Chapter 9, Part 5: The Reaction against the People's Party

Second Heading: The Reaction against the Party

The party had scarcely announced its program and opened its registers for membership when discerning eyes saw it as a strong, cohesive political body that promised the country and its people every good to come.

The first thing the party was convinced of, especially after Israel had been set up in our heart and on our borders, was that we should look around us to gather the scattered parts of our nation to resist its deadly danger, all the more since it had defeated our armed forces on the battlefield and seized us by the throat diplomatically in the international arena with the help of the colonial powers, led by America, England and France.. It planted in us an idea not far from our principles: to draw strength from those Arabs who had a striking force.

In that period King Abd Allah of Jordan, who worked under British influence, was pursuing what he called Greater Syria.. This call was rejected because of the danger it posed to our independence, and we resisted it with all our strength.

On the throne of Iraq sat a minor king who was about to come of age. When he did, the regent, Abd al-Ilah, would be left with nothing to do. He was looking for a new throne for himself outside Iraq.. But Syria was content with its republican system and happy with it.

To discharge its conscience and examine the possibilities of the future, the People's Party submitted to the President of the Republic, three months and five days after the start of his second term, a memorandum dated 23 October 1948 to set the question of Arab union in motion and to demand an investigation into the mistakes made, especially during the Palestine war.

It said:

1. "Syria has come to a position in which it may be unable to repel the Zionist danger on its own, however much material and moral force it mobilizes, and the time has come to make efforts at once to establish an Arab union embracing Syria and the other Arab countries that have met the conditions of such a union, and to make these efforts one of the government's main aims, as a first step toward achieving Arab unity, which is the hope of the Arabs in all their lands."

2. To enact an urgent law laying down procedures for trying ministers, and to apply it to everyone who has committed crimes and errors against the country, regardless of any political consideration.

3. To hold a swift and thorough investigation into the mistakes made and to condemn those responsible for them.[1]

This memorandum had scarcely been handed to President al-Quwatli when it was leaked to the local press, which seized on it, and seized with it something to grease its claws with.. It launched a hysterical, feverish attack on the People's Party, unusual in political writing. It is well known that the newspapers of those days did not speak for organized parties or national bodies, but were mere business-agency "shops" living off sources that were not honorable, at home and abroad.

In fairness I should not generalize, but the honest ones were rare.

I have preferred not to cite concrete facts, or I would have touched on the "holiday gifts" from public money and the levy imposed on the Iraq Petroleum Company after we reached an agreement with it in 1955 that safeguarded the country's rights.

The People's Party had a newspaper that we founded to speak for us. We, the party's deputies and members, wrote for it without pay and financed it from our salaries.. Even so, we were unable to keep it going, and we closed it.

I would like to recall our position on the question of Greater Syria.

Some of the old Syrian politicians had gathered around King Abd Allah and dressed up for him the Syrians' attachment to his throne.. To dispel his illusions, the Syrian Chamber of Deputies held two special sessions to debate this matter on 27 and 29 September 1947.

The Chamber, in all its tendencies, stood against this colonial project, and seventeen independent deputies submitted a petition "condemning the statement broadcast by King Abd Allah on 4 August 1947.. and supporting the speech of the President of the Syrian Republic, which condemned this call that hides behind it the specter of personal ambitions and Zionist ambitions.. and violates the Charter of the Arab League".

The People's Party charged me with delivering its statement on this matter, and the party's statement included the following:

"In the name of my brothers, the members of the People's Party, I condemn and denounce this suspect call, standing in solidarity with our colleagues who submitted the petition, in fulfillment of the nation's wish and in adherence to the republican system we have enjoyed, under which we have become free and equal in rights and duties. Accordingly we declare publicly our attachment to the republican system, from which we shall never depart. And let the fate of the Transjordan group and of those who blow the horn of the suspect Greater Syria be:

Like the mountain goat that butted a rock one day to weaken it,
but did it no harm, and only weakened its own horn."

Our brothers Hani al-Siba'i and Faydi al-Atassi also spoke in support of this statement. Dr. Munir al-Ajlani, the independent deputy for Damascus, described this call "as the plague that dwells in Transjordan, the plague of colonialism, which is deadlier than cholera. It is a false project, neither Syrian nor great.. It is the work of foreign conspiracies and personal ambitions.. We do not want to build a king a palace in Damascus so that he can dig a grave for our independence and bring back the memory of colonialism".

By an irony of fate, the deputy al-Ajlani was prosecuted two years later and arrested on the charge of taking part in a conspiracy against Syria "on behalf of" the Greater Syria project.

The Chamber of Deputies unanimously adopted a resolution "condemning and denouncing the Greater Syria project, behind which personal ambitions and Zionist aims hide. The Chamber welcomes a unity in which the branch (Jordan) joins the trunk (Syria), free of every restriction or treaty, under the banner of the republic and independence".

And so the curtain came down on the Greater Syria project..

Endnotes:

[1] See the full text in Appendix 4.