The myth of "Palestinian" Nationalism - artykuł

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The myth of "Palestinian" Nationalism and the reality of Arabic-Islamic
Nationalism

The "refugees" were not leaving their homeland, rather the were just
migrating to another part of the larger Arab state.

A glaring, and tragic, illustration of the Arabs' loose territorial
affinities was provided by a largely disregarded aspect of the "refugee"
problem. After all has been said of the pressures that were exerted and the
panic that was induced by their leaders in 1948, something uncanny remains in
the picture of a community, rural as well as urban, not under any physical
pressure

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Needless to say, the Arab governments, like other governments, are not
altruistic. A glance at their ruling classes suggests that, in the matter of
concern for others, the Arabs are below rather than above average. They are
model members in a world where the rule, perhaps inevitable, is for every
nation to look out for itself and to pursue its own selfish interest. It is not
to help the Palestine Arabs that the Arab states pursue their militant purpose
toward Israel.

"If the Arabs could agree on nothing else," wrote one of their great friends, a
British officer who served in the Jordanian Arab Legion, "they could at least
agree that Israel as a State must be extinguished. Israel delenda est."1 Such
has been the theme ever since the Arab leaders began to see the Arab Empire as
a tangible aim. In May 1946, when the Jewish state was still only a "threat," a
meeting at Inshass in Egypt of leaders of the Arab states declared: "The
problem of Palestine is not the problem only of the Arabs of Palestine, but of
all the Arabs."

Since the Jewish state was established, Arab political and ideological
literature has been filled with a mass of semantic variations on the theme.

"When Palestine is injured," said Abdel Nasser in 1953, "each one of us is
injured in his feelings and in his homeland."

Eight years later, the outlook had not changed. "The Palestine problem," said
Nasser in 1961, "has never been the problem of the Palestinians alone. The
whole Arab nation is involved." At its conference in October 1966, the Syrian
ruling Ba’ath Party went to the heart of the Arab purpose: "The existence of
Israel in the heart of the Arab homeland constitutes the main base dividing the
eastern part from the western part of the Arab nation."2


"The meaning of Arab unity is the liquidation of Israel." - Egyptian Prime
Minister, 1965
Nasser stated it more pointedly on February 2, 1965, at the Festival of
Unity: "The meaning of Arab unity is the liquidation of Israel."
The conflict, then, shorn of legend and fiction, is between the "Arab nation,"
which possesses eighteen states embracing an area of thirteen million square
kilometres, and the Jewish people, claiming the right to its single historic
homeland, whose territory even today after the Six Day War, constitutes less
than 1 percent of the territories ruled and dominated by the Arabs.

That is the moral issue in the clash between Arabs and Jews. On the one hand is
the hunger of the Jewish people for national independence and physical security
in its homeland, a land it has brought back to life. On the other hand is the
huge, unsentimental appetite of the Arab people for the unbroken continuity of
a vast empire and for the unique status of a nation which, itself dominating
minority populations of millions, arrogantly and violently refuses to accept
that status for one small segment of its people.

The ambitions of British imperialists, aiming at their own domination of the
Fertile Crescent through Arab puppet states, first aroused the idea of a reborn
empire in Arab minds as a serious and practical political proposition. Their
aid and patient support established the nucleus of the modem Arab Empire. After
they had conceived and established the Arab League in 1945, the British tended
and nurtured it for years thereafter. They first envisaged Palestine as a full
partner in that empire, its Jewish population being given minority status as
envisaged in the British government's White Paper of 1939. No less important,
the British persuaded the Arabs that this plan was feasible. They looked
forward to a tangible reward for their friendship. Later, however, the
strategic attractions and commercial opportunities of the Arab states drew the
attention of other nations, and Britain had to content herself with only a part
of the Arabs' favours.

This change flowed from a development which even the most powerful Arab
imagination had not conceived. It was precisely in this period that new,
unprecedentedly large discoveries of oil were made in the soil of a number of
the Arab states. Their economic importance and potential increased overnight.
Tremendous impact was now added to their relations in the international area,
and especially with the great powers, who are the chief exploiters of the oil.
The Arabs became a power in the world.


For many hundreds of years, the Arab states had played no part in world
affairs.
For many hundreds of years, the Arab states had played no part in world
affairs. (Few of them had played any part even in the conduct of their own
affairs.) Outside the sheikhdoms of Arabia itself, which pursued the slow tempo
of life in the wide spaces and played out their desert rivalries, there simply
were no Arab affairs. Nor was there any hunger or striving for their revival.
The Arabs warmed themselves and were contented with memories of past glory.
Characteristically, they tended to magnify that glory; their imagination
expanded the 120 years of the purely Arab Empire in the seventh and eighth
centuries and fused them with the following three centuries of an empire ruled
by Moslems, who spoke and wrote Arabic but, like Saladin, were not Arabs and
became Arabs only in the nostalgic retrospection of later centuries.
Nevertheless, the Arabs have genuine memories of glory, of military
achievements that were the wonder of their age, of the wide sowing of their
language and their faith over vast areas of the earth, of the glittering
imperial splendour of Damascus and Baghdad, of a cultural contribution that
enriched and dazzled medieval European scholarship.
For a thousand years they lived on that glory. In a prolonged and continuous
stagnation, they ceased not only to rule, but also to achieve, to create, to
build, to strive. Far from reviving past glories, they sank into a lethargy
that brought them into the twentieth century as one of the most backward, most
immobile of peoples. Students of Arabic history and culture, especially those
well-disposed to the Arabs, cite the characteristics responsible for that
lethargy. "the Arab is preoccupied with his past," writes the Arab sociologist
Sania Hamady. "The pleasant memories of its glory serve as a refuge from the
painful reality of the present" (p. 217).

The roots of this condition are deep. As the scholars point out, lethargy and
stagnation are conditioned by Islamic principles of predestination and
fatalism. Nor are there reasonable prospects of a change. "It is not an
exaggeration to say that after so many centuries of immobility the process of
agriculture, industry, exchange and learning had become little more than
automatic, and had resulted in a species of atrophy that rendered those engaged
in them all but incapable of changing their methods or outlook in the slightest
degree... It is incapacity rather than unwillingness to learn that
characterises Arab society."3


The Arab leaders who themselves enjoyed a modem education have been conscious
of the stagnation of their society.
The Arab leaders who themselves enjoyed a modem education may have been
conscious of the stagnation and backwardness of their society. They were
nevertheless not equipped, they were indeed helpless, to effect any of the
apparently revolutionary changes that alone might raise their people to the
cultural and technical levels of our age.
Yet now, suddenly, they found themselves with little effort possessed of
independence, controlling states with enormous resources and vast territories
important in global strategy, ruling over millions of non-Arab minorities. Now,
too, they were courted by the great powers of the world. By a little effort of
their imagination they saw themselves bridging the black gap of the centuries,
winning the recognition of the pr

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By a little effort of their imagination they saw themselves bridging the black
gap of the centuries, winning the recognition of the previously supercilious
Western world. Suddenly they could see themselves accepted, with no further
cultural effort, as instant full partners in the complex culture of the
twentieth-century world, just as they had shared in the building of its
foundations during the Middle Ages.4

The power of the Arabs' imagination is such that they soon forgot that there
had been a gap at all. They soon saw unfolding behind them one continuous
stretch of centuries of glory and of Arab life dominant throughout the whole
area conquered by the ancient Arabic Empire in Asia and Africa. The facts of
history between the eighth and the twentieth centuries ceased to exist; and the
prospect they induced themselves to see was a direct continuation of what had
existed 1000. years ago and more.


Arab population of Palestine sat by while Jewish resistance led to the end of
British rule
Now, at last, the time had come for the assertion of a "Palestinian" Arab
entity. The Arabs could theoretically have joined the Jews in a classic war of
liberation from a foreign ruler and established a claim to partnership in the
ensuing independence. Or, more credibly, the British having already promised
them in fact independence which the Jewish resistance was endangering, they
might have rushed in to help the British in crushing the Zionists. In fact,
faced with the two alternatives, they chose a third: They did nothing. The Arab
population of Palestine sat by while the Jewish resistance movement brought
about the end of British rule.

96% of local Arabs of military age sat by and did not fight while the
neighboring Arab countries invaded Israel.
When the United Nations General Assembly decided on November 29, 1947, to
recommend the partition of Palestine and the establishment of two states, the
Arabs did launch a countrywide attack on the Jews. But this, too, was carried
out only with considerable aid from the British who maintained their presence
in the country for another six months. Clearly, also, the attacking Arabs were
a minority of the people, while the majority remained passive or evacuated in
order to leave the field to the invading Arab states, who promised to drive the
Jews into the sea. The Palestine Arabs were truly a people of non-combatants;
they contributed very little manpower to the ensuing full-scale war that was
supposed to be a life-and-death struggle for them. The British statistics gave
the Arabs a population of 1,200,000 in western Palestine. Even if, as is
likely, this figure is an exaggeration, there must still, at a highly
conservative estimate, have been 100,000 men of military age. The report of the
Iraqi Government Commission, which subsequently inquired into the cause of the
defeat,5 established that the total number of Palestinian Arabs who took part
in the war was 4,000. The Jews, altogether some 650,000, lost one-and-a-half
times that number.
This confrontation of figures (%4 of Palestinian Arabs of millitary age fought,
while almost 10% of the entire Jewish population died). is symbolic of the
affinity to Eretz Israel of the Jewish people and of the real Arab relationship
to the country. The Arabs of Palestine were under no physical compulsion when
their vast majority deliberately left their homes unguarded and exposed and
moved off across the Jordan or into Syria or Lebanon or to those parts of
Western Palestine that fell under the control of the Arab invaders. The Jews--
most of them the first and second generation of the organised return to their
ancestral country-stood and fought and died for every inch of the land. This
stark confrontation of affinities has its deep roots in the history of the land
and the people.

There was a further reason for the Arabs' confidence: They were convinced of
their superiority over the Jews as a fighting nation. Had not the Arabs
conquered half the world? True, that had happened 1,300 years earlier since
which time they had distinguished themselves at best in minor in-fighting among
rival Bedouin tribes and in the Laurentian tactic of arriving after the battle
to claim the victory. They had no difficulty, however, in projecting their
seventh-century martial excellence as an abiding fact in the twentieth. Whoever
reads the predictions of the Arabs in 1956, after they had suffered one defeat,
and their even more bloodcurdling predictions of victory and destruction in May
1967, after they had suffered two defeats, will recognise the uninhibited,
unlimited, early certainty of the Arab states in May 1948 that they were about
to win a stunning, historic victory, and that within a few weeks, or even days,
Jewish hopes would be in ruins and Palestine would be inexorably enfolded in
the embrace of the reborn Arab Empire.

1948 has entered Arab history as the year of the catastrophe. The Arab states
were saved from complete rout by political considerations: the submission by
the novitiate Israeli government to British and United States pressures. Thus,
Transjordan remained in possession of most of the area allotted in the United
Nations resolution to the Arab states (Samaria, Judea, and eastern Jerusalem),
while Egypt occupied the Gaza district. Israel, however, was not only not
obliterated, she improved substantially upon the collapsible borders of the UN
resolution of 1947 and emerged from the conflict with the high prestige of
courage and resource in the face of overwhelming odds. Moreover, some 400,000
Arab residents of the area lost their homes.


Soon the shock and the shame of loosing to Israel gave way to the search for
scapegoats and for excuses.
Soon the shock and the shame gave way to the search for scapegoats and for
excuses. "The Arab," notes an Arab writer, "is reluctant to assume
responsibility for his personal or national misfortunes, and he is inclined to
put the entire blame upon the shoulders of others. The Arab is fascinated with
criticism--of the foreigner, of fellow-countrymen, of leaders, of followers,
always of 'the other,' seldom of oneself."6 There is a cultural reason for this
habit. Hamadi explains: "As a result of his determinist orientation, the Arab
finds a good excuse to relegate his responsibility to external forces. He
attributes the ills of his society, his mistakes and failures, either to fate,
to the devil or to imperialism" (p. 187).
Thus, as time went by, the material aid and the diplomatic support and military
co-operation which their British allies had given the Arabs in the war of 1948
and the loaded American neutrality-which together nearly insured the Arabs'
objective of annihilation

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They were subject to special taxes. They were, of course, not alone-all non-
Moslems were so treated. But in the eyes of the Moslems, the Jews in Palestine
lived always in the image of a defeated people, in the daily shadow of their
defeat in 70 and 135 C.E. The Christians, inferior though they were, had in
their background a world of states, of power. The Jews had nothing; they were
outcasts over large areas of the Christian world as well. Even when the Arab
was himself ill-treated or humiliated in Moslem non-Arab society, he saw the
Jew as one grade below him. The confrontation with the Jews in British-
controlled Palestine had no doubt amended this attitude, yet now to be defeated
in the open battlefield, at such an historic moment and in such favourable
circumstances, by the Jews-that was an overwhelming blow to Arab pride


The State of Israel, as the instrument of the Arabs' defeat and dishonour,
became the focus of their frustrations.
The State of Israel, as the instrument of the Arabs' defeat and what they
described as their dishonour, thus became the focus of all their frustrations,
of all their hatreds, and of a hunger for vengeance which, by force of a
combination of circumstances, grew fiercer and deeper with time. Honour and
pride could be restored only by the disappearance of Israel. Again, then,
Israel delenda est.
The continuing enhancement of the Arabs' international stature only increased
the frustration. This, after all, was the era of colonial disengagement. The
Dutch, the Belgian, the French, and the British Empires were disintegrating.
Asia and Africa became a checkerboard of independent states, most of them
established with little or no struggle. One Arabic-speaking country after
another became independent. From seven states at the United Nations in 1948,
the Arabs grew to a bloc of eighteen by 1972. The Arab states, though their
average illiteracy rate is among the highest in the world, have perhaps more
influence at the United Nations any other group of nations.

The years have, moreover, seen a steep increase in oil wealth. While normally a
people labours for years to achieve minor improvements in the national income
and the standard of living, some of the Arab states have overnight joined the
richest countries in the world in terms of per capita wealth. The ease with
which their wealth and influence-and in most cases their political independence-
were accomplished led them all the more to think of 1949 as an unhappy accident
for which the "imperialists" were responsible. When the time came, they
decided, the Israelis could be beaten and with ease "driven into the sea."

A great new force helped to bolster Arab hopes of victory and annihilation. The
Soviet Union, by its steady stream of arms to Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, and by
unstinting political support, replaced Britain as the big brother of Arabism.

1. Peter Young, The Israeli Campaign, 1967 (London, 1967), p. 32

2. Yehoshafat Harkabi, Arab Attitudes toward Israel (Tel Aviv, 1972), p. 93;
Fatah in Arab Strategy (Tel Aviv, 1969), p. 30, quoting Anabtawi, Palestinian
Documents, II, p. 481.

3. H. A. R. Gibb and H. Bowen, Islamic Society and the West (London, 1950), pp.
215-216.

4. An amusing illustration of the full circle of Arab fantasy and sense of
values is the picturesque claim of the Arab writer Mahmoud Rousa: "The Arabs
invented the wheel, on which modern civilisation is built and now they supply
the oil which turns the wheel." Palestine and the Internationalisation of
Jerusalem (Baghdad, 1965), p. 2.

5. Published in Hebrew translation in Behind the Curtain (Tel Aviv, 1954).

6. F. A. Sayegh, Understanding of the Arab Mind (Washington, 1953), P. 28.