In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

CHAPTER TWELVE The Rebirth of Pan-Arabism? As we saw in Chapter 11, Palestinian nationalism has been one of the main problems of the Middle East. The "high political" goal of exiled Palestinians was proclaimed to be the regaining of their homeland , in its entirety or at least by establishing sovereignty in a part of it; and for local Palestinians it was freedom from foreign-i.e., Israelirule . We saw that both issues were intertwined. We discussed Syrian claims to Palestine as a part of Syria's own sense of sovereignty or statehood , even though this Syrian claim was not the centerpiece of Assad's foreign policy. Yet the Ba'ath Party-still ruling in Syria, and in Iraqhad always emphasized pan-Arabism, and thus rejected any form of non-Arab presence in a united (when the time comes) Arab world. From this we can discern three forms of Arab nationalism. The first form is the search for sovereignty for a certain group or groups of people , such as the Palestinians. The second form is the search for extended sovereignty of an Arab state over other Arab entities, which is grounded in historical, economic, and strategic reasons, some "low political" in the sense of serving hegemonical and personal interests of some Arab leaders . This was demonstrated in the case of Syrian claims for Palestine. It was also demonstrated in the case of Iraqi claims for Kuwait, which could be seen as being cloaked in "high political" terms-as if the issue was of the highest significance to Baghdad, almost an issue of Iraq's very history, its rights and survival-even though the occupation of Kuwait could have saved the Iraqi regime from collapsing as a result of its previous adventures against Iran, which were basically "low political " at first. Still, this form of hegemony could mobilize pan-Arab sentiments and pretend to spearhead a general trend toward Arab unity. 231 232 The Politics and Strategy of Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East The third form of Arab nationalism is pan-Arabism, the Ba'ath Party's main goal and a "high political" issue of the utmost importance to other Arab leaders such as Nasser and Qaddafi, even though it was not a precondition for the very survival of their countries-unless economic reasons and "low political" quests for personal and national hegemony leading to Arab unity could be combined with domestic and foreign challenges, with various dangers to the stability of a developing Arab nation, and with the growing gap between rich and poor in the Arab world. Thus, pan-Arabism could assume a social color-and a modem anti-Western one-as if the rich Arabs deprived the poor Arabs of wealth because of Western interest in keeping the price of oil as low as possible. Of course, whether this was the case recently-rather than that Arab and Western oil interests calculated that high oil prices would lead to the successful development of substitutes-is an issue that is outside the scope of this book. However, some Arabs were doubtless in dire need of more revenues. For example, Saddam Hussein's Iraq needed revenue following his war with Iran, when he had an ambitious weapons production effort at home based on foreign procurement and had to maintain the costly civilian economy. A solution for him was to contest oil-rich border areas owned by neighbors, such as Kuwait, and demand higher oil prices regardless of the possible boomerang effect described above. The Kuwaitis and the Saudis would be very conscious of this reasoning and would refuse to comply, also because they would constantly fear that a larger and stronger Arab entity financed by them might endanger them. In Iraq's case, the Arab-Iranian rivalry in the Persian Gulf added to the Arab-Arab cooperation, once Iraq perceived itself as the "Eastern Gate" of the Arab world, resisting Iran, at least while the Shah of Iran was trying to control the whole Persian Gulf by seizing two islands in the mouth of the Shat-el-Arab River and by enticing the Kurdish population of northern Iraq to cede from the main body. This indirect encounter was settled in 1975, when the river was divided between the Shah's Iran and Saddam's Iraq, and the Kurds were abandoned by Teheran (and by the United States and Israel, who supported them via Iran). The 1980 invasion of Arab-populated Khuzistan by Saddam Hussein could have been seen, in...

Share