Chapter 13, Part 1: The Labor Pains of Union: Dreams and Choices

Our generation knew an idealistic, Platonic longing for a unity that would gather together again a nation that had been one in its feelings, aims and convictions, even in the periods when the rulers of its regions and provinces were scattered. Our teachers taught us the principles of Arab nationalism in primary school. They filled us with pride when they told us of the conquests of the Rightly Guided Caliphs and, after them, the conquests of the Umayyads, when the banners of Islam and Arabism flew from the borders of China to the Sea of Darkness.

The home was purely Islamic, speaking Arabic and keeping the religious observances with strict precision.. So from two sacred sources we drank in a particular hatred of the colonizer, mixed into the fibers of our veins.. and a hatred of everyone in the country who collaborated with him.. That is why no one should be surprised to hear the demonstrators' cry: God is great.. But school corrected many of our notions.. and patiently and with long forbearance nurtured a new notion that progress had imposed, the notion of Arab nationalism.

Then the leaders of the struggle against the colonizer came to refine this notion, as we began to applaud Faris al-Khouri, Edmond Rabbath and Naim Antaki among the Christian national leaders. So just as an Arab may be a Muslim, he may also be a Christian.

From this reality King Faisal I said: Religion is for God and the homeland is for all.. As long as the Arab countries remained under the foreign yoke, feelings stirred in an idealistic way at any important event, an uprising for instance, that happened in them and whose news reached us.. And I can state with certainty that these were the feelings of the overwhelming majority of the people in Syria. I did not say the feelings of all the people, because there was a minority there that feared for its own particular rights.

To counter this wave of feeling, the colonizer pushed some Orientalists who worked with the foreign ministries[1] to build barriers on local ethnic foundations.. So he set up Pharaonism in Egypt, Phoenicianism in the eastern Mediterranean and Berberism in the Maghreb[2].. And where he could not find ethnic foundations for division, he tried to create sectarian barriers.

For the record, I will say that the great writer Muhammad Husayn Haykal once visited Aleppo in 1951, and the municipality held a large reception for him, which I attended as a deputy for the city. We chatted freely at the table, and he defended the idea of Pharaonism and did not see it as conflicting with the Arab idea.. a doctrine we could not accept. I told him frankly my view, the prevailing view in Syria, that we accept nothing but Arabism alone as our creed and heritage..

When the Syrian student mission traveled to France in 1938, Dr. Taha Hussein came aboard the ship at Alexandria.. He had conversations with some members of the mission in which he was a thoroughgoing "Pharaonist".. And he heard enough of their enthusiasm and burning Arabism to make him watch every word he said whenever he talked with young Syrians.

When the Arab countries that had been under the yoke of Western colonialism began to free themselves and set up states, we said: here is unity within our grasp.

Then came the tragedy of Palestine.. The Arabs of the Maghreb were cut off from the Arabs of the Mashriq by the most hardened of planners, and kings and presidents sat on the couches of power, savored its taste and enjoyed its trappings and pleasures. Oil came to deepen the roots of regionalism further. So a reality built on material considerations took the place of idealistic Platonism, and the struggle for survival began. The Arabs split into camps.. True, the Arab League brought them together.. but they sat in it like passengers on a ship, each planning for himself and his own destination.. should it come to harm or should it reach a safe shore.

The visionary intellectuals went on dreaming of some kind of Arab unity, as a poet dreams at dawn in the temple of illusions. Anyone who read the programs of the parties in Syria would find that all of them regarded themselves as "Arab" and were committed to working for Arab unity.. or at least an Arab federation.. Indeed, the modern Arab constitutions began to set down the question of Arab nationalism and Arab unity.

The 1950 Constitution and its preamble, Adib al-Shishakli's constitution and its preamble, the Egyptian constitution issued on 17/1/1956.. and the Syrian constitution of 1973.. for example, contained an explicit text that Syria.. and likewise Egypt.. is "part of the Arab nation".. and the wave spread to some other constitutions.

I would like to single out President Abdel Nasser and his fellow revolutionaries for special praise, because they wiped the dust of Pharaonism from the face of Egypt when they put the following into the 1956 Constitution:

"We, the Egyptian people:

who feel our existence interacting within the great Arab whole, and who appreciate our responsibilities and obligations toward common Arab solidarity for the glory and honor of the Arab nation..

Article One: Egypt is an Arab state.

And the Egyptian people are part of the Arab nation."

This is the very same as our pioneering text in Article One of the 1950 Constitution. So every effort toward Arab federation or Arab unity was an effort within the framework of the Syrian party programs and in fulfillment of the provisions of the state's constitutions.. Syrian politicians faced three choices:

The first: to keep things as they were.. because the division that had kept the Arab countries apart for many centuries had given each country its own interests and traditions.. and it would be hard for it to give up its particular character by merging into a larger and more cultured country. This was the theory of the regionalists, who wanted what was to stay as it was. So it did not find wide acceptance, and its advocates remained on the defensive.. especially after Israel was established and began devouring the lands and the sovereignty of its neighbors with an appetite that was never satisfied.

The second: to set up an immediate full merger, if possible, on the ground that regional considerations and economic interests must not stand in the way of achieving a higher ideal.

The supporters of this choice say: Since the middle of the nineteenth century the fires of nationalism have been flaring up in the world.. German unity and Italian unity.. and all were achieved by tireless struggle and by rising above petty interests.

So why should the torn Arab nation not follow the pattern of the other unions? When they speak this emotional language, their eyes are turned to men of the stamp of the German Bismarck and the Italian Garibaldi.

The third: to build ties of rapprochement between the Arab states without doing away with their present entities.. so that they cooperate economically on a preferential basis, unify their thinking and minds culturally, and organize themselves to stand up militarily to the dangers that threaten them..

And whenever the bond grew closer in one field, new measures would be taken for further rapprochement, until minds and interests were unified.. Then the decisive step would be taken, setting up a federation acceptable to all.. and not imposed by any material or moral coercion.

We, and perhaps my whole generation, whether under the French Mandate over Syria or while we were at French universities (or foreign ones, and all the more so Syrian institutes), thought of Arab unity in an idealistic, mystical way. So we never asked ourselves: what kind of unity is it that we want? Is it a unity based on religion? Or a unity on a secular basis, which does not want religion at the forefront of political action? Or a socialist unity in which classes disappear, if only in theory!.. The truth is that we wanted it to be a full merger (above all), stretching from the Arabian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean, without taking into account the present conditions that had taken root over the centuries of division, and without being influenced by the views of the sociologists and their theories and offshoots.

Time went by, we woke from our dreams, and we realized that the rock of reality is harder and tougher than the clouds of dreams.[3]

From the middle of the fifties the third choice prevailed among the Arabs.. Egypt and Syria concluded a military agreement for joint defense in 1955.. and this agreement came into effect when Egypt sent forces to Syria to defend its northern border, which was threatened by the Turkish military buildup.

At the national level, the states of the Arab League concluded the Joint Defense Treaty and the economic treaty.. signed on 11 April 1950.

Its second article said the following:

"The contracting parties undertake to hasten to the aid of the state or states that are victims of aggression, and to take at once, individually or collectively, all measures, and to use all means, including the use of armed force."

Article 5 provided for the formation of a permanent military committee based in Cairo, and a joint defense council made up of the ministers of foreign affairs and defense.

The treaty also provided for an economic council to coordinate the means of economic cooperation among the Arab states.

But the situation in Syria differed from that of the other Arab states, in the eagerness of its politicians to set up a wide Arab federation if possible, or at least a narrow one.. with the Arab brothers whose borders were closest.

All eyes were on two countries: Jordan, as part of Greater Syria, and Iraq, because of its proximity, its active part in the wars of Palestine.. and the enthusiasm of its unionist thinkers.

But Jordan was bound by a treaty with Britain that made its independence a joke.. and because of this treaty, and the existence of a hereditary monarchy, the story of Greater Syria was buried.

As for Iraq, the problem likewise lay in the English treaty and the monarchy.. I mentioned earlier that great obstacles stood in the way of this federation, and I insisted that the People's Party never adopted the subject, not in its program, nor in its leading party council, nor in its statements, nor in its press, though it did not rule it out if the conditions for a sound federation were met.

Endnotes:

[1] I should confess that I hold a particular view of the Orientalists, which I summed up in the speech I gave at the reception welcoming me as a member of the Arabic Language Academy, at the session held on 16 October 1991. I said in that speech: "Orientalists who were spies are few. Those who loved Arab civilization, helped to spread its treasures, wrote deep and pioneering works about it and taught us methods of research in our history and literature are the great majority."

[2] Now called Amazigh.

[3] Since the forties of this century many studies on the concept of nationalism have appeared, some of which I list here:
Mr. Sati' al-Husri, who wrote several works, the most important of them:
Difa' an al-Uruba, Ma Hiya al-Qawmiyya, Muhadarat fi Nushu' al-Fikra al-Qawmiyya, al-Uruba Awwalan, al-Uruba bayn Du'atiha wa Mu'aridiha, al-Bilad al-Arabiyya wal-Dawla al-Uthmaniyya and Yawm Maysalun.
Mr. Michel Aflaq, Fi Sabil al-Ba'th.
Dr. Adib Nassur, al-Fikr al-Arabi fi Alf Sana.
Abd Allah Abd al-Da'im, al-Watan al-Arabi wal-Thawra.
Dr. George Jabbour, Khawatir Hawl Mustaqbal al-Wahda al-Arabiyya.
Dr. Mohammed Abed al-Jabri (a Moroccan), al-Khitab al-Arabi al-Mu'asir.
Dr. Burhan Ghalioun, al-Dawla wal-Din.