanding of its spirit and organization. […] This is why every Arab, no matter what his sect or community, who takes interest in his past culture and in its renaissance – and such an interest is at the head of those duties which his nationality imposes on him – should attempt to study Islam and to understand its reality; he should also sanctify the memory of the great Prophet to whom Islam was revealed.³⁰

Moreover, the terms used by Arab Christian ideologists had Islamic connotations. For example, Najīb ʿĀzūri thought about an Arab Caliphate, headed by an Arab caliph, that would have political authority over the Hijaz and a moral and symbolic role over the Arab state. ³¹ ʿAflaq thought about ‘ʾUmma ʿArabiyya Waḥida Dhāt Risāla Khālida’ (one Arab nation with an immortal mission). The Arabic word ʾUmma has a modern definition, namely, a nation. However, using the term in an Arab-Muslim context may be misleading. Its origin is the Quran: ‘You are the best community [ʾUmma] ever raised for humanity – you encourage good, forbid evil, and believe in Allah.’ ³² The term ʾUmma has strong religious connotations. The Quran dictates solidarity with the ʾUmma, and the Islamic religion expects this solidarity. The ʾUmma is comprised of Muslim believers, either Arabs or others.³³

During the 19th century, Muslim intellectuals tried to understand the decline of the Islamic world and the rising of Europe. They read and translated European writings looking for answers. They began a process of adaptation of European terms to the Arabic language. They had an Islamic motive. According to Sylvia Haim,

They tried to prove that what they found excellent in the West did not contradict the tenets of Islam, but was a mere extension and development of notions already known among them. It becomes, especially after a process of translations[…] not too difficult to superimpose on the concept of the Umma in Islam an alien conception of nationhood, since the conception of the umma, as a body different from and superior to every other form of society, already existed in Islam.³⁴

The Islamic intellectual ʿAbd al-Raḥman al-Kawākibi defined the term ʾUmma similarly to Western definitions. According to al-Kawākibi, ‘ʾUmma is the sum of the individuals with a common ancestry or watan, language or religion, just as a building is a collection of stones.’³⁵ Al-Kawākibi’s ʾUmma definition notwithstanding, in retrospective, it seems that the traditional definitions of ʾUmma, those who connected it with Islam, pushed aside more modern ones. With such an Islamic historical and terminological influence, it is no wonder that Arabism and Islam became interchangeable. This synonymity led to the deprivation of non-Muslim Arabs, and their Arabism fell short of that of the Muslim Arabs. This deprivation even affected the Arab Christian ideologists. In this context, the words of George Antonius are enlightening: ‘For the task which I have set myself, which is to draw a narrative picture of aspects of this [Arab] awakening, I have not even the qualification of being a Moslem.’³⁶

Another challenge to Arabism is sectarianism. Although Muslims make up most of the Middle East’s population, they are not the only inhabitants of the region, and various sects and communities live in the vicinity, such as Druze, Alawites, Christians, Jews, and others. The different ethnic and religious communities in the Middle East differ in numerical size, and naturally, each has different interests, which often conflict with those of other groups. Moreover, these sects and communities attract the loyalty of their followers. This reality of sectarianism, namely, the devotion to a community and sect, makes it challenging to create a pan-Arab nation with a pan-Arab consensus on its characteristics. The heterogeneous demographic structure of the Arab world is a permanent independent variable for explaining why the pan-Arabism idea had small odds of succeeding in the first place.

The scholarly discourse regarding sectarianism in the Middle East traces its origins to the 19^th century when Western colonialism met with the Ottoman modernization process. According to Ussama Makdisi, sectarianism is a combination of local Middle Eastern traditions and practices and Western influence over the Ottoman Empire.³⁷ Fanar Haddad claims that sectarianism is an elastic term that can ‘be used as a tool with which regimes and conservative social elements can dismiss and silence dissent and squash perceived threats to the status quo.’³⁸

The challenge of sectarianism troubled the Arab protagonists. They considered those who preferred loyalty to the sect as enemies of Arabism. For example, Buṭrus al-Bustāni, who adhered to the idea of an Arab state of Greater Syria, believed that ‘those who replaced love of the fatherland by sectarian fanaticism were not worthy of belonging to Syria and were enemies of the fatherland.’³⁹ Later, Qunsṭanṭin Zurayq claimed:

If nationalism does contradict anything, it is not the religious spirit but the destructive fanaticism which makes the communal tie stronger than the national tie and refuses to dissolve itself in the all-consuming crucible of the nation; for it is the fanaticism which often exploits innocent religious feeling for its own partisan ambitions and inclinations. This is the chronic disease of the land, and its authors are the enemies of Arab nationalism and the destroyers of its unity.⁴⁰

It seems that al-Bustāni and Zurayq were right. When it comes to internal conflicts, the Middle East has seen countless cases of bloodshed between groups that have religious, ethnic, or ideological differences. Nor is it a coincidence that, in the introduction to his edited book, Lawrence Potter singled out the importance of sectarianism in shaping the face of the Middle East as a region full of cleavages. The book reflects the reality of dividing lines on a religious, sectarian, ethnic, national, majority-minority, and class basis, which poses difficulties in realizing pan-Arabism.⁴¹

The Syrian Civil War erupted in 2011 can well demonstrate the difficulties of sectarianism. Syria can be considered an Arabism stronghold, ‘the throbbing heart of Arabism.’⁴² According to Fouad Ajami, ‘the Syrians had long insisted that Arab nationalism had been their gift to other Arabs, that the Egyptians and other Arabs were newcomers to that idea.’⁴³ Hafiz al-Assad took over Syria in 1970. He implemented a strict Arab identity in Syria to hide his Alawite origin because the Alawites are considered heretics by the Sunna. He ruled Syria with an iron fist, and when an Islamic rebellion erupted in the early 1980s in Hama (northeast of Damascus), he crushed it ruthlessly. ‘The violent suppression of the Hama rebellion by no means reflects the destruction of the Muslim opposition to the Alawi regime.’⁴⁴

Under Hafiz al-Assad’s heir, Bashar al-Assad, the Islamic rebellion regenerated. In 2011, in what is known as the Arab Spring, protests, demonstrations, and riots began in Syria. Soon, these demonstrations and riots evolved into a civil war with religious characteristics. Bashar al-Assad tried to portray his regime as a defender of religious minorities against the Islamic threat.⁴⁵ Indeed, some minority leaders supported Assad, at least in the first stages of the war.⁴⁶ Ajami brought the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church to Syria, Ignace IV’s notions regarding the position of the Christians in the Syrian Arab Spring, that summarizes well the destructive effect of sectarianism upon Pan-Arabism. According to Ignace IV

This Arab Spring was being Islamized, and Christian Arabs were living atop a volcano […] The Christians had bet on Arab nationalism, but it had failed them as it was Islamized from below … Arabs hadn’t been truthful about their religious and sectarian differences, and Greater Syria itself had been a land of feuding communities and identities. Secular nationalism had denied and papered over these deeply held attachments and rivalries, but the fight in Syria, as in Lebanon for a good generation prior to that, had brought these rivalries out into the open.⁴⁷

Arabism and the challenge of tribalism

It is impossible to talk about the population in the Middle East without referring to ‘tribalism.’ One of the first historians within the Islamic world, who discussed tribalism, was Ibn Khaldūn (1332–1406). He analyzed the term ʿAṣabiyya, the solidarity that bonds the tribe members, which refers to primordial components of the individual, meaning family and tribe. This pattern of thought still exists within Arab political thought and practice in the Middle East region today.⁴⁸

The term tribe has different definitions. In the pre-Islamic era and the first stages of Islamic history, a tribe was a group of people with a common ancestor. In modern times, however, a tribe can also be defined by mutual name, specific territory, and common laws.⁴⁹ Tribalism, like other words, gets a negative connotation when discussed in Western societies due to the view of tribalism as a traditional phenomenon that threatens modernization. In the Middle East, on the other hand, the meaning of the term ‘tribalism’ can be considered to be positive in some regions and societies. It produces for its residents a clear identity for a family, clan, and tribe, grouping the same clans and families. Belonging to a tribe also produces a clear distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and establishes a sense of security in belonging to a collective on a primordial basis.⁵⁰

A form of living in tribes was common in parts of the Middle East region even before the advent of Islam. During the Jāhiliyya era, men and women were bound to their tribe and depended upon it for protection and supplies. Then, Prophet Muhammad united the various Arabian tribes under the banner of Islam. Theoretically, Islam and its laws must have overcome the reality of tribalism, and instead of loyalty to the tribe and abiding by its rules, people were to be loyal to the Islamic ʾUmma and obey Islamic law. However, the new religion could not eradicate the reality of tribalism and its traditions, which prevail even today.⁵¹

Following Jerry Muller’s proposal of seeing the continuing power of ethnic nationalism as the basis for conflicts between groups,⁵² we suggest looking at tribalism not only as a source of collective security but also as a divisive factor between groups on a linguistic, religious, geographical, or another basis. Since tribalism still exists in the Middle East, it constitutes a practical barrier to pan-Arabism. As suggested by the name, this idea is supposed to dismantle tangible and intangible partitions between people seeking to live under a single Arab leadership.

The emergence of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) in modern history is a prominent example for illustrating the importance of tribalism as an obstacle to national identity cohesion and certainly for pan-Arabism. The absolute supremacy of the two families of al-Saʿūd and al-Wahab was due, inter alia, to their military power over other families and tribes. When they faced opposition, they did not hesitate to use all means available to suppress it. In 1901, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz ibn Saʿūd (1882–1953) declared himself the leader of the national Arab movement. This was a political step in order to unify the Arab peninsula under his regime. A year later, his armed forces entered Riyadh, the traditional capital city of the al-Saʿūd family, and took the city from the al-Rashid family. The same pattern of taking control and defeating other families, tribes, or cities was seen in 1924 when Taif was conquered by al-Saʿūd troops, who massacred the local population. This activity, led by Wahhabis, naturally revived fear among the survivors. The following two military operations were the conquest of Mecca and Medina, even though both cities surrendered unconditionally.⁵³

After Saudi Arabia’s independence in 1932, most of the authority in all regions shifted to the elite of the Najd region (central KSA). This political decision created a new situation because inhabitants depended entirely on the elite’s will, interests, and occasional kindness. The new administrators had a full mandate to implement their policy, which indeed led to discrimination against regions, tribes, and families based on primordial differences. This policy enhanced local and regional identities among communities (tribes and inhabitants of various cities) and decreased the odds of forming a collective identity, which is required not just for Saudi nationalism but also for a pan-Arab identity.⁵⁴

Yemen is another Middle Eastern state where tribal affiliation and identity prevail over a national or a pan-Arab one. Charles Schmitz pointed out that tribalism within Yemeni society means, inter alia, an analysis of foreign relationships with other segments of this society.⁵⁵ Using the term ‘foreign’ while discussing the question of a common and broad identity for all Yemeni people as part of the pan-Arab identity speaks for itself. Regardless of the real political power of the tribes, the history of Yemen is replete with wars between different tribes, as was the case in the famous 1967–1968 siege of Ṣanʿāʾ, when royal tribes surrounded the city, and in August 2011, when Ṣādiq al-ʾAḥmar called on the tribes to defend him in Ṣanʿāʾ but forces who were loyal to other tribes prevented him from defending himself.⁵⁶

Arabism and the challenges of leadership

One of the ideas of Arab thinkers such as Mishel ʿAflaq was to create a united Arab state that would abolish the artificial borders imposed upon the Arab world by colonialism. This idea brought the problem of leadership to the surface. Who would lead such a united new political entity? This question uncovered struggles in the Arab world between different leaders and states.

The question of leadership arose before the establishment of the Arab states after World War One, when the idea of pan-Arabism was in its formative stages, trying to respond to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. For example, ʿAbd al-Raḥman al-Kawākibi, one of the pioneers of the Islamic and Arab philosophical awakening, thought that the Arabs of the Hijaz (in the Arabian Peninsula) were more suitable for leadership than Arabs of other regions.⁵⁷ Conversely, Najīb ʿĀzūri wanted to nominate an Arab sultan who would lead the united sovereign state. While excluding Egypt from the Arab world, ʿĀzūri suggested offering ‘the throne of the Arab Empire to that prince of the Khedival family of Egypt [the Muhammad ʿAli dynasty] who will openly declare himself in its favor.’⁵⁸ Indeed, leaders from both Egypt and the Hijaz would claim leadership over the Arab world.

The leadership challenge became more complicated after the establishment of Arab states. There were various states and leaders who wanted the throne, and national and personal ambitions and prestige were bound together. It seems that two states, and their leaders, became the prominent contenders for the leadership of the Arab world: Egypt and Iraq. Both states had an ancient and Islamic history and were ruled by strong and inspiring leaders both before and after the revolutionary age.⁵⁹ Later, leaders and states from the Arabian Peninsula would reemerge as leadership contenders.

During the 1930s, there were strong pan-Arab sentiments in Egypt. The Egyptian king, Fuʾād, and later his son Fārūq, considered themselves the leaders of the Arab world. They were followed by politicians who advocated the idea of forming an Arab state headed by Egypt. In this era, Egyptian intellectuals, such as ʾAhmad ʾAmin and ʿAbd al-Wahab al-ʿAzām, were also promoting pan-Arab ideas. A union was almost a sine qua non for Arab salvation in their eyes. It should be mentioned that they first wanted to achieve a cultural union rather than a political one. Nevertheless, in every union scenario, Egypt needed to have the leading role.⁶⁰

Iraq did not fall behind. The Hashemites who ruled the Kingdom of Iraq between 1921 and 1958 considered themselves the leader of the Arab world. The Iraqi Hashemites aspired to unite the Arab world under their rule. During the 1930s, Nūri al-Saʿid, the powerful Iraqi politician and a close aide of the Hashemite kingdom, tried to achieve various forms of Arab union. He also tried to enhance Iraq’s standing within the Arab world by mediating the Jewish-Arab conflict in Palestine. His efforts did not bear fruit, however, and led to objections from the Egyptian side.⁶¹ Naturally, the competition between Iraq and Egypt did not result in unification but rather in divisions and the creation of camps.

The struggles continued into the revolutionary era. Following the revolution in 1952, Gamal Abdel Nasser took over Egypt, abolished the monarchy, and created a republic. Under Nasser, the idea that Egypt must lead the Arab world became stronger. Soon, Nasser positioned Egypt and himself at the forefront of Arab politics, calling for revolution and the unification of the Arab world under Egypt’s leadership. Nasser challenged the Arab monarchies, undermining their legitimacy and encouraging subversive elements within them into revolutionary action. Through his deeds, Nasser split the Arab world into two camps: a revolutionary camp headed by Egypt, which aspired to attach itself to other revolutionary Arab states, and a conservative camp that included the Arab monarchies, which tried to thwart Nasser’s destructive efforts to meddle in their affairs.⁶²

The peak of Nasser’s pan-Arab aspirations was the establishment of the United Arab Republic (UAR), the union between Egypt and Syria, between 1958 and 1961. The newborn state heralded the fears in the Arab world of those who opposed Nasser. As a result, the two Hashemite kingdoms in Jordan and Iraq declared their unification. They sought in vain to attach Saudi Arabia to the new union. The united Hashemite state was meant to signify that it was the ‘real’ pan-Arab state. However, it lasted just a few months and ended after the coup d’état in Iraq that dissolved the Iraqi Hashemite kingdom.⁶³

The UAR was short-lived as well. While the Syrians hoped that the union would put them on an equal footing with Egypt, they soon discovered they were playing second fiddle to Nasser. Egypt took over Syria and treated it as its fiefdom. Thus, instead of a united republic, the embodiment of pan-Arabism, the UAR only served Nasser’s ambitions and Egypt’s interests. In 1961, the Syrians ended the so-called union, regaining their independence.⁶⁴

Thus, the temporary union exposed the struggle for power in the Arab world and the futility of the pan-Arab idea. That a Hashemite union arose after Nasser established his UAR proved that his effort to unite the Arab world had only increased its divisiveness. Moreover, personal and local Egyptian interests were more vital than any ideal. Nasser used the pan-Arab idea to improve his own standing and the position of Egypt within the Arab world.

Another leader who tried to unite the Arab world was Muʿmar al-Qadhāfi of Libya. Qadhāfi, who ruled between 1969 and 2011, considered himself Gamal Abd al-Nasser’s heir, at least in the first years of his rule. Like Nasser, Qadhāfi aspired to unite the Arab world.⁶⁵ He also thought about three circles in which Libya, and not Egypt, was in their center. Libya should be in the heart of a united Arab nation because it is in the middle of the three circles of Islam, Arabism, and Africanism. Unlike Nasser, Qadhāfi put Islam in the first circle, followed by Arabism and Africanism. Indeed, Qadhāfi’s Pan-Arabism ideology was well connected to Islam. According to Qadhāfi

Arabs were already religiously united through Islam, therefore there was a deep connection between religion and political union. It was colonialism that destroyed this union imposing artificial boundaries. Arab unity was based on Islam, which was the winning formula and a sort of regenerative force.⁶⁶

In early December 1969, a few months after taking the leadership in Libya, Qadhāfi approached Nasser, suggesting unification. On 26 December 1969, Qadhāfi hosted a summit in Tripoli that included Egypt and Sudan. The three states decided to form an alliance against Israel. It was not the desired unification that Qadhāfi adhered to, but he did not lose heart. In May 1970, Qadhāfi wanted to alter the tripartite alliance into a complete unification, but Nasser refused.⁶⁷

After Nasser died, Qadhāfi approached Anwar Sadat, Nasser’s successor, offering a unification. The leaders of Libya, Egypt, and Sudan met in early November 1970 to discuss the possibility of unification. Later that month, Hafiz al-Assad, the new leader of Syria, announced his desire to join the prospected union. In 1971, Libya, Egypt, and Syria declared the formation of the ‘Federation of the Arab Republics’ (al-ʾItiḥād al-Jumhūrīyāt al-ʿArabīyah).⁶⁸ Once again, it was not the desired unification of Qadhāfi since it was not a real union. Qadhāfi strived for an Egyptian-Libyan unification, but Sadat refused. It appears that Egypt (as well as Syria) was looking for its own interests and did not want a real unification. After the attempts to unite the Eastern Arab World (the Mashriq) failed, Qadhāfi tried to unite the Western Arab World (the Maghrib). However, his efforts did not bore fruits.⁶⁹

It should be mentioned that Qadhāfi also had internal Libyan interests in achieving unification. Pan-Arabism was a ‘good tool of legitimization to obtain political consent among the Libyan population and the whole Arab League.’⁷⁰ Also, Pan-Arabism could give Libya a sense of nationality because, according to Tamburini, Libya ‘ … was a “non-nation,” since the concept of nation had developed very late, while the sense of tribal attachment and ʿasabīya was very strong.’⁷¹ Again, the particularistic interests apparently overpowered the aspirations for Arab unification.

Arabism: various interpretations and competing ideologies

The idea of pan-Arabism has had different interpretations that often intermingled with the question of leadership. This is because various Arab leaders have claimed they were the protagonists of ‘true’ Arabism. These multiple interpretations have made it difficult, perhaps impossible, to accomplish the idea of pan-Arabism. Moreover, aside from the competing interpretations within the pan-Arabism idea, there were also opposing religious and secular ideologies to Arabism, such as Salafism and the idea of a Greater Syria. We will explain this variation using the interpretations of King ʿAbd Allah I of Jordan, who considered himself the suitable leader for the Arab world, and Gamal Abdel Nasser. In addition, we will use Islamic thoughts to demonstrate opposing religious ideas to pan-Arabism.

Our first example is the interpretation of Pan-Arabism by King ʿAbd Allah I of Jordan. ʿAbd Allah’s Arab nationalism was closely linked to Islam. Modern definitions of nationalism, such as a shared history and language, did not align with ʿAbd Allah’s thoughts. According to ʿAbd Allah, although Arabs predated Islam, only Islam implemented their noble qualities, united them, and brought them outstanding achievements in human history. There is no existence for Islam without the Arabs who created it, and the existence of Arabism depends on Islam.⁷²

Islamic history also influenced ʿAbd Allah’s territorial perceptions of the Arab state, which should be those of the Islamic state of Prophet Muhammad, the Rāshidūn caliphs, and the Umayyad (al-ʾUmawiyah) and Abbasid (ʿAbāsiyyah) dynasties. The Hijaz should be the religious capital of the Arab state, and Damascus should be its political center. In this manner, ʿAbd Allah excluded Egypt and North Africa from the Arab state. According to ʿAbd Allah, an Arabic-speaking region is not necessarily part of the Arab nation.⁷³ Excluding Egypt from the Arab world, at least according to ʿAbd Allah’s thoughts, raises doubts about whether pan-Arabism was anything more than a romantic idea.

ʿAbd Allah ascribed great importance to the Arab Revolt of 1916, the springboard of Arab nationalism his family led. According to ʿAbd Allah, the Hashemites awakened the Arab people in their revolt, opening a new era for the Arabs. The purpose of the revolt was to unite the Arab people. The revolt paved the way for the Arabs to reunite under Arab leadership, restoring the greatness of their glorious past.⁷⁴

For ʿAbd Allah, the Arab Revolt was a guideline the Arabs needed to follow. If the purpose was to reunite the Arabs, then any attempt to disunite the Arab world deviated from the Arab Revolt’s spirit. The Arab Revolt also justified ʿAbd Allah’s aspirations for leadership. Only the Hashemites, the descendants of Prophet Muhammad, could guarantee that the Arab Revolt’s principles would be preserved and the Arab world would not be divided again.⁷⁵

Our second example is the interpretation of Pan-Arabism by Gamal Abdel Nasser. In his book Egypt’s Liberation: The Philosophy of the Revolution, Nasser stated that Egypt is at the center of three circles: Arab, African, and Islamic. Thus, he saw Egypt as the leader of the Arab world.⁷⁶ Nasser’s pan-Arab view was based on the idea that Egypt should lead the Arab nation. Moreover, the connection between Egypt and the Arab world stemmed from a common language, a shared history, and even the joint suffering that both the Arab world and Egypt had suffered due to the incessant invasions of the Middle East.⁷⁷

The Arabic language dictated the Arab state’s boundaries. For Nasser, these ended where nobody understood his propaganda, namely, in non-Arabic-speaking regions.⁷⁸ Thus, Arabic-speaking regions were undoubtedly part of the Arab nation. A more specific territorial definition delineates the nation as within the areas from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and from the Atlas Mountains to the Mosul Mountains.⁷⁹

Pan-Arabism is also challenged by Islamic thoughts. The supporters of Pan-Arabism had to compete not only with nationalism but also with a range of religious movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafism, Wahhabism, and sub-regional ad hoc alliances (in the Maghreb, the Middle East, and the Gulf). The Saudis, for instance, opposed pan-Arabism as early as the 1960s and were concerned by Nasser’s policy, especially after the Egyptian army invaded Yemen in 1962 and, from time to time, attacked Saudi targets. The Egyptian establishment also initiated a press campaign aiming to weaken the KSA’s power, image, and influence in the Middle East region.⁸⁰ In response, King Faiṣal (1964–1975) tried to undermine Nasser’s ideology and regional achievements through, inter alia, enhancing the power of the religious Wahhabi establishment. The opening of a new radio station, ‘Voice of Islam,’ which aimed to be an alternative to and compete with the radio station ‘Voice of Thunder’ broadcast from Cairo, was one of his notable decisions.⁸¹

Wahhabism was not the only idea that opposed pan-Arabism. Salafism, as a theoretical idea, emphasizes studying the Quran and the hadith (accounts of things said or done by Muhammad or his companions), which are believed to be the basic sources of Islam and reflections of the Salafist principle of the unity of God (tawḥid). For Salafists, the writings of the Quran are the direct word of God and are to be taken literally. According to Salafism, there is no room for competing ideas that recognize the rights of non-Salafis (other Sunnis, Shi’ites, Christians, and members of other sects) living under their sovereignty or in a heretical regime. Salafism can be traced back to the 7^th century, and its renaissance in the mid-20^th century, inter alia by Sayyid Quṭb (1906–1966) and later by ʿAbd Allah ʿAzām (1941–1989), was a major obstacle for pan-Arabism.⁸² Therefore, Salafism aims to uproot all other thoughts, practices, and interpretations of the Quran, sunnah, and hadith. This stance, almost automatically, sets Salafism against pan-Arabism.⁸³

Lahouari Addi indicated the dissonance between Islamic culture and democratic ideology. In 1992, he suggested that Islam stands between a real democracy and modernity. If we take his insight one step further, we can argue that modernity is, inter alia, accepting other customs, religions, dress codes, and so on. If Islam opposed all these, it could not accept pan-Arabism since its basic idea is that all people have the right to live freely and equally. In 2018, Addi presented a range of different political ideas, such as Wahhabism, liberal nationalism, and radical nationalism, that make the option of implementing pan-Arabism harder, perhaps impossible, as our study argues.⁸⁴

Arabism and the attitude toward Israel

During the 1950s, the West and Israel were the main targets for pan-Arab propaganda to justify the existence of the incumbent Arab regimes, which defined themselves as revolutionary and in opposition to the imperial or colonial power. As Barry Rubin pointed out in 1991, for the mass of the Arabs, it was enough to feel proud when Nasser addressed the people, calling for unity against the enemy.⁸⁵ Over the years, it appeared that various factors, all of them relevant to the Arab world’s policy toward Israel, caused the odds of pan-Arabism achieving Arab unity to decline. This was not just due to the multiplicity of ideologies, differences in interests, and ad hoc alliances that Arab states had signed with each other temporarily. It was also down to a geostrategic change concerning Israel.

If there was a moment of Arab unity, it was after the June 1967 war. The shared feeling of defeat in the war was one of the catalysts for the Arab summit in Khartoum, Sudan (August 29 to 1 September 1967). The Khartoum resolutions ‘affirmed the unity of Arab ranks, the unity of joint action and the need for coordination and for the elimination of all differences.’ The summit also decided on no peace, no recognition, and no negotiations with Israel.⁸⁶

However, the closed ranks against Israel were shaky. In 1975, for example, a short time after the civil war in Lebanon began, the Maronite leaders asked Israel to support them. The Israeli government provided them with weapons, food, and medicines.⁸⁷ This can be perceived as a prelude to the tectonic move of Anwar Sadat’s Egypt. Ignoring the possibility that Sadat, the president of Egypt (1970–1981), was already interested in direct dialogue in 1971, the Arabs’ political unity unraveled when he arrived in Israel in 1977. Although Egypt was suspended from the Arab League for a decade (1979–1989), Sadat moved forward with his political decision to end the state of war with Israel.

Several regional developments in the late 1980s and the early 1990s made pan-Arabism no more than an unrealistic vision and affected the Arab world’s position and policy regarding Israel. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait divided the Arab world into two camps: on the one hand, most Arab states supported the global coalition headed by the USA against Saddam Hussein; on the other, Jordan and the PLO opposed this coalition, backing the Iraqi policy. One important consequence was the rich Arab countries’ decision to halt financial support to the Palestinians. As time passed, the PLO’s political and diplomatic activity decreased, forcing the organization to close some of its consulates worldwide. This is one explanation why Yasser Arafat changed his traditional stance and accepted the idea of an international conference for peace that ultimately took place in Madrid in 1991.⁸⁸

The Madrid summit illustrated what had long been known: there is no Arab unity. There are Arab national states, each taking care of its own national interests. The idea of Arab unity remains lip service and an idiomatic phrase that politicians use to produce a false representation of pan-Arabism. The Palestinians and the Israelis signed the Oslo Accords in September 1993 (the Declaration of Principles) and May 1994, and Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994. Some of the Gulf states had clandestine ties with Israel following the Oslo Accords, and they renewed these ties, this time fully in the open, in 2020 by signing the Abraham Accords.

The gate Anwar Sadat opened in the 1970s saw him labeled a traitor, but after more than four decades, it appears that Arabs’ stance toward Israel has engendered a fundamental change. By the end of 2021, six Arab countries had signed peace or normalization agreements with Israel (Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan). This is completely the opposite trend to the position the Arabs adopted at the Khartoum Conference in August 1967, a stance that included the ‘Three No’s’ for Israel (no recognition, no peace, and no negotiations). In fact, as a previous study has already suggested, instead of one united Arab community, the Arab states in the Middle East, the Maghreb, and the Gulf can be classified into four different categories relating to Israel:

1. The Palestinian issue;

2. Arab states that have signed peace or normalization accords with Israel;

3. States (and non-states) that see Israel as their enemy because of the unresolved Palestinian issue or the religious or national perception that there is no place for a Jewish sovereign entity; and

4. Arab states that maintain unofficial relations with Israel, explaining that the time for an overt diplomatic tie has not yet come (Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman).⁸⁹

Conclusions

This study has examined the applicability of the idea of pan-Arabism in the Middle East by using five different criteria: religion and sectarianism, tribalism, the question of leadership, the different interpretations of Arabism and competing ideologies, and the attitude toward Israel. Each of these criteria can hinder and, in some cases, even prevent the accomplishment of Pan-Arabism, let alone when all these elements are combined. Indeed, due to these insurmountable criteria, pan-Arabism perished right from its inception.

The article has three main conclusions. First, pan-Arabism was a utopian ideal. The resounding call in the Middle East – ‘Where are the Arabs?’ – remains a hollow slogan, from the desert to the ocean. The Arabs, in an ethnic sense, are scattered across more than 20 sovereign nation-states (from Morocco to the Gulf) and do not operate with political, military, social, and diplomatic unity. A society structured according to different tribal affiliations, religions, and sectarianism were inherent barriers to pan-Arabism. Second, pan-Arabism, except from 1958 to 1961, encountered subjective and objective obstacles that made it difficult for it to survive. Leaders’ interests, religious and secular ideologies, the region’s heterogeneous demographic structure, and the artificial creation of nation-states (a legacy of colonialism) made the idea merely romantic.

Third, the contemporary history of the Middle East shows that the regional attitude toward Israel also created an impassable buffer against pan-Arabism. The slogan of the ‘Three No’s’ of the Khartoum Conference was eroded no more than a decade after it was aired to the world. Moreover, Egypt, which had sought to lead pan-Arabism, was the first to sign a peace agreement with Israel. In the third decade of the 21^st century, the attitudes of Arab states toward Israel can already be classified in a series ranging from full peace (Egypt, Jordan) and normalization (Morocco, Bahrain) to boycott. Some scholars believe that the Abraham Accords of 2020 were the graveyard of Pan-Arabism. We accept this analysis since these agreements are reflecting a unique national interest of several Arab states (UAE, Bahrain, Morocco) and not pan-Arabism interests. The Arab-Islamic summit of Riyadh (November 2023), following the war at Gaza, is another evidence to support our conclusion: the Arab leaders failed to agree on a joint call for stopping the war. This division in itself proves that pan-Arabism was and remains an unrealized vision.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The Party of the Arab Baʿth, ‘Constitution,’ in Sylvia G. Haim (ed.), Arab Nationalism: An Anthology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), p. 233.

2. F. Ajami, ‘The end of Pan-Arabism,’ Foreign Affairs, 57:2 (1978/1979), pp. 357–358.

3. Y. M. Sawani, ‘The “end of pan-Arabism” revisited: reflections on the Arab Spring,’ Contemporary Arab Affairs, 5: 3 (2012), p. 390.

4. See for example F. Ajami, The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation Odyssey (New York: Vintage Books, 1998); R. Khalidi, ‘Arab Nationalism: Historical Problems in the Literature,’ The American Historical Review, 96:5 (1991), pp. 1363–1373; F. Salameh, ‘Towards a New Ecology of Middle Eastern Identities,’ Middle Eastern Studies, 47:2 (2011), pp. 237–253; Y. M. Sawani, ‘The “End of Pan-Arabism” Revisited’; E. Monier, ‘Egypt, Iran, and the Hizbullah Cell: Using Sectarianism to “De-Arabize” and Regionalize Threats to National Interests,’ The Middle East Journal, 69:3 (2015), pp. 341–357; N. T. Boms and H. Aboubakr, ‘Pan Arabism 2.0? The Struggle for a New Paradigm in the Middle East,’ Religions, 13:1 (2022), pp. 1–13. Many Arab thinkers put in writing their ideas and thoughts. See, for example, ‘A. ‘A al-Ahwani, Azma al-Wahad al-‘Arabiyya: Abhath hawla al-’Ishtiraqiyya wal-‘Uruba [The Crisis of Arab Unity: Researches on Socialism and Arabism] (Beirut: Al-Mu’assasa al-‘Arabiyya lil-Dirasat wasl-Nisher, 1972); M. ‘Aflaq, Fi Sabil al-B‘ath [toward the renewal] (Beirut: Dar al-Talia‘a, 1978); S. al-Husri, Abhath Mukhtara fi al-Qawmiyya al-‘Arabiyya [selected studies on Arab nationalism] (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahda al-‘Arabiyya, 1985); M. ‘A. Darwaza, Mukhtarat Qawmiyya li-Muhhamad ‘Azat Darwaza [national anthologies of Muhammad ‘Azat Darwaza] (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahda al-‘Arabiyya, 1988); S. Kassir, Being Arab (London: Verso, 2013).

5. R. Khalidi, ‘The Origins of Arab Nationalism: Introduction,’ in R. Khalidi, L. Anderson et al. (eds), The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. vii.

6. B. Tibi, Arab Nationalism: Between Islam and the Nation-State (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997), pp. 100–101.

7. E. Tauber, The Emergence of the Arab Movements (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 8.

8. See B. Abu-Manneh, ‘The Christians between Ottomanism and Syrian Nationalism: The Ideas of Butrus Al-Bustani,’ International Journal of Middle East Studies, 11:3 (1980), pp. 287–304; Tibi, Arab Nationalism, pp. 102–104.

9. S. G. Haim (ed.), Arab Nationalism: An Anthology, p. 4.

10. Ibid, 4–5.

11. Tauber, The Emergence of the Arab Movements, pp. 8–9; Tibi, Arab Nationalism, p. 104.

12. Ibid, pp. 16–17, 110–112; Tauber, The Emergence of the Arab Movements, pp. 54–58, 178–197.

13. E. Tauber, The Arab Movements in World War I (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 68–82; Tibi, Arab Nationalism, pp. 113–115.

14. J. Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East (London: Simon & Schuster, 2011), pp. 25–106 (in Hebrew).

15. C. E. Dawn, ‘The Formation of Pan-Arab Ideology in the Interwar Years,’ International Journal of Middle East Studies, 20:1 (1988), p. 69.

16. J. Worrall, International Institutions of the Middle East: The GCC, Arab League, and Arab Maghreb Union (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 37–41.

17. J. F. Davlin, The Baʿth Party, A History From its Origins to 1966 (Stanford, Ca.: Hoover Institution Press, 1979), pp. 7–10.

18. J. P. Jankowski, Nasser’s Egypt, Arab Nationalism, and the United Arab Republic (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2002), pp. 35–36.

19. P. J. Vatikiotis, Nasser and His Generation (New York: Routledge, 2022), pp. 225–248; T. Osman, Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to the Muslim Brotherhood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 50–85.

20. Tauber, The Emergence of the Arab Movements, pp. 7–9, 33–42.

21. George Antonius, The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement (Place of publication not identified: Pickle Partners Publishing, 2015 [1938]).

22. It should be mentioned that Muslims turned to pan-Arabism in the aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 and the Turkification of the Ottoman Empire. The common denominator between Muslims and Christians was the Arabic language.

23. Khalidi, ‘Arab Nationalism: Historical Problems in the Literature,’ p. 1365.

24. K. S. Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), p. 212.

25. Ibid, 211–212.

26. Ibid, 210.

27. Kassir, Being Arab, p. 32.

28. Ibid, pp. 31–33. Kassir also stated that this segmentation was outdated because the renaissance age was over. It is interesting to note that Kassir was assassinated in June 2005, probably by emissaries of Syria, the stronghold of Arabism, because he objected to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon.

29. S. G. Haim, ‘Islam and the Theory of Arab Nationalism,’ Die Welt des Islams, 4:2/3 (1955), p. 125. Shawkat was not alone. The same attempt to find antiquity origins was made in Egypt between the two World Wars. See, Dawn, ‘The Formation of Pan-Arab Ideology in the Interwar Years,’ pp. 67–91.

30. Q. Zuraiq, ‘Arab Nationalism and Religion,’ in Haim, Arab Nationalism, 169.

31. N. Azoury, ‘Program of the League of the Arab Fatherland,’ in Haim, Arab Nationalism, 82.

32. Quran 3:110, https://quran.com/3?startingVerse=110

33. Haim, ‘Islam and the Theory of Arab Nationalism,’ pp. 137–139.

34. Ibid, p. 136.

35. Ibid, p. 129. Among Muslim intellectuals, the word watan meant the place of residency. Later definitions defined watan as one’s homeland.

36. Cited in Ajami, The Dream Palace of the Arabs, 19.

37. U. Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 2.

38. F. Haddad, ‘“Sectarianism” and its Discontents in the Study of the Middle East,’ The Middle East Journal, 71:3 (2017), p. 364.

39. Cited in Tauber, The Emergence of the Arab Movements, p. 8.

40. Zuraiq, ‘Arab Nationalism and Religion,’ p. 168.

41. L. G. Potter (ed.), Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 1–6.

42. D. Roberts, The Baʿth and the Creation of Modern Syria (New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 1.

43. F. Ajami, The Syrian Rebellion (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2012), p. 70.

44. M. Ma’oz, ‘The Emergence of Modern Syria,’ in Moshe Ma’oz and Avner Yaniv (eds.), Syria under Assad: Domestic Constraints and Regional Risks (New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 32.

45. C. Phillips, ‘The International and Regional Battle for Syria,’ in Raymond Hinnebusch and Adham Saouli (eds.), The War for Syria: Regional and International Dimensions of the Syrian Uprising (New York: Routledge, 2020), p. 44.

46. Ajami, The Syrian Rebellion, p. 112.

47. Ibid, pp. 115–116.

48. Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddimah: Prolegomena to History, translated by Immanuel Koplewitz (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1966), pp. 82–85, 115 (in Hebrew). ʿAṣabiyya is also related to the relationship of business and trading that united (and still unites) different families and tribes.

49. E. Landau-Tasseron, ‘Tribes and Clans,’ in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, General Editor: Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington DC. Consulted online on November 29, 2022, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1875–3922_q3_EQSIM_00427

50. R. Tapper, ‘Tribalism in Middle Eastern States: A 21^st Century Anachronism?’ LSE Middle East Centre Blog, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2018/07/11/tribalism-in-middle-eastern-states-a-twenty-first-century-anachronism/ (accessed on July 4, 2022); Y. Alon, ‘Tribalism in the Middle East: A Useful Prism for Understanding the Region,’ International Journal of Middle East Studies, 53:3 (2021), pp. 477–481.

51. Ibid.

52. J. Z. Muller, ‘Us and Them: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism,’ Foreign Affairs, 87:2 (2008), pp. 18–35.

53. G. Hitman, Saudi Arabia: A SWOT Analysis of a Family-Wahhabi Nationalism Case Study (New York: State University of New York Press, 2022), pp. 10–13.

54. M. Yamani, Cradle of Islam: The Hijaz and the Quest for an Arabian Identity (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), pp. 11–14.

55. C. Schmitz, ‘Understanding the Role of Tribes in Yemen,’ CTC Sentinel, 4:10 (2011), pp. 17–21.

56. Ibid.

57. A. Al-Rahman al-Kawākibi, Umm al-Qura: Mecca the Mother of Cities, translated by Shosh Ben-Ari (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2015), pp. 180–182 (in Hebrew).

58. Azoury, ‘Program of the League of the Arab Fatherland,’ p. 81.

59. E. Podeh, ‘The Crystallization of the Arab State System: A Reconsideration,’ Hamizrach Hehadash, 41 (2000), pp. 101–102 (in Hebrew).

60. I. Gershoni, ‘Arab Unity in the Egyptian National consciousness in the late Thirties (Part I),’ Hamizrach Hehadash, 28 (1979), pp. 186–194 (in Hebrew); I. Gershoni, ‘Arab Unity in the Egyptian National Consciousness in the late Thirties (Part II),’ Hamizrach Hehadash, 29 (1980), pp. 1–31 (in Hebrew).

61. Y. Porath, ‘Nuri al‐Sa’id’s Arab Unity Programme,’ Middle Eastern Studies, 20:4 (1984), pp. 76–98; Podeh, ‘The Crystallization of the Arab State System,’ pp. 97–103.

62. E. Podeh, The Decline of Arab Unity: The Rise and Fall of the United Arabic Republic (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 1999), pp. 27–30; E. Podeh and O. Winckler, ‘Introduction: Nasserism as a form of Populism,’ in Elie Podeh and Onn Winckler (eds.), Rethinking Nasserism: Revolution and Historical Memory in Modern Egypt (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2004), pp. 1–42.

63. A. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace (Tel Aviv: Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir, 2009), pp. 144–150.

64. Podeh, The Decline of Arab Unity, 177–181.

65. Y. Ronen, Qaddafi’s Libya in World Politics (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2008), p. 106.

66. F. Tamburini, ‘The Politics of State Mergers in the Qaddafi’s Foreign Policy: Utopia, Pan-Arabism, and Survival Strategy,’ Journal of Asian and African Studies (2023), p. 3. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00219096231168060

67. Ibid, p. 5; Ronen, Qaddafi’s Libya in World Politics, p. 106.

68. Eventually, Sudan refused unification.

69. Tamburini, ‘The Politics of State Mergers in the Qaddafi’s Foreign Policy,’ pp. 6–8; Ronen, Qaddafi’s Libya in World Politics, pp. 105–110.

70. Tamburini, ‘The Politics of State Mergers in the Qaddafi’s Foreign Policy,’ p. 4.

71. Ibid.

72. I. Gershoni, ‘The Arab Nation, the Hashemite Dynasty and Greater Syria in the Writings of ʿAbd Allah,’ Hamizrach Hehadash, 1–2 (1975), pp. 6–9 (in Hebrew).

73. Ibid, pp. 2, 5.

74. Ibid, pp. 14–19.

75. Ibid, pp. 14–21.

76. G. Abd al-Nasser, Egypt’s Liberation: The Philosophy of the Revolution (Tel Aviv: Gadish Books, 1958), pp. 253–258 (in Hebrew).

77. Ibid, pp. 53–54.

78. J. Lacouture, Nasser (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1972), p. 123 (in Hebrew).

79. B. Eliav, ‘Epilogue,’ in Abd al-Nasser, Egypt’s Liberation, p. 80.

80. See the reports in the following newspapers: Ruz al-Yusuf (Cairo), January 8, 1962; Al-Hawadith (Beirut), February 2, 1962, and August 24, 1962; Al-Mussawar (Cairo), April 18, 1962.

81. M. Abu Rumman, ‘al-Salfiyya fi al-Jazira al-’Arabiyya’ [Salafism in the Arabian Peninsula], in ‘Abed al-Ghani “Imad (ed.), al-Harakat al-Islamiyya fi al-Watan al-”Arabi [The Islamic Movements in the Arab Homeland] (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahda al-’Arabiyya, 2013), p. 4 (in Arabic), https://www.academia.edu/15296830/.

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