Politics and Prospects in the Arab Middle East

POLITICS AND PROSPECTS IN THE ARAB MIDDLE EAST Sir Hamilton Gibb The longer my connection with the Middle East, the less sure I am of either my knowledge or my comprehension, and the more unpredictable seem to become the policies and actions of its leaders. Partly, no doubt, this is due to the fact that the generation with which I grew up is now passing from the scene, and a new generation is coming forward, a generation with which I have not had the same close contacts and whose ways of thinking I have not learned by long and intimate personal association. But at the same time, the impulsive, sometimes even irrational, element that has always been present in Middle Eastern politics (and not always absent from politics elsewhere) seems to have grown more pronounced and to have found a freer field of action. Revolutions are always just around the comer, but who could have foretold, even a few days before it was announced, that Egypt and Syria would join in a "United Arab Republic "? Who, even now, can say confidently how solid is the union or what may come of it? It was hailed in some quarters as a "union of peoples," and it is true without doubt that in its first fine glow it offered a measure of satisfaction to a deep-seated and powerful emotional drive for Arab unity. But a real union of peoples? Nobody who has heard the hypnotized masses of German youth chanting "Heil Hitler" will place too much confidence in frenetic demonstrations at Damascus, or Cairo, or Baghdad. Yet they undoubtedly display in some way, or symbolize, a factor that has to be reckoned with in any survey of the contemporary Arab world. The problem is to identify that factor, and to assign to it its true valuation in relation to other factors in the Arab world, and the true measure of its significance for the relations of the Arab world with other nations of the East and West. The sudden formation of the U.A.R. is typical of the headaches which POLITICS AND PROSPECTS 169 beset a Western student of the contemporary Middle East. Here is a given political event: what materials are there available for an observer to interpret it, assuming that he already possesses a specialist knowledge of the Middle East, its history, and its social institutions? It is obvious that there are two general ingredients: (1) the historical setting, that is, the underlying frame of social relationships and organization and the series of past events leading up to, or at least preceding, the given event; and (2) the immediate factors involved in that particular event. The student may be expected to be reasonably well informed on the historical setting, although there are still considerable limitations to his knowledge; but he can scarcely ever pin-point the immediate factors, the precise stimuli that motivated the action itself. Even the public declarations of the actors themselves may obscure rather than clarify the situation. Such declarations, even when not deliberately designed to mislead, are too often post hoc rationalizations or apologetic for what was in origin and essence an instinctive or impulsive reaction to a given circumstance . All that the observer may say is that the action either chimes in with the past course of events and may therefore be called a natural or logical development, or else appears to be a completely unforeseeable and erratic deviation. If it is the former, he will be inclined to regard it as a substantial and durable step in a continuing development, a fact that can be built upon as an indication of future developments. If the latter, he will be inclined to regard it as an atypical and temporary aberration. Yet, however aberrant an event may seem in itself, the fact of its happening (and still more its public rationalization) carries both pragmatic and programmatic consequences. The particular instance of the union of Egypt and Syria, although in one sense typical in the abruptness of a fait accompli which postpones the resolution of the resulting problems to an uncertain future, aptly illustrates the principle. In dealing with the Middle Eastern region, then, and...