Assess The Impact Of The Arab-israeli War On Arab Society

The Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948 in many ways set the tone of Middle Eastern politics and diplomacy for the next thirty years, if not the next seventy. The mass flight of Palestinian Arabs, the Nakba, the crushing defeat of 'Goliath' by 'David' and the subsequent political acrimony that engulfed the Arab world would all turn into themes that have bedevilled the regions since; the right of return and the issue of repatriation, Arab worries or military weakness versus 'Fortress Israel' and finally the rise of Nasserism, which combined Arab nationalism with social revolution to produce a heavy concoction which the Arab world drank deeply from even after his death. The war can be seen as the first test of Arab unity; the newly created Arab League, set up in 1945, had Palestine as its first challenge and its first and most catastrophic failure. Masked by the rhetoric of Arab unity, we must look at the inter-state conflicts between Arab countries and how these were affected by defeat. Laying aside for a moment ideological concerns, the realpolitik of the Middle East was changed tremendously by the shock of defeat, as well as the series of revolutions and coups which followed in its wake. In terms of foreign relations we must also look at the Arab states' relations with Israel. No lasting peace was made with Israel until the Camp David Accords in 1978 but to believe the rhetoric of ceaseless struggle against Zionism would be naive; every power engaged with Israel in varying degrees of openness and with varying degrees of shame; Jordan most nakedly, followed by Egypt. Having examined the diplomatic consequences of the war, we must also look at the domestic politics of the Arab world which often drove foreign policy, especially in the less stable regimes such as Syria and Iraq but there were marked changes in foreign policy in Egypt after the Free Officer revolution of 1952 and in Jordan after union with the West Bank. The most important development in Arab politics, which deserves special treatment, however, is the collapse of the conservative orders and the rise of a new populist form of politics in Egypt which would infect the Arab world and change the political paradigm from British-aligned versus French-aligned to 'progressive' versus 'reactionary' and bring the Middle East into the centre stage of the Cold War and a new era of imperialism.

Relations between the Arab states had been chilly at best before 1948; the very nature of their foundation meant that mistrust marked their diplomacy, while their every move was to try and gain political capital at the expense of their neighbours. One can trace this back to the close of the First World War and the installation of the Hashemites first in Syria, then in Transjordan and Iraq; Feisal's dreams of a Greater Syria never did come true, but they were kept alive by his brother Abdullah, who sponsored Arab nationalist movements within Syria right into the 1950s, while his relations with Saudi Arabia were poisoned by his stated goal of reconquering the Hedjaz, taken from his family in 1925. The intrusion of Israel into this web of fear and suspicion was seen by many as an opportunity for Arab unity; the creation of the Arab Salvation Army to protect the Arab Palestinians, and the joint command of the Arab forces under King Abdullah, seemed to give cause for celebration, that perhaps the Arab states were uniting against a common enemy. That, indeed, is the case in Zionist historiography; that Israel faced a united and implacable enemy whose stated aim was: 'a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades.' Such a view would give the Arabs too much credit. The Salvation Army was a product of Syrian pressure, who wanted a separate Arab force in Palestine that was not controlled by the Hashemites, whose Arab Legion coupled with the Iraqi army dominated operations in the West Bank. Meanwhile Abdullah was given overall command of the armies not out of any deference to the head of the much-despised Hashemite clan, but because he would be an easy fall-man if everything went wrong, which almost everyone expected to happen. This infighting hardly improved after the War. A semblance of unity was maintained in the Arab League, such as the resolution passed in 1950 to expel any member from the League that made a separate peace with Israel. This was, of course, driven by the members' knowledge that at least two countries, Egypt and Jordan, were already in talks with Israel. Arab unity after the war was not one of mutual cooperation, but was rather one of bullying machismo; a determination by regimes to try and present a hard line against Israel while forcing any wavering counterparts into line through threats, such as the campaign against Jordan in 1950, which threatened economic sanctions and expulsion from the Arab League. Such threats could not mask the fact that the Arab world was deeply divided, and this was not changed at all by the 1948 war. Indeed, it only made matters worse, as loss of face forced regimes into ever more strident rhetoric lest they meet the fate of Husni Zaim or King Abdullah himself.

It may go without saying that the Arab-Israeli war embittered relations between the Arab states and the new Jewish homeland, but once again the fog of seventy years of conflict hides the complex relations between the two parties; indeed, the assumption of there being two blocs, one Arab the other Jewish, is itself misleading. Before the war, there were several Arab statesmen who, although not exactly friendly to Zionism, were at least tolerant of a Jewish state, such as al-Chadjeri, the Egyptian economy minister who in 1937 expressed some support for Zionism, but whose National Democratic Party became virulently anti-Zionist and pan-Arabist after 1947. The difference in Arab policies towards Israel can broadly be understood by their interests in Palestine; between those states whose commitment to the Arab Palestinians was ideological, namely Syria and Iraq, and the borderline states of Jordan and Egypt, who had a more direct state in Mandate politics. Syria and Iraq generally pursued the most stridently anti-Israeli course; President Husni Zaim of Syria lasted only 150 days in office and was executed for his overtures to Israel in 1949. Within Jordan and Egypt, relations with Israel were conditioned by the difference of interests between the royal courts and popular politics. Both Farouk and Abdullah had interests in Palestine; Farouk sought self-aggrandisement in Palestine, and opposed his Prime Minister, al-Nuqrashi, who sought Arab self-government even after the war. Jordan, however, is the outstanding country in terms of the complexity of its relations with Israel. Even before the war, Abdullah had been in contact with the Jewish Agency over the future of Arab Palestine. The fact that the Jordanian army, unlike the other Arab powers, never invaded the half of Palestine allotted to the Jews in 1948 shows that he was motivated more by a desire to annex the West Bank than crush Israel. This led to what Avi Shlaim has called an 'antagonistic partnership'; faced by almost universal Arab hostility to his Israel policy, Abdullah received unsolicited aid from Israel in the form of a £10,000 subsidy, while to Moshe Sasson Abdullah stated: 'I want peace not because I have become a Zionist or care for Israel's welfare, but because it is in the interest of my people. I am convinced that if we do not make peace with you, there will be another war, and another war . . . and we would lose. Hence it is in the supreme interest of the Arab nation to make peace with you.' Abdullah's desire for peace was based ultimately upon his own dynastic ambitions. Having inherited from Feisal the leadership of the Hashemite family interest, he saw Greater Syria as his natural birthright, which included not only Transjordan and Syria but also Palestine. Abdullah saw peace with Israel as the best opportunity for securing this, and thus perhaps deserved the universal suspicion he was held in by the rest of the Arab world. In contrast with Abdullah's dynastic interests, Egypt took an opposite tack. King Farouk's own dynastic interests were swept away by the Free Officer revolution in 1952, and after this Egyptian policy became more markedly anti-Israeli. Nasser saw Israel as a product of imperialism, to be fought at all cost: ''imperialism is the great force that is imposing a murderous, invisible siege upon the whole region, a siege one hundred times more powerful and pitiless than that which was laid upon us in our trenches at Faluja . . .' Nasser's reference to Faluja here, where he and a contingent of the Egyptian army were besieged by Israeli forces in 1948, points to the sense not only of persecution by foreign powers but also of betrayal by the conservative elite in Egypt epitomised by King Farouk's out of touch, profligate court. The ramifications of this sentiment in Egyptian domestic politics shall be examined later, but it translated to a more stridently anti-Israeli policy that would culminate in the Six Day War, precipitated by Nasser's blockade of the Straits of Aqaba.

The 1950s were years of turmoil in the Arab world; Syria would experience coup after coup, the monarchies of Iraq and Egypt would be swept away more or less bloodlessly (respectively), while in Jordan the assassination of King Abdullah in 1951 precipitated a crisis which the monarchy miraculously survived. It is telling that of the men who signed armistices with Israel: Husni Zaim, King Abdullah, King Farouk and Riad al-Suhl, all would either be dead or out of power by 1952. The conservative elites that had dominated Arab politics in the interwar years had banked heavily on the war, hoping to distract their restless populations with a Zionist bogeyman. It is no surprise, therefore, that failure led to revolution. Gamal Abdul Nasser, leader of the Egyptian Free Officers, proved to be the frontman of this discontent. His regime's mixture of Arab nationalism with economic populism struck a chord with Arab popular opinion whose own expectations, elevated by better education and by nationalist promises of independence, proved thwarted by the old regimes. In 1948 Iraq had 28,000 students in high schools or colleges, while Egypt had 19,000 in higher education. These effendiyya would prove the backbone of revolutionary change in both countries. The massive economic inequality which had resulted from decades of aristocratic notable rule was also a point of contention; there were 1.2 million landless fellahin in Egypt while in Iraq 1% of the population owned 55% of cultivated land. Thus the deciding moment in Egypt's political future was not the exile of Farouk in 1952, but the dismissal of the civilian cabinet in 1953 and replacement by a one-party military state; this change was precipitated not by Israel but by disagreements over land reform. Finally in their demands for independence from colonial powers, there was a new radicalism in Arab politics. Previously sedate discussions over treaties became political flashpoints. In Iraq, a draft treaty with Britain that would have given Iraq independence but reserved military powers and bases for Britain had to be repudiated by the Regent in January 1947 because of popular protest. This only got worse after the war and would reach a climax with Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal and subsequent international crisis. Economic development and demands for political independence were two core features of politics in the Arab world, indeed still are, but they acquired a new urgency after the 1948 war. The conservative elites had no doubt hoped that a short, glorious war against a universally despised enemy would give them time to restore their tarnished reputations; but ignominious defeat and then diplomatic debacle laid the stage for a seismic shift in popular politics. The most surprising thing about this period is not that the Arab monarchies fell, but that any at all survived; the Gulf monarchies and Saudi Arabia perhaps got off lightest, with their small populations and limited involvement in the war, but Jordan's perilous position makes the endurance of the Hashemites nigh on miraculous. Its annexation of the West Bank had doubled its population, while in the 1950 elections, only 14 out of 20 seats on the East Bank were contested, yet all 20 in the West Bank were. This large and politicised Palestinian population posed a threat to the established order and it is a miracle that the kingdom survived the assassination of the King in 1951, let alone the reign of his mentally unstable son.

The Arab world thus saw seismic changes in its internal politics; the old conservative regimes failed their people for the last time and were removed, largely by military strongmen. But that is not the biggest change in Arab politics. The 1950s saw the emergence of a new political force in the Arab world; led by a vanguard of Free Officers, especially the charismatic, dashing, vainglorious and self-absorbed Colonel Nasser, the rise of Nasserism, which combined social revolution with Arab nationalism, changed the political landscape of the Middle East for a generation. In the previously quoted extract of The Philosophy of the Revolution, we can see Nasser's sense of betrayal; not only by the foreign powers that had dominated the Middle East since time immemorial, but also the monarchy they had propped up. Nasserism brought together all the threads of popular discontent that had been developing since the First World War; only unlike the conservative nationalists, who looked to their own borders for national liberation, he told Arabs that theirs was a shared plight: 'We have suffered together, we have gone through the same crises, and when we fell beneath the hooves of the invaders' steeds, they were with us under the same hooves.' Nasser sought to expand Arab consciousness; his speeches were broadcast across the Arabic-speaking world while Egyptian newspapers were distributed broadly; 5,000 copies were sent every day to Syria and Lebanon while Mohamed Heikal, journalist and Nasser's confidant, turned Al-Ahram into the mouthpiece of the regime. Can Nasserism be solely ascribed to the Arab-Israeli conflict? Of course not; if the ear of 1948 had never happened, or had been fought successfully, it is likely that the conservative house of cards erected in the Middle East after the First World War would have come tumbling down on its own. But the form the collapse took; of a revival in Arab nationalism and a palpable sense of betrayal by the Great Powers, who had let their former proteges be obliterated by an upstart colony planted there by the Balfour Declaration, are all direct responses to the disaster of 1948.

For the future of the Middle East, however, Nasser's greatest change would be to bring Egypt into the Non-Aligned Movement in 1955 at the Bandung Conference and then, following rejection by America and the World Bank, taking funds and armaments from the Soviet Union. This would bring the region well and truly into the Cold War and a new era of imperial encroachment upon the Middle East. The descent of the Yom Kippur War into a Soviet-backed Arab alliance versus an American-backed Israel does not help our judgments of Arab politics immediately after the 1948 War. Arguably, the term 'Arab-Israeli' is a misnomer, because it assumes not only a united Israeli front (tell that to the Irgun or the Stern Gang) but also a united Arab front whose armies, as we have seen, were nearly as close to fighting one another as they were to fighting the Haganah in 1948. The period from 1947 to 1954 saw a paradigm shift in Arab politics. The dynastic tensions that marked politics before the 1950s were generally swept away; the Hashemites were relegated to a tiny and unstable desert kingdom, while the Muhammad Ali Dynasty was banished to the history books by the Free Officers. From the mid-1950s onwards, strong-arm Arab nationalism and social revolution were the fashionable political ideologies; from Libya to Ethiopia, young military men dreamed of removing the decaying 'reactionary' monarchies that imposed themselves upon them, while opposition to Israel turned from necessity, both for internal stability and dynastic ambition, to an almost cult-like status.