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1. Kemal Ataturk carried out policies that distanced the new Turkish republic of the 1920s from the Ottoman past. Why? What specific policies did Ataturk pursue? 2. Why many Arabs felt betrayed by the British (and the French) after the First World War? 3. Discuss at least three features of patrimonial leadership. List three or more Middle Eastern states where such type of political leadership persists 4. Describe the key processes (both internal and external) that initiated political and economic disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. 5. European military superiority in the late eighteenth century prompted Ottoman rulers to respond with what specific political measures? 6. The Zionist political movement originated in Europe rather than in the Middle East. Explain why and how. 7. After the Second World War, several Arab countries went through the process of transition from constitutional monarchies to republics. Identify three such countries and describe the course of events that brought about this transition. 8. How is religious Zionism different from secular Zionism? What is the relevance of this difference for the creation of the state of Israel? Has the relative influence of the two remained stable since the creation of the Israeli state? 9. What was the principle source of political legitimacy of the Ottoman Empire? 10. While most Ottoman European provinces, riding the tide of the nineteenth century nationalism, sought and won independence from Istanbul, Ottoman Arab provinces maintained their political loyalty to the Ottomans. What explains this difference between Arab and European provinces? 11. Social and political forces in favor of a constitutional reform in Iran (1905-1911) were markedly different from the groups that promoted constitutional limitations on executive powers of the sultan in the Ottoman Empire prior to the First World War? Explain this difference. 12. What are some of the key features of Arab socialisms? Which Arab leaders adopted socialist ideology? Which Arab leaders were opposed to it? 13. After the First World War, the new Middle Eastern protectorates (e.g., Syria, Lebanon, Iraq) were expected to develop into modern secular states. What specific policies did France and Britain try to implement? How successful have theses policies been? 14. The 1967 war was a watershed event for all major actors in the Middle East. Explain the consequences of the war for domestic politics in Israel and Egypt respectively.
Political Development after WW2:
Types of governments, states
Caveat:
Clusters of states rather than cross-regional generalizations (traditions, demographic composition, external influences, geographic location).
Structural (international) conditions:
Modernization as a norm;
Cold war “realities”;
Alternative models of economic development.
Turkey and Iran (similarities)
A move away from agriculture.
Industrial development (Etatism in Turkey; White Revolution in Iran).
Urbanization
Demographic change (population boom)
Turkey and Iran (further similarities)
Literacy rates up (improved education and health care)
Emancipation of women (politics, education); Iran: 1967 and 1975: family protection laws granted women greater legal equality within marriage.
Political upheaval.
Turkey and Iran (some significant differences in the 1950s)
Turkey: Proliferation of political parties (competing with the Republican People’s Party);
Iran: Foreign intervention.
Afterwards: the military and the monarchy bound by common interests.
Turkey (1950-60): anitsecularization measures (not against Kemalism)
Religious instruction in the primary school system.
Calls for prayers in Arabic legalized,
The number of schools for training Muslim prayer leaders was increased,
Turkey (1950-60): anitsecularization measures
Considerable government expenditures for the repair of existing mosques and the construction of new ones.
Expansion in the publication of books and pamphlets dealing with religious subject.
A renewed public observation of the Ramadan fast and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Saudi Arabia
The only exception to secularization.
Rejected Western (secular) influences.
Promoted strict adherence to religious practices.
Saudi Arabia
Governed by a strong royal family.
A consultative branch of limited powers, and a judiciary that implemented a mixture of customary law and shari`a-based law.
(Criminal laws based on the Islamic tradition).
Ideological orientations of other Arab countries
Decolonization (political and economic);
Nationalism;
Pan-Arabism;
Socialism (not to be confused with communism!!);
Non-alignment; and
Islamism
Short history of statehood:
Iraq,
Syria,
Jordan,
Lebanon,
Saudi Arabia
Algeria,
Lybia
The post-colonial state (i.e., after WW2)
Most Arab states went sequentially through the two modes of government:
Monarchy under foreign tutelage or direct foreign administration, and
Authoritarianism either as a presidential system (Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Tunisia) or military dictatorship (Libya, Algeria).
(Monarchy as a form of government survived in Morocco and Jordan).
Arab nationalism:
Liberation from colonial rule was the common wish of all Arab peoples by the 1940s.
Most people in the Arab world believed they were united by a common language, history, and culture grounded in the Islamic past, a culture shared by Muslims and non-Muslims.
Some Arab nationalists
Wanted to dissolve the frontiers drafted by the imperial powers to divide the Arabs.
and build a new commonwealth based on the deep historic and cultural ties that bound the Arabs.
Egypt: March 1950 through October 1951
The Wafd government conducted talks with the British government.
After 19 months of talks failed to produce results, the Wafd government unilaterally abrogated the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty.
The British refused to recognize the abrogation, which would have turned their forces in the Suez Canal Zone into an illegal army of occupation.
The strategic importance of the Suez Canal
A cornerstone of British foreign policy.
The armed struggle in the Canal Zone; the Brits responded with arms.
The events of early 1952: the end of the political order in Egypt.
A shift…
The old nationalist politicians, and the kings they served, were discredited for their failure to make a clean brake form British imperial rule.
A rise of radical new parties ranging from the Islamist Muslim Brothers to the Communists.
Egypt: The Free Officers
United by the belief that Egypt’s monarchy and parliamentary government had failed the country.
The 1948 Arab-Israeli war (triggering cause):
The defeat had discredited the old regime.
Nasser and other Free Officers had been appalled by their experiences in the Palestine War (sent to battle without adequate weapons and found themselves besieged by the Israelis for months and ultimately defeated).
Nasser
Agreed to form a new, largely civilian, government in September of 1952.
Created a committee of military men (the Revolutionary Command Council) to oversee the work of the revolution, ostensibly in collaboration with the government.
Reform programs: Free Officers’ six-point political program
The destruction of British colonialism and the removal of its Egyptian collaborators;
The elimination of feudalism;
The ending of the political controls of the state by foreign capital;
The establishment of social justice;
The formation of a strong national army; and
The creation of a healthy democratic life.
The military men
Were quick to purge Egyptian politics of party pluralism.
In January 1953, in response to pressures from the Wafd and the Muslim Brothers, the RCC banned all parties and expropriated their funds from the state.
Nasser
Introduced a state-sponsored party: Liberation Rally.
Argued that party factionalism was largely responsible for the divisive politics of the interwar years.
Hoped the Liberation Rally would serve to mobilize popular support behind the new regime.
Made the final break with the old order when the RCC abolished the monarchy on June 18, 1953.
Egypt: Progressive Policies
Land reform to reduce the wealth and power of the landed elite while improving the living conditions of the peasants;
Laws abolishing all civil titles (pasha, bey) a bill of rights that protected Egyptians from discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, language, or religion.
Women were permitted to vote.
Nasser:
Projected a spirit of hope.
The new Egyptian government
Inherited an array of economic problems.
The country was over-reliant on agriculture, and agricultural output was constrained by Egypt’s desert environment.
There was no way to expand the land under cultivation without the water resources for desert reclamation.
Egyptian industry remained largely underdeveloped
Agriculture contributed 35 percent of the Egyptian GDP in 1953, industry contributed on 13 percent (services 52%).
Low levels of public and private investment.
Overall population growth well outstripped the rate of job creation.
The officers of the RCC
Decided to build a hydroelectric dame on the Nile (near the town of Aswan).
The new Dam would store enough water to allow and expansion of land under cultivation by anywhere between 35 and 75 percent.
Such a project would cost hundreds of millions of dollars — far more than Egypt could raise from its source.
In order to pose a credible threat to Israel, Egypt needed to
Acquire arms from abroad.
Nasser turned first to the US approaching for assistance in November 1952.
The US was willing to assist (mediate between Israel and Egypt) but wanted Egypt to commit to a regional defense pact (Middle East Defense Organization) with the US and the UK against the Soviet Union.
Nasser
Next approached the French alternate source of military hardware.
But the French had misgivings about Nasser due to his support for nationalist movement in North Africa (Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria).
September 1955:
Nasser flirting with the Soviets (who do not make conditions).
He presented the Americans with a fact by announcing that Egypt would obtain arms from the Soviet satellite state of Czechoslovakia. The magnitude of the arms deal dramatically changed the ablance of power in the Middle East.
May 1956: Nasser extended diplomatic relations to the People’s Republic of China.
Aswan Dam:
The US government tried to make the loan contingent on a commitment from the Egyptian government not to buy more arms from the Soviet Union.
The military purchases would undermine the ability to pay back the loan.
Nasser in Alexandria (July 1956)
If the Western powers refused to help the Egyptians, he planned to argue, then Egypt would pay for the dam itself by
nationalizing the Suez Canal and diverting the canal’s revenues to meet the cost of the dam.
The British, French, and Israelis
Wanted to change Egypt’s government altogether.
The 1956 war.
No Arab leader has exercised such influence on the Arab stage before
Or since…
By 1957
Both the Ba’ath Party and the Communists approached Nasser with proposals to unite Syria and Egypt,
The Ba’ath proposed a federal union,
The Communists raised the stakes with the suggestion of a full merger of the countries into a single state.
The Syrian army got involved in the merger.
The army had already staged three coups against the Syrian government and many of its officers were avowed Ba’athists.
They were drawn to the military government of Nasser’s Egypt and believed that union would favor them as the dominant power in Syrian politics.
Nasser:
Had always promoted Arab unity,
He understood the expression to mean Arab solidarity, a unity of purpose and of goals.
he had never aspired to formal union with other Arab state.
Egypt, he recognized, had a very distinct history from the rest of the Arab world.
An all-Arab state
Prior to the revolution most Egyptians would not have identified themselves as Arabs, reserving the term either for the residents of the Arabian Peninsula or for the desert Bedouin.
The new state would be non-contiguous.
Incentive for Nasser:
As head of a union of two major Arab states he could secure his position as the unrivaled leader in the Arab world.
So he called for:
full union, with Syria ruled from Cairo by the same institutions that governed Egypt;
the Syrian army to come under Egyptian command and would have to stay out of politics;
all political parties to be disbanded and replaced with a single state party to be known as the National Union (once again: party pluralism equated with divisive factionalism).
Egypt:
The 1964 constitution: added the requirement that 50 percent of the delegated to the national assembly had to be workers and peasants).
Education
In terms of raw numbers, the advances in education were impressive;
since 1962 Egypt guaranteeing a government job to every university graduate.
Egypt: pluralistic society was circumscribed
Political parties were officially banned;
Instead mass organization: the Liberation Rally later replaced by the National Union;
Decision-making authority was further centralized by constitutional provisions that gave extensive powers to the president.
Political repression:
The (print) media brought under state control (Egypt);
Prominent government-appointed ulama were persuaded to issue decrees and write articles on the harmony between Islam and Arab socialism.
From constitutional monarchies and parliamentarism to authoritarian regimes
Egypt (Free Officers 1952)
Iraq (Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim 1958)
Syria (Colonel Husni Za’im 1949)
Egypt, Iraq (political change)
Monarchy abolished
Republic declared
The principle o democracy (Egypt: a 350-member national assembly) adopted.
A partial exception (Syria):
returned to civilian parliamentary government,
held three free elections from 1947 to 1954 that all broke down along sectarian and regional lines.
the military continued to interfere in politics,
between 1954 and 1958, the Syrian political structure was so fragmented that government could barely function.
The political leadership of the core Arab states changed during the 1950s:
Upper class civilian politicians educating in European-style institutions were replaced by young military officers from the lower urban or rural strata of society.
From: the sons of the landed or professional elite (Egypt); urban notable classes (Syria)
To: the sons of small peasant proprietors, minor government officials, and petty merchants.
New leaders
pragmatic nationalists;
military bureaucrats;
no predetermined views on a political organization or ideological orientation.
The post-colonial state (internal structure):
continued the mission of the colonial state to transform the societies over which it ruled;
outlined a vision of development to be pursued in the name of common good;
inherited significant autonomy from the colonial state.
Arab socialism:
Nationalization:
domestic enterprises;
banks and insurance companies;
import agencies;
hotels.
State responsible for all capital formation (state capitalism rather than Marxist socialism).
Nationalization
enabled the government to weaken rival power centers (landlords, business community or foreign oil companies).
satisfied the large sector of the population that was employed by, and dependent on, the state.
Central planning:
Planning agencies were set up to manage the economy.
Five-year plan economic plans (heavy emphasis on industrial development; huge expenditures)
During the 1960s, industrial output increased substantially, especially in the production of textiles and food an beverages.
Reform programs:
The very nature of their objectives led them to
expand the role of the state and
introduce planned economies and new networks of social control.
Syria and Iraq:
The Ba’th party
The rise of the Communist Parties.
The Ba’ath ideology
Arab rebirth;
Dedicated to revolutionary activism aimed at bringing about a complete transformation of Arab society:
to bring an end to social injustice, class exploitation, and tyranny and
to establish freedom, democracy, and socialism.
The Ba’ath ideology (cont.)
the failure of the Arabs to achieve the promise of pan-Arab unity blamed on the West;
the assertion of the country’s economic independence.
the transformation of the economic system from free enterprise to collectivism;
Syria: political conditions
A large number of military coups and coup attempts shook the country in the period 1949-1971.
Between 1946 and 1956, Syria had 20 different cabinets and drafted four separate constitutions.
Power increasingly concentrated in the military and security establishment.
Hafez el Assad
1971: President for a 7-year term.
March 1972, to broaden the base of his government, Assad formed the National Progressive Front, a coalition of parties led by the Ba’ath Party.
A new Syrian constitution went into effect on March 1973
The 1973 Constitution defines Syria officially as a secular socialist state with Islam recognized as the majority religion.
Followed by parliamentary elections for the People’s Council (the first such elections since 1962).
The Assad regime:
Policies adopted from the 1960s through the late 1980 included nationalization of companies and private assets.
Syria was under Emergency Law from 1963-2013, effectively suspending most constitutional protections for citizens.
Iraqi political development:
1921-1958: Constitutional monarchy;
1958-1968: Republican (military) regimes;
1968-2003: Government controlled by the socialist, pan-Arab Baath Party.
General Qasim and his key advisors influenced by socialist models:
a planned economy,
elimination of foreign economic influences (notably in the oil sector),
and land reform.
The transformation of Iraq from Third World to developed country driven by:
the need to spread wealth more equitably;
the need to diversify Iraq’s economy to avoid overdependence on a single commodity (oil).
Expropriations and nationalizations:
In 1961, the partly British-owned Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC). The rest of petroleum industry was nationalized in stages until 1973;
expropriation of land;
large-scale industry, banking, insurance and services were nationalized in 1964 (the Arif government).
Reasons for nationalization
1. in line with the Ba’ath Party ideology;
2. enabled the government to weaken rival power centers, whether landlords, the Shia business community or foreign oil companies;
3. to satisfy the large sector of the population that was employed by, and dependent on, the state.
The oil boom following the first Arab oil embargo
Iraq was able to pursue its socialist model without having to make hard choices between solvency and other priorities such as welfare benefits, infrastructure development, and even armed forces modernization.
The country was earning $75 billion a year in the early 1970s from oil exports (in 2003 dollars).
Per capita income had peaked at over $7,500 in 1980.
Early 1980s
one of the Arab World’s most advanced economies;
It had besides petroleum — a considerable industrial sector, a well-developed transport system, and comparatively good infrastructure.
Iraq:
had a relatively large middle class, per capita income levels comparable to Venezuela, Trinidad or Korea (it rose from 28% of urban population in 1958, to 54% in 1988).
one of the best educational systems in the Arab world, a well educated population and good standards of medical care.
Security Apparatus
The Ba’ath party’s cellular structure;
System of military commissars;
The Republican Guard; and
Party’s paramilitary militia force.
Arab Socialism extended, overstretched and made irrelevant
Nasser’s influence:
Iraq (Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim and Colonel Abd al-Salam ‘Arif hade been plotting a coup since 1956; they called themselves the Free Officers)
Syria,
Jordan,
Lebanon,
Yemen,
Libya, and
Palestinians.
Jordan and Lebanon
Both vulnerable to Nasser’s aggressive policies of pan-Arabism.
King Hussein (Jordan 1952-1999)
History of close relations with Britain.
had been a particular target of the Nasserist propaganda machine (“The Voice of the Arabs”) calling the Jordanians to overthrow the monarchy and joint the progressive ranks of modern Arab republics.
1957
opposition inspired by convergence of all of the reformist currents of
Nasserism,
Ba’thism, and
Communism.
King Hussein did all he could to distance himself from Britain
He stood up to British pressures and stayed out of the Baghdad Pact.
In March 1956 he dismissed the British officers still running his army.
King Hussein:
Even negotiated the termination of the Anglo-Jordanian treaty effectively ending British influence over the Hashemite Kingdom.
Made conciliatory efforts toward Egypt and Syria (to demonstrate Jordan’s commitment to Arab nationalism).
King Hussein opened up his government
To pro-Nasserist forces.
In 1956 free and open elections for the first time in Jordan’s history, which gave left-leaning Arab nationalists a clear majority in the Jordanian parliament.
Invited the leader of the largest party, Sulayman al-Nabusi to form a government of loyal opposition (lasted less than six months).
The Nabulsi government
Had a difficult time reconciling the contradictions between the loyalty (to the king) and opposition.
Enjoyed greater public support and loyalty from the Nasserist “Free Officer” elements in the Jordanian military than did the king.
In 1957 Hussein:
Demanded al-Nabulsi’s resignation, on the pretext of the government’s sympathies for communism.
Then he went after the Free Officers.
King Hussein suspended the constitution and proclaimed martial law.
The pressures on Jordan intensified
following the 1958 union of Syria and Egypt.
Arab nationalists redoubled their calls for the Hashemite government to step aside and for Jordan to join the UAR.
King Hussein’s own vision of Arab nationalism
More dynastic than ideological;
He turned to Iraq, led by his cousin King Faisal II;
Within two weeks, he concluded a unity scheme with Iraq called the Arab Union launched he Amman on February 14, 1958.
The Arab Union (AU)
No match to for the UAR.
The AU was seen as a reactive move (rather than pro-active) action against the threat of Nasserism.
Iraq,
host of the Baghdad Pact,
prime minister Nuri al-Sa’id was regarded as one of the most anglophile Arab politician of his day.
King Hussein
Recognized the vulnerability of his own position (without Iraq);
Recalled his own army, which had reached 150 miles inside Iraq, Hussein turned to Britain and the US on July 16 to request military assistance.
On July 17, (1958) British paratroopers and aircraft began to arrive in Jordan.
Jordan:
Requested economic assistance from the US.
Rewarded by a steady increase in US financial aid (by the 1960s about 50 million annually; these funds enabled Jordan to experience a period of sustained economic growth.
Lebanon:
Another state that came under intense pressure from the union of Syria and Egypt.
The sectarian division of power agreed to in the 1943 National Pact had begun to unravel.
Lebanon:
The constitution of 1926,
the census of 1932, and
the National Pact of 1943
established the basis of confessional politics.
Each district reserves seats for different religious groups
Ensuring representation of all minorities.
Example: Beirut (of the 19 total seats, 9 are reserved for Muslims and 10 for Christians).
Further divisions are made among the groups ensuring that the proportion of seats allocated to Sunni, Druze, Shiites, Greek Orthodox, Maronite candidates represents the districts demographic reality.
This complex calculus
is done throughout Lebanon’s districts, ensuring that the even 64-64 seat split between Christians and Muslims looks like this:
Lebanese Muslims (Sunnis, Shiites, and Druzes)
were particularly aggrieved.
they did not approve of the pro-Western policies pursued by the Maronite Christian president Camille Chamoun.
Lebanese Muslims
Saw Nasser as strong Arab leader who would unite the Arab world and end the perceived subordination of Lebanon’s Muslim in the Christian-dominated Lebanese state.
Lebanese Muslims (1957-8)
Believed that they outnumbered the Christians.
No new census since 1932 only confirmed Muslim suspicions that the Christians refused to recognize demographic reality.
Lebanese Muslims
Knew that under true majority rule Lebanon would pursue policies in line with the dominant Nasserist politics of the day.
Began to question the political distribution of power that left them with less political voice than their numbers would warrant under a more proportional system.
President Chamoun (1952-1958)
believed Nasser posed a direct threat to Lebanon’s independence,
he sought foreign guarantees from outside subversion.
After the Suez Crisis
Chamoun did not think he could count on France or Britain for support.
Instead he turned to America.
In March 1957 he agreed to the Eisenhower doctrine.
The Eisenhower doctrine:
Called for American development aid and military assistance to Middle Easter states to help them defend their national independence.
Also authorized deployment of US troops (to potect against “International Communism”).
When the president of Lebanon formally accepted the Eisenhower Doctrine
he entered on a collision course with both the Nasser government and Nasser’s many supporters in Lebanon.
The Lebanese parliamentary elections.
In Lebanon, the parliament elects the president of the republic for a single six-year term.
The parliament resulting from the 1957 elections would thus elect the next Lebanese president in 1958.
The run-up to the elections:
Chamoun’s opponents: Muslims. Druze, and Christians formed an electoral bloc called the National Front (NF).
(The NF represented a far larger share of the Lebanese public than that supporting President Chamoun).
As parliamentary elections neared
the US government feared Egypt and Syria would promoted the National Front and undermine the position of Chamoun.
So the US subverted the elections (the CIA provided funds)
Chamoun won in a landslide
The opposition press took the election results as proof that Chamoun sought to stack the parliament in his favor in order to amend the Lebanese constitution to allow himself an unlawful second term as president.
The opposition shut out of the parliament:
Some of its leaders turned to violence to prevent Chamoun from gaining a second term of office.
Bombings and assassinations in Beirut and the countryside in early 1958.
The breakdown in order accelerated after the union of Syria and Egypt (July).
Civil war in May 1958
The commander of the Lebanese army (General Fuad Shihab) refused to deploy the army to prop up the discredited Chamoun government.
The US prepared to intervene.
The Qassim coup (Iraq)
The overthrow of the Hashemite regime in Iraq on July 14, 1958
In Lebanon
Opposition forces celebrated the fall of the monarchy in Iraq.
They believed the Hashemite monarchy was a British puppet state and that the Free Officers were Arab nationalists in Nasser’s mold.
Chamoun (Lebanese President)
immediately requested US assistance to save country from falling under the control of pro-Nasser forces.
Chamoun
Invoked the Eisenhower Doctrine two hours after receiving news of the violent revolution in Iraq.
Marines landed in Beirut the next day (US Sixth Fleet in the Eastern Mediterranean).
The US intervened in Lebanon
“The American show of force on behalf of its Lebanese ally included 150,000 troops on the ground, dozens of naval vessels off the course, and 11,000 sorteis by naval aircraft that made frequent low-level flights over Beirut.” (Rogan) US troops left after 3 moths without firing a shot.
Political stability in Lebanon after American occupation
The commander of the the Lebanese army, general Fuad Shihab, was elected president on July 31, 1958.
President Shihab oversaw the creation of a coalition government combining loyalist and opposition members.
Shihab (1958-1964)
Modernization of the state;
Installing the basics of a social welfare system.
Increased government expenditures
public works projects such as road building,
rural electrification,
and the extension of the supply of water to previously neglected rural areas.
Lebanon:
The government removed trade restrictions.
A free press,
A burgeoning publishing industry,
A university that attracted students from all over the Arab world.
Lebanon:
Faced with nationalization laws in Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad, Arab capital descended on Lebanon.
Britain, the US, and the Soviet Union
Believed that the Iraqi Revolution would set off an Arab nationalist sweep.
They were convinced that the Iraqi coup had been masterminded by Nasser.
This explains the swiftness of the action of the US and Britain to prop-up the regimes in Lebanon and Jordan.
Would Qassim now
bring Iraq into union with Syria and Egypt and thus change the balance of power in the region?
Or would the rivalry between Cairo and Baghdad be preserved in the republican era?
1958
It looked as though the Arab world might break the cycle of foreign domination that had marked the Ottoman, imperial, and cold War eras to enjoy an age of true independence.
The new Iraqi government was divided
Qassim vs. Arif
Qassim
Determined to rule an independent state and had no intention of delivering his country to Nasser’s rule.
Worked closely with the Iraqi Communist Party,
Sought closer ties to the Soviet Union,
and was cool toward the Cairo regime that had clamped down upon the Egyptian Communist Party.
Qassim’s second in command, Colonel ‘Arif
Called for joining the UAR.
A great disappointment for pan-Arabism.
The decade of the 1960s: the decade of defeats for Nasser
The union with Syria unraveled in 1961.
The Egyptian army got mired in Yemen’s civil war.
And a disastrous war with Israel in 1967.
The end of the UAR
The Syrian army resented taking orders from Egyptian officers.
The Syrian landowning elites suffered from Egypt’s land reforms.
Syrian businessmen saw their position undermined by socialist decrees that transferred their companies from private to state ownership, as the government expanded its role in economic planning.
Nasser
Egypt and Syria had failed to achieve the degree of social reform necessary for such an ambitious Arab unity scheme to work.
His response to the breakup of the UAR
was to introduce a radical reform agenda to strip the “reactionary” elements from Arab society and pave the way from a future “progressive “ union of the Arab people.
The “reactionaries” = the men of property who put narrow national self-interest before the interests of the Arab nation.
Nasser’s (full-blown) socialism:
Nationalization of private enterprise.
Already in 1960, the UAR government had introduced its first Soviet-style five year plan (1960-1965) with overly ambitious targets for economic expansion in industry and agricultural output).
Egypt’s new political orientation
Enshrined in the 1962 National Charter, which sought to weave Arab nationalism, socialism, and Islam, into a coherent political project.
The National Union was renamed the Arab Socialist Union.
The ultimate target of Nasser’s critique after the breakup of the UAR
Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia (conservative) Tunisia and Lebanon (liberal) dismissed as reactionary.
The list of progressive states: Egypt, Syria and Iraq (and later Algeria, Yemen, and Libya).
Nasser
Not good relations with “progressive” Iraq.
In 1962 Nasser had gained an important ally
Revolutionary Algeria, with its emphasis on anti-imperialism, Arab identity politics, and socialist reform, was a natural partner.
Nasser’s new state party, the Arab Socialist Union drafted a joint statement with the FLB in June 1964 to assert their unity of purpose to promote Arab socialism.
Nasser took some credit for the success of the Algerian revolution. He was carried away..
Yemen:
Imam Ahmad (1948-1962) established diplomatic relations with both the Soviet Union and the PRC in his search for development assistance and military aid.
A coup attempt.
Ahmad opposed Nasser’s vision of Arab socialism (taking property by forbidden means that was against Islamic law).
When he died in 1962
Succeeded by his son Badr who was overthrown in a military coup and the Yemen Arab Republic was declared.
The Yemerni royal family challenged the coup with the support from Saudi Arabia.
Egypt threw its full weight behind the new republic and its military rulers
part of what Nasser saw as the larger battle between progressives and reactionaries in the Arab world.
Nasser’s support for the civil war in Yemen:
By 1962 Egypt committed 70,000 troops, almost half of the Egyptian army at the time.
The Arabs and the state of Israel
They refused to refer to the country by name, preferring to speak of “the Zionist entity.”
The Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the Gaza Strip served as a daily reminder of the Arabs’ failure to live up to their promises to liberate Palestine.
Some Israelis were also intent on war:
They feared that the country’s narrow waist between the coastline and the West Bank — at points only 7.5 miles, or 12 kilometers, wide — left Israel vulnerable to a hostile thrust dividing the north from the south.
Other aspirations:
Access to the Western Wall and the Jewish quarter of the old city of Jerusalem, which remained in Jordanian hands.
Syria: held the strategic Golan Heights overlooking the Galilee.
The Israelis
“Needed to secure defensible boundaries and inflict a decisive defeat on the Arabs to impose peace on terms with which Israel could live.”
Believed that their strategic advantage — holding more and better quality weapons than their Arab neighbors — would diminish over time as the Soviets provided weapons systems to the Egyptians and Syrians.
Nasser:
None of Nasser’s millions of supporters doubted that the Egyptian army would lead its Arab allies to victory over Israel.
With 50,000 of his best troops still tied down in the Yemen War, Nasser was forced to call up all his reservists.
Egyptian forces were sent into the Sinai with no clear clear military objective.
Once the UN had been withdrawn
The strait of Tiran returned to Egyptian sovereignty. Egypt closed it for the Israelis.
War with Israel
May have been the last thing Nasser wanted.
Public disenchantment set off a wave of coups and revolutions (just as after the 1948 war).
President Abd al-Rahman ‘Arif of Iraq was toppled by a coup led by the Ba’th in 1968.
King Idris of Libya was overthrown by a Free Officers coupd headed by Colonel Muammar al-Qadhafi.
Ja’far al Numayri wrested power from the Sudanese president in 1969.
Syria: in 1970, Syrian president Nur al-Din Atassi fell to a military coup that brought Hafiz al-Asad to power.
Each of these governments
adopted a radical Arab nationalist platform as the basis of their legitimacy, calling for
the destruction of Israel,
the liberation of Palestine,
and triumph over imperialism — (i.e. the US).
During the 1967 war
LBJ’s administration abandoned neutrality in the Arab-Israeli conflict and tilted in favor of Israel.
Believed that Nasser and his Arab socialism were taking the Arab world into the Soviet camp, they were pleased to see him discredited in defeat.
What has started as a narrative to deflect domestic criticism
The claim of US participation in the war on Israel’s side grew into a conviction that America was using Israel to advance its own domination over the region in a new wave of imperialism.
All but four Arab states (Tunisia, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia) broke relations with the US for its alleged role in the 1967 war.
Nasser and King Hussein:
Hoped to recover Arab territory through a postwar negotiated settlement with Israel.
But were Marginalized by the hard line adopted during the meeting of Arab heads of state in 1967 in Khartoum (Sudan).
The adoption of “three nos” of Arab diplomacy:
no recognition of the Jewish state,
no negotiation with Israeli officials and
no peace between Arab state and Israel.
Palestinians
During the two decades since they had been driven from their homeland, the Palestinians had never gained international recognition as a distinct people with national rights.
Palestinian Arabs remained just “Arabs” (either as Israeli Arabs or Arab refugees).
Between 1948 and 1967
The Palestinians disappeared as a political community.
Golda Meir: there were no Palestinians.
The collective Arab defeat in 1967 convinced Palestinian nationalists to take matters in their own hands.
Inspired by Third World revolutionaries, Palestinian national groups launched their own armed struggle against Israel and those Arab states that got in their way.
October 1959
Arafat and Khalaf convened a series of meetings with twenty other Palestinian activists in Kuwait to establish Fatah (“conquest” and a reverse acronym for Harakat Tahrir Filastin — the Palestine Liberation Movement).
The movement advocated armed struggle to transcend factionalism and achieve Palestinian national rights.
The PLO created by Arab leaders in 1964 in Cairo
Nasser imposed a lawyer named Ahmad Shuqayri to head the PLO.
Arafat and the Fatah activists: convinced that the PLO had been created to control the Palestinians.
The 1964 Jerusalem Congress
The PLO formally established
The 422 invited delegate reconstituted themselves as the Palestinian National Council (a sort of parliament in exile),
ratified a set of objectives enshrined in the Palestinian National Charter,
The PLO called for the creation of a Palestinian national army.
Fatah decided to upstage the PLO and launch an armed struggle against Israel
1969 Arafat: was elected chairman of the PLO. Fatah’s operations in Israel
The Popular Front’s hijackings.
1967:
The 1948 defeat had discredited the old regimes of landed elite, urban notables, and wealthy monarchs.
The 1967 debacle tarnished the reputations of the military regimes that had come to power in the 1950s with their programs of social reform and their promises of strength through Arab unity.
1967 Arab-Israeli war
Since the 1960s: the impression that the Muslim world is under attack
Soul-searching and reassessment
What had gone wrong?
Why were the combined Arab forces defeated so quickly?
Was the weakness of Muslim societies due to their abandonment of their faith (the loss of power as a result of a loss of faith)?
Had God abandoned the Muslims? Is the Muslim faith compatible with modernity (implying a secular state, political institutions, bureaucracy, economic development)?
Islamic ideology and discourse reemerged as a major force.
Islam became a reason for mass mobilization and political participation all over the Muslim world.
State Building (Part 2)
The Ottoman Empire: once an integrated economic unit
Was parceled into fragments.
Each new Arab state had
its own tariff and customs regulations,
its own currency, and
its own form of economic ties with its European overlord.
What forces of political loyalty and cultural identity could replace it?
Faysal’s Syrian kingdom with its Pan-Arab orientation.
New identities: Iraqis, Syrians, and Palestinians.
1919
The Ottoman state: an attempt to reassert the central government’s claim of legitimacy.
Mustafa Kemal Paşa
Assigned to reorganize what remained of the Ottoman military units and to improve internal security on April 30, 1919.
He and his staff left Istanbul.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1920-1945)
The Turkish War of Independence (May 19, 1919 to July 24, 1923)
A war waged by Turkish nationalists against the Allies, after the country was partitioned following the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in WW I.
December 1919
Elections for the Ottoman parliament.
Another attempt to reassert the central government’s claim to legitimacy.
National Pact or National Oath
Six provisions passed by the (last) Ottoman Parliament.
Parliament met on 28 January 1920 and made its decisions public on 12 February 1920.
National Pact: Provisions 1 and 6
1. The future of the territories inhabited by an Arab majority at the time of the signing of the Armistice of Mudros will be determined by a referendum. On the other hand, the territories not occupied at that time and inhabited by a Turkish majority are the homeland of the Turkish nation.
6.In order to develop in every field, the country should be independent and free; all restrictions on political, judicial and financial development will be removed.
The response:
The Treaty of Sevre.
The Occupation of Constantinople by the British, French and Italian troops on 16 March 1920.
Ottoman officials
Concealed from the occupying authorities details of the developing independence movement spreading throughout Anatolia.
Munitions initially seized by the Allies were secretly smuggled out of Istanbul into Central Anatolia.
The British
The Ottoman government not doing what it could to suppress the nationalists.
March 1920
Turkish revolutionaries announced that the Turkish nation was establishing its own Parliament in Ankara under the name Grand National Assembly (GNA).
On April 23, the new Assembly summoned for the first time, making Mustafa Kemal its first president and Ismet Inonu chief of the General Staff.
Turkish nationalism
Kemal had set up a National Assembly in Ankara, in open defiance of the government in Istanbul,
Assembled forces capable of checking Greek advances, which had occupied more and more of western Anatolia.
Anatolia:
From being partitioned and occupied in 1920 (Treaty of Sevres), it emerged three years later as the internationally recognized independent nation-state of Turkey (Treaty of Lausanne);
Free of restrictions on its domestic policies, on its finances, and on its jurisdiction over foreign nationals.
The Treaty of Lausanne (July 1923)
Turkish sovereignty was recognized over all areas claimed by the 1920 National Pact with the exception of Mosul (northern Iraq).
Ataturk (1923-1945)
Shifted away from Islam as the foundation of the state,
Committed to modernization and Turkish nationalism to create the ideological underpinnings of the state.
Endorsed rationality and science.
Ataturk (1923-1945) cont.
Rather than seeing modernization as an import from abroad, he saw the Ottoman Turkish core as being essential in promoting it.
Since Turkism, in his view, was the very source of modern civilization, becoming modern meant regaining identity that the Turks have actually already had.
Molding Turkish national identity:
Elevated Turkish identity as a touchstone of the new state.
Ataturk sought to distance the Turkish identity from that of the Arabs by claiming the superiority of Turkish over Arabic.
Claimed that being Turk was superior to being of any other nationality.
Distancing from Arabic:
Attaturk commissioned a translation of the Quran into Turkish and had it read publicly in 1932.
In 1932, legislation made obligatory the issuing of the call to prayer in Turkish instead of Arabic.
The successor Turkish Republic
Turkish cultural heritage as distinct from the Ottoman one and as making crucial contribution to the successes of the empire,
Turkish ethnicity substituted for Islam.
Legitimacy by claiming to represent a coherent national group, namely the Turks.
Turkey: November 1, 1922
The assembly passed a resolution that:
separated the caliphate from the sultanate and
eliminated the sultanate.
Molding Turkish political identity
The capital of the country was transferred from Istanbul to Ankara in 1923.
In 1924, a new constitution was passed in which the principles of republicanism and popular sovereignty were reaffirmed.
Ataturk’s secularism and official institutions:
The grand national assembly voted in March 1924 to abolish the caliphate, and to banish from Turkey all members of the Ottoman royal family.
Abolished:
the office of shaykh al-Islam,
the religious schools, and
the Ministry of Religious Endowments.
Ataturk’s secularism and the religious practices
The Sufi orders were dissolved, and worship at tombs and shrines was prohibited by law.
In November 1925, the assembly endorsed the president’s practice and passed a law that made it a criminal offense to wear a fez.
The Turkish assembly:
In 1926, formally abolished the Mejelle and the shari’ah and adopted a Swiss civil code that forbade polygamy and broadened even further the grounds by which wives could seek divorce.
It also adopted a penal and commercial codes modeled on Italian and German examples respectively.
The Turkish government
effectively took over control over religious affairs by setting up the Ministry of Religious Affairs that became involved in making key appointments in the religious establishment.
This radical secular doctrine:
based on the belief that there is no need for religion in public affairs;
it allowed religion to exist only as a source of personal faith wholly subordinated to the state and
made the military the guarantor of this new political order.
Kemalist secularism
Adopted in the cities by modernized descendants of the Ottoman elite bureaucrats, officers, and professionals.
Rejected by the rural and small-town majority.
Reza Shah (1926-1941):
Borrowed many of his programs from Ataturk: centralization of state power; secularization of state institutions (legal and judicial sphere).
In 1928 the Majlis voted to adopt a new civil code modeled on that of France.
In 1928 a law was passed that required males to dress in the European manner, and in 1935 the wearing of a hat became compulsory.
Reza Shah (1926-1941):
Deployed the army to establish state authority over the tribal leaders.
His power was based on coercion rather than consensus.
Reza Shah (1926-1941):
The religious schools were not abolished as they were in Turkey.
The Arabian Peninsula (at the end of WW1)
Britain the dominant European power along the shores.
Britain cared little about the interior so long as its shifting tribal confederations did not threaten the stability of the rulers along the coast (shaykdoms: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the Aden Protectorate).
Sharif Husayn
Emerged from the war as king of Hijaz.
Sharif Husayn
(Much) less than he hoped for.
After Turkey abolished the caliphate in 1924, he claimed the title for himself (unilaterally).
His shortcoming made him unpopular (being blamed for weakening the Ottoman Empire).
Enters Abd al-Aziz ibn Sa’ud (1881-1953)
The political revival of Wahhabism began in 1902; Ibn Sa’ud seized Riyadh.
Between 1902 and the end of WWI brought most tribes of Najd under his authority.
From tribal to religious commitment.
Built mosques to communities, sent ulama into them to disseminate the Wahhabi doctrine.
1924:
Ibn Sa’ud led his Ikwan warriors into the Hijaz.
Seized Mecca and Medina.
Drove Sharif Husayn into exile.
Arabia had a ruler: the head of the house of Sa’ud and the head of the Wahhabi religious order.
The Treaty of Jiddah (1927):
Britain recognized Ibn Sa’ud as the king of the Hijaz and sultan of Najd and its dependencies.
Ibn Sa’ud acknowledged Britain’s special relationships with the coastal rulers.
Of the ten core Middle Eastern states
Only Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen exercised full sovereignty during the interwar era.
Saudi Arabia and Yemen were allowed independence solely because they were isolated and because Britain and France regarded them as relatively unimportant.
The mandate system:
Provided Britain and France with an opportunity to secure their strategic interests in the Middle East while paying lip service to the principle o self-determination.
Different from prewar imperialism in that the mandatory power was bound to terminate its control at some unspecified time.
What kind of political systems developed in the ME after WWI?
A model of a nation-state:
Separation of powers;
Secularized legal, judiciary, and educational systems;
Expansion of state power;
Cultural uniformity; and
Diminished role of religion.
The new protectorates were expected to develop into modern states:
Social engineering (by Europeans):
The limitation and ordering of government in a constitutional state.
Constitutions that set rules establishing the relationship between government and citizens.
Specifying the institutions and processes through which political power would be exercised.
Adaptability was the very essence of the Ottoman system:
It governed directly the areas that could be efficiently controlled and allowed a certain degree of latitude to chieftains and feudal emirs in more remote locations.
Even in areas of direct control (as in Greater Syria), the Ottoman governors exercised their authority in association with the local Arab notables.
The Ottoman rule also
tolerated a rich diversity of religious and cultural practices throughout the Arab province.
The government of the postwar successor states:
First under European control and later under independent Arab regimes, would not be accommodating.
Strict central controls over rural tribes and urban dwellers in order to instill in all their citizens a measure of cultural uniformity.
Installed rulers (Iraq, Jordan, Syria)
Obtained their legitimacy in an authoritarian manner.
They would build a security apparatus – strong security states.
Some parliamentarianism:
Egypt,
Iraq,
Syria,
and Lebanon.
Generally: a very strong executive power supported by weaker legislative and judicial branches of government.
The British
Granted Egypt and Iraq a limited form of “independence” to conduct domestic political affairs as they saw fit.
But required the two states to allow the presence of British military bases on their soil and to adopt a foreign policy that was acceptable to Britain.
Egypt’s “independence”:
1922: The British government unilaterally ended its protectorate over Egypt and granted it nominal independence with the exception of four “reserved” areas:
foreign relations,
communications,
the military
and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.
Egypt’s experiment with democracy:
Constitution in 1923 (political pluralism, regular elections to a two-chamber legislature, full male suffrage, and a fee press).
Awarded extensive powers to the king, including the right to appoint the primer minister and dissolve parliament (an institutionally weak legislature).
Egypt: weak political party system
First parliamentary election in January 1924.
The Wafd Party won 90 percent of the seats.
Neither the Wafd nor any of the smaller parties adopted the principles of compromise and respect for the opposition.
Anglo-Egyptian treaty of alliance that recognized Egypt’s independence
1936: Britain agreed to renegotiate the 1922 declaration.
It also provided for a British military presence in the Suez Canal zone and reaffirmed Britain’s right to defend Egypt in case of attack.
Iraq:
The British officials who delineated the Iraqi frontiers restricted the new state’s access to the Persian Gulf.
Only 36 miles of coastline and no deep water port.
The border between Iraq and Kuwait became a frequent source of friction from the 1930s onward.
Faysal brought to the country in 1921
There were no systems of
government,
education,
national defense,
or any of the institutions by
which a nation is defined.
Iraq:
The British attempt to replace the decentralized Ottoman system with centralized government structures.
Uprising in June 1920 (among the tribes of the Euphrates);
The army founded in 1921.
Iraq: the 1925 Organic Law
Iraq defined as a hereditary constitutional monarchy;
An elected bicameral legislature;
Establishment of a public school system.
Islam was the state religion;
The shari’ah courts retained jurisdiction over personal status and waqfs;
Oil concessions:
The Iraqis conceded to British pressures and in 1925 signed a seventy-five-year concession with the firm that became the Iraq Petroleum Company.
Provided Iraq with modest royalties but excluded Iraq from having ownership in the company.
The 1930 treaty:
Iraq was to gain full independence within two years,
In 1932 Iraq received formal independence and was admitted to the League of Nations.
British military and security privileges retained: the right to maintain two air bases in the country.
After 1933:
In the absence of leadership from the palace, the government came to be dominated by a narrow clique of individuals without previous experience in civilian administration.
The government’s failure to secure unqualified independence.
Transjordan:
No previous existence as a political community.
During the Ottoman period, it was a neglected portion of the province of Syria (a desert inhabited by Bedouin tribes).
The 1928 agreements with the British: indirect British rule; reserved to the British resident the final word in foreign relations, the armed forces, the budget, etc.
France:
The self-proclaimed protector of the Christian communities in the Levant (especially of the Catholic Maronites of Mount Lebanon).
It professed a moral duty to continue its religious and educational activities in the region.
The French mandate in Syria:
Carved out a series of separate political units, the existence of which was designed to hinder the development of Syrian national identity.
The French mandate in Syria
France
Encouraged the existing religious, ethnic, and regional differences
Isolated the Druze and the Alawites from national politics and ensured that Syrian politics would be dominated by a propertied and conservative class of urban Sunni Muslims.
The French method of governing Syria:
Discouraged the acquisition of political responsibility and administrative experience by the local population.
The top bureaucratic positions in the high commissioner’s office were reserved for French staff.
NO independent decisionmaking authority for local Syrian governors and district commissioners.
The 1936 treaty: An alliance between France and Syria
Granted France the right to defend Syrian sovereignty and to maintain air bases and military garrisons on Syrian soil.
Syria’s admission to the League of Nations.
Still, in 1939 the high commissioner suspended the Syrian constitution, dissolved parliament.
The creation of Greater Lebanon (1920)
France removed the fertile Biqa Valley from Syrian jurisdiction and placed it within the frontiers of the expanded Lebanese state.
The Maronite Christians: the single largest religious community within the new Lebanon.
With the exception of Beirut, the areas added to Lebanon contained a predominantly Muslim population who objected to being placed within a Christian-dominated polity.
Sunni Muslims demanded unity with Syria.
Lebanon:
The constitution provided for a single chamber of deputies that was elected on the basis of religious representation and for a president who was elected by the chamber.
The president was granted extensive authority, including the right to appoint the prime minister and the cabinet.
The French mandate in Lebanon
France retained control of Lebanese foreign relations and military affairs.
The high commissioner, who had the right to dissolve parliaments and suspend the constitution, did so in 1932-1934, and again in 1939.
The presence of French advisers within each ministry.
Political systems comparatively:
Europeans created the (sharp) separation between the state and its people.
Europeans also encouraged:
Adaptations to Western culture (literature, music, attire).
But Westernization was not simply imposed:
Egyptian (liberal) leaders endorsed the belief that European civilization (with its rational foundation) was supposedly superior to the devinely ordained Islamic order.
Prominent Egyptian writers of the interwar era downplayed Arab heritage by emphasizing the country’s Greek and pharaonic past.
Women’s rights
The Egyptian Feminist Union;
1925: primary education compulsory for girls as well as boys;
Women admitted to the national university.
Islam and the new states:
superficially injected Islamic provisions into constitutions requiring
that the head of state be a Muslim or
that Islamic law be recognized as a (rather than “the”) source o law.
Two issues came up:
the extent to which the Shari`a would play a role in the legal and judicial systems;
the extent to which the Shari`a would play a role in the system of governance.
In sum:
Western-based legal systems replaced the shari’a.
Western-educated secular professionals replaced the jurist experts in Shari’a.
The domination of the state over religious institutions.
Side effect: Politicized religion
A struggle of power between the state and religious institutions in the political arena.
Example: conflict between westernized elites (who wanted to impose from above) and the ulama (the defenders of true Islam, the interpreters) when it came to the family law.
In some cases:
the secularization process consisted of the domination of the state over religious institutions (bureaucratization of religious scholars in Egypt and Turkey) of religious schools and property.
In other cases…
Secularization pushed religion out of the public sphere where it was not regulated or controlled by the state (Iran, Iraq).
In the private arena, religion over time became a potential source of support for political opposition to the state and its ideology.
In both cases
Islam remained relatively important (domestically!) despite the ongoing process of secularization.
State Building (Part 3)
Israel: the political system (crystallized by 1949)
A parliamentary democracy.
A unicameral legislature (the Knesset) composed of 120 elected representatives.
Different:
Political views held;
Languages spoken;
Cultural norms;
Conception of Judaism;
Understandings of what should be the role of religion in politics.
Diversity and the political party system:
This diversity played an important role in the formation of a complex political party system.
The popular vote is divided among many different parties.
Electoral system: proportional representation.
Electoral and legislative coalitions
No absolute majority for any single political party in the Knesset.
It is normal for each Knesset to contain representatives from 10 to 15 different parties.
Liberal, democratic principles of the state
Free press.
Israel itself is two states:
On the one hand there is a Hebrew speaking civil society, very successfully globalized (starting businesses, living with civil rights).
It is one that is appealing not just to the Jews but also to all kind of immigrants who come in and also to some Israeli Arabs.
Israeli Arabs and Jews
2/3 of Israeli Arabs are now born into a Hebrew speaking civil society.
(According to a poll conducted by a sociologist from the Haifa University), of all Israeli Arabs, some 45% say that they feel closer to the Jews than to the Palestinians.
On the other hand…
there is a Jewish state, which is a state within a state.
The religious basis of the state: Religious (rabbinical) courts
Since 1948 awarded exclusive jurisdiction in matters of personal status (marriage, divorce, the confirmation of wills, and the determination of who qualified as a Jew).
Since 1953 formal part of the state judicial system;
The courts were exclusively controlled by the Orthodox rabbinical establishment.
The religious basis of the state:
Also enforced by granting the non-Jewish communities of Israel — made up mainly of Muslim and Christian Arabs — the right to follow their own laws in matters of personal status.
Public institutions (including the military): required to observe kosher dietary laws
Public education: state funding for both secular and religious schools.
The West Bank: The Haaretz on racism and intolerance
routinely report incidents of rabbinical or settler racism,
in the past decade a kind of casual anti-Arab rhetoric has infected political life.
There are fewer inhibitions now about expressing hatred for the Arabs.
In this political atmosphere…
Most young Israelis believe that:
Israeli Arabs do not deserve equal rights.
Discriminatory statements
regarding women:
Elyakim Levanon (the chief rabbi of the Elon Moreh settlement, near Nablus):
Orthodox soldiers should prefer to face a firing squad rather than sit through events at which women sing,
has forbidden women to run for public office, because the husband presents the family’s opinion.
There are reports of ultra-Orthodox men spitting on schoolgirls whose attire they consider insufficiently demure, and demanding that women sit at the back of public buses.
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s Foreign Minister from 12/09-12/12:
called for:
citizens to swear loyalty oaths to the Jewish state;
restrictions on human-rights organizations, like the New Israel Fund; and
laws constricting freedom of expression.
The 2012 poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute
found that fifty-one per cent of Israelis believed that people should be prohibited from harshly criticizing the State of Israel in public.
Development of intolerant culture: shift to the political right?
Electorate?
Political parties?
Both?
poll after poll reveals that many younger Israelis are losing touch with the liberal, democratic principles of the state.
A profoundly anti-democratic, even racist, political culture
has become endemic among much of the Jewish population in the West Bank,
jeopardizes Israel proper.
Warnings from two former Prime Ministers
Ehud Barak (1999-2001) and
Ehud Olmert (2006-2009) have both warned of a descent into apartheid, xenophobia, and isolation
Warnings from Jewish American journalists and scholars
Gershom Gorenberg, The Unmaking of Israel;
Peter Beinart, The Crisis of Zionism;
Judith Butler, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (New Directions in Critical Theory)
David Remnick, The Party Faithful:The Settlers move to annex the West Bank — and Israeli politics (The New Yorker).
What about democracy in Israel?
The Israeli left: the separation from the Palestinians to preserve democracy.
Should Israel be a democracy?
Does it have to be a democracy?
Benny Katzover, a leader in the settlement of Elon Moreh: Israeli democracy has finished its historical role, and it must be dismantled and bow before Judaism.
What explains the apparent move to the right?
The impasse of the peace process?
Unstable region? (David Horowitz)
The rise of religious conservatives?
The movement to return to Israel
Nationalism.
Horror, and
The hope of redemption.
The horrors
Exodus from Spain in 1492 (like a subsequent expulsion of Muslims form Spain about a century later);
1648-1656 Khmelnytsky massacres (mostly Ukraine but also Russia);
The WW2 massacres (the term “Holocaust” since the 1960s).
Zionism is associated with
the trial of Alfred Dreifus…in France and
the experience of Theodor Hertzl.
Herzl in “The Jewish State”:
“We have sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the national communities in which we live, seeking only to preserve the faith of our fathers. It is not permitted us. In vain are we loyal patriots, sometimes superloyal; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow citizens; in vain do we strive to enhance the fame of our native lands in the arts and sciences, or her wealth by trade and commerce. In our native lands where we have lived for centuries we are still decried as aliens, often by men whose ancestors had not yet come at a time when Jewish sighs had long been heard in the country…”
Herzl: “The Jewish State”
the restoration of the Jewish State:
to stop the plight of the Jews;
to create security for an endangered people.
“The Jews who will try it shall achieve their State; and they will deserve it.”
At the heart of the issue was
the status of Jews in Europe not the status of Jews in the Middle East.
The Jewish Question was talked about in Europe and the US particularly in the early 20th century after the large immigration of Jews from E. Europe from the early 1880s onward.
Zionism: stronger in Europe than in the US.
Moses Hess: “Rome and Jerusalem, the last national question.”
The Jews are not normal people.
What would make them normal?
The expectation that if they would have their own land that they return to..if they could only be peasants growing their own crops they would be normal. That is what normal people do.
Hess
The idea that the crucial thing was not simply to have a land but to WORK on the land.
Redemption through tilling the soil.
Herzl and Hess were not religious men.
Their Zionism was not driven by Jewish religion!
Herzl envisioned a pluralist Zionism in which rabbis would enjoy no privileged voice in the state.
Herzl
Wanted a Jewish state that cherished liberal ideals.
In 1902, he wrote a novel called Altneuland (Old New Land) about a future Jewish state. It guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of religion; rabbis enjoy “no privileged voice in the state.”
Herzl and Hess’s Zionism was Labor Zionism
Committed to the idea of collective ownership of property, collective living in kibutz communities and laboring on the land as agriculturalist.
Driven by socialist ideas.
David Ben Gurion: a paramount (political) figure of labor Zionism.
What was the aim of Zionism?
The aspiration to establish a homeland for the Jewish people (pre-state Zionist pioneers shaping the future borders of the Jewish state).
Eretz Yisrael: is the Biblical name for the territory roughly corresponding to the area of
Southern Levant,
Canaan
Palestine,
Promised Land and
Holy Land.
The Balfour Declaration:
April 1917: the British cabinet was worried that Germany might make a declaration in support of Zionist aims and thus attract a sympathetic response from US Jewry.
The chance to secure British strategic interests.
The text of the Balfour Declaration:
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National House for the Jewish people, and will use their best endevours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that, or the rights and nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
Britain failed
To create political institutions in its mandate;
Instead it left the Arab and Jewish communities to struggle for supremacy.
Zionism
Not united within itself.
Types of Zionism in terms of the ideological nature of the future state
Labor
Revisionist
Cultural
Religious
Labor Zionism (Nachman Syrkin, Ber Borochov, Haim Arlosoroff, Berl Katznelson)
desire to establish an agricultural society on the basis of moral equality.
Revisionist Zionism (Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Menachem Begin)
The founding ideology of the non-religious right in Israel.
Nationalism.
Today revisionism is represented primarily by the Likud Party.
Cultural Zionism (Ahad Ha’am, Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg)
A strain that values Jewish culture and history, including language and historical roots.
Ahad HaAm: to achieve independence in the land of Israel would bring Jews into conflict with the native Arab population, as well as with the Ottomans and European colonial powers.
The fulfillment of the national revival of the Jewish People by creating a cultural center in the Land of Israel and an educational center to the Jewish Diaspora (to prevent assimilation that threatens the existence of the Jewish People).
Religious Zionism (Yitzchak Yaacov Reines, Abraham Isaac Kook)
Eretz Yisrael was promised to the ancient Israelites by God.
Jerusalem has been a symbol of the Holy Land and of their return to it, as promised by God.
The right of the Jews to the land is permanent and inalienable.
Jewish nationality and the establishment of the State of Israel is a religious duty derived from the Torah.
The haredim, the ultra-Orthodox groups, opposed religious Zionism
On the grounds that an attempt to re-establish Jewish rule in Israel by human agency was blasphemous.
The Jews should return to their Biblical homeland only after the appearance of the mashiach, the Messiah.
Hastening salvation and the coming of the Messiah was considered religiously forbidden, and Zionism was seen as a sign of disbelief in God’s power and therefore a rebellion against God.
A theological answer that gave Zionism a religious legitimacy:
“Zionism was not merely a political movement by secular Jews. It was actually a tool of God to promote His divine scheme and to initiate the return of the Jews to their homeland – the land He promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God wants the children of Israel to return to their home in order to establish a Jewish sovereign state in which Jews could live according to the laws of Torah and Halakha and commit the Mitzvot of Eretz Israel (these are religious commandments which can be performed only in the land of Israel)… settling Israel is an obligation of the religious Jews and helping Zionism is actually following God’s will.”
Types of Zionism in terms of how to create the state:
Political
Practical
Revolutionary/Revisionist
Political Zionism
originated in Russia, where anti-Semitism was most virulent;
inspired as much by nationalism as by religious belief;
for some it offered an alternative hope for escape from persecutions.
Political Zionism (Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau).
The Zionist Organization: establishing for the Jewish people a legally assured home in Palestine.
Included initial steps to obtain approvals from the established powers that controlled the area.
Political Zionism and religion:
Religion not at the center of attention during the British mandate.
The struggle of the Yishuv to gain independence pushed the problem aside.
Practical Zionism (Moshe Leib Lilienblum, Leon Pinsker)
The Hovevei Zion organization.
Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel, aliyah, settlement of the land, as soon as possible, even if a charter over the Land is not obtained.
Political and Practical Zionism (Chaim Weizmann, Leo Motzkin, and Nahum Sokolow)
Weizmann: (supported grass-roots colonization efforts as well as high-level diplomatic activity).
Lobbied for the founding of a Jewish institution of higher learning (science, engineering in Palestine):
the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 1912;
The Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Revisionist
Relentless pressure on Great Britain, including petitions and mass demonstrations, for Jewish statehood on both banks of the Jordan River;
a Jewish majority in Palestine;
a reestablishment of the Jewish regiments; and military training for youth.
Revolutionary Zionism (Avraham Stern, Israel Eldad, and Uri Zvi Greenberg):
Many of its adherents (Lehi) engaged in guerilla warfare against the British administration.
The state of Israel is a tool to be used in realizing the goal of Zionism, which they called Malkhut Yisrael (the Kingdom of Israel).
Territorial aspirations (revisionist and revolutionary Zionists)
Types of Zionism in terms of the relevance of religion
Secular Zionism:
Labor
Revisionist/Nationalist/Political Zionism
Religious Zionism
Secular Zionism
The historically dominant stream.
Rooted in a concept of the Jews as a people that have a right to self-determination.
To have a state where Jews would not be afraid of anti-Semitic attacks and live in peace.
Religious Zionists:
Religious beliefs and traditional practices are central to Jewish peoplehood (or nation-ness).
Assimilating to be a secular “nation like any other” would harm more than help the Jewish people.
Israel has a mandate to promote Judaism, to be the center of Jewish culture and center of its population, perhaps even the sole legitimate representative of Jews worldwide.
Religious Zionists:
Liberal Israelis – like the adherents of Uganda Program – are simply interested in a place where Jews can live in peace, and care little about restoring past historical or religious glories.
A state should not be centered on Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean Coastal Plain – areas where the ancestral mountain-dwelling Hebrews of Biblical times did not dwell.
Secular and religious Zionists
Have argued passionately about:
what an Israeli state should represent;
whether a Jewish state should exist at all.
Should Israel maintain and strengthen its status as a state for the Jewish people, or transition to being a state purely for “all of its citizens,” or identify as both?
And, if both, how to resolve any tensions that arise from their coexistence.
The formation of Israeli national identity
a contested process in which proponents of religious law clashed with secular pragmatists and socialist visionaries.
In the secular sphere
A new nationalist culture took shape that stamped Yishuva Jews as distinctive from Jews living elsewhere.
The most important manifestation of this new identity was the establishment of Hebrew as a national language.
David Ben-Gurion in a letter dated June 19, 1947
The future government will make sure that the religious demands be answered concerning personal status issues, such as marriage, divorce, and conversions.
All government-operated kitchens (army, police, hospitals, etc.) will have kosher food.
The Ben-Gurion letter (cont.)
The Sabbath will be the official day of rest for Jews.
Autonomy in education: the state will not intervene in religious education but will demand and regulate a minimum curriculum in secular subjects such as science, grammar and history.
In constructing their national identity
Israelis collectively sought to break with:
the European Jewish past,
to the Diaspora, with its memories of victimization.
Social tensions
Between Jews that came form European countries and the immigrants from the Levant and North Africa.
At times these tensions even resulted in violence.
From 1948 to 1967:
Socialist ideology dominated the ethos and the public institutions of Israel.
Zionism was a predominantly secular form of nationalism, and a challenge to the Biblical version of Jewish history.
Politically, the National Religious Party was a perennial coalition partner, generally dovish on foreign policy issues in Mapai governments.
The labor-oriented Mapai Party
The body that dominated the political life of the Yishuv (during the British mandate).
Moderately socialist.
Resulted from the merger of two labor groups.
For decades
the leaders of the state,
the
Israel has never dominant figures in government, the military,
the media, culture, and academia were mainly secular.
had a religious Prime Minister.
No constitutional settlement
the first Knesset (a constituent assembly) became deadlocked over the issue of whether or not to write a written constitution,
the religious parties being opposed to a constitution other than the Torah and halakhah.
Open questions:
Which institution within the state is to authenticate an individual’s Jewishness?
Is religious law to regulate all of public life?
How will the government be organized
theocracy,
constitutional theocracy,
constitutional republic,
parliamentary democracy
More open questions:
Should the justice system be based on secular common law, secular civil law, a combination of Jewish and common law, a combination of Jewish and civil law, or pure Jewish law?
On what legal principles should the constitution of a Jewish state be based?
How to deal with the non-Jewish Arab minority in Israel?
Hertzl failed to anticipate
an Arab national movement demanding a state in Palestine of its own.
Wars: 1948-9, 1956, 1967, 1973.
The 1967 war
Some Israelis viewed as an unjustifiable occupation;
Others saw it as a God-given opportunity to lay claim to all the lands of ancient Israel.
The policy vacuum
Settlement was a Zionist value, especially a Labor Zionist value. Now there was new land to settle.
Labor governments approved new settlements on a piecemeal basis.
The map of what they expected Israel to keep was drawn one fact at a time.
indecision allowed pro-settlement ministers — led by Allon, Galili, Dayan, and Dayan’s successor as defense minister, Shimon Peres — to pursue creeping expansion.
The unplanned war of 1967 and the ill-considered settlement effort:
An unintended consequence:
the transformation of religious Zionism from a moderate political movement to a sect with Jewish control of the Whole Land of Israel as its primary principles of faith.
Hertzl could not have anticipated:
the co-option of Zionism by a right-wing religious movement (he vowed to keep the theocrats in their temples, just as much as keeping professional Army in the barracks).
Theological justification for settling land
Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook (chief rabbi during the British Mandate). Kook’s teachings melded Jewish mystical doctrine and European nationalist theory. The Jews’ return to their land, he had taught, was part of God’s plan for redemption of the world, and secular Zionists were unconciously doing God’s will.
For many religious Jews, especially younger ones, the miraculous victory (in 1967) demanded explanation. The rabbi’s son, Tzvi Yehuda Kook provided one: the conquests were the next step in God’s plan, in the process of redemption.
For Kook
the Kingdom of God was being established in Biblical Israel through the firepower of the I.D.F.
There was a general sense of intoxication in the country and beyond.
Mystical nationalism:
Not only justified taking part in the secular project of nation building.
It taught that the world’s spiritual condition was measured by Jewish military power and territorial expansion.
Religion absorbed the hard-line nationalism of soil, power, and ethnic superiority.
1977: Menachem Begin comes to power
a coalition of constituencies that resented the Labor elite and felt excluded from the mainstream of Israeli life.
Begin’s support came from the poorer immigrants from North Africa and Arab states; Jabotinskyite conservatives; the ultra-Orthodox; and religious Zionists, including the settlers.
Begin:
Israel must rule the Whole Land of Israel (he had not changed since his underground years).
The Likud built large suburbs and small ex-urban bedroom communities, offering massive subsidies to attract settlers.
Ariel Sharon (head of the Ministerial Settlement Committee)
took a major role in drawing the map of new settlement, aimed at driving wedges between Palestinian towns and preventing the emergence of a contiguous Palestinian state (facts on the ground…”just like in the War of Independence, when most of the places where Jews lived ended up on the Jewish side”).
Violence by settlers
In 1984, authorities uncovered plots by a settler group known as the Jewish Underground to bomb Arab buses and to blow up the mosques on the Temple Mount.
The national-religious camp: from the fringes of political life to its center
made a concerted effort to penetrate national institutions and the business world.
Demographics and time on their side; the birth rate among religious families much higher than in the secular community.
No longer have to worship the secular inventors of this country.
State-Building
Nationalism, secularism, and great power politics at the turn of the 20th century
Some questions to consider:
Islamists are in power in both Iran and Turkey. Why is Turkey so different from Iran?
Why is the government in Egypt so different from the government in Saudi Arabia?
Why has the military played an important role in the politics of Turkey?
1914
Two (major) political entities in the region:
The Ottoman Empire (Egypt, Tunisia)
Iran
Ten years later…
Turkey
Egypt
Iraq
Transjordan (later Jordan)
Syria
Lebanon
Saudi Arabia
Iran
The Ottoman Empire:
the balance among linguistic, regional, and religious groupings was disturbed by European interventions and the internal political changes.
The Ottoman decline:
By the turn of the 20th century the Ottoman state became unstable.
Keep in mind:
The religious foundations of Ottoman rule.
Legitimacy of the Ottoman Empire
As long as loyalty to the empire appeared consistent with loyalty to the best interests of Islam (the ties of the ummah were paramount) most Arab Muslims accepted the legitimacy of the Ottoman rule.
Modernism, Humanism, political liberalism, and the Enlightenment.
A transition from communities of faith to national communities;
Secular (universal) citizenship;
Loyalty to the state and its institutions rather than to communal (mostly tribal) identities.
Constitutional government;
Anti-monarchism
Religious pluralism, freedom, individualism;
Unified legal, judicial, educational system;
The expansion of the state instituions (bureaucracy, surveillance).
The Ottoman swings in opposite direction:
Constitutionalism;
Religious restoration.
Young Ottomans (bureaucracy):
Secularization (legal, judicial, educational systems);
Universal citizenship;
The 1876 Constitution.
Religious restoration
(sultan Abdul Hamid II)
Technological and administrative modernization, railways, post offices, warships but:
Refurbished the long neglected title of caliph,
Broadcasting pan-Islamic appeals, and
Topped up the ranks of his administration with Arabs.
Religious restoration and identity
Pan-Islamisms
Rather than:
Ottomanism
1908
Widespread opposition to the sultan’s tyranny.
A military rising in Monastir and Salonika (Rumelia);
The sultan forced to call elections;
The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) won a majority across the empire.
The 1908 Young Turk “revolution”
Officers demand that Abdul Hamid II restore the constitution.
On July 24, 1908, the constitution was declared once again in effect.
The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) government
Overriding aim was the preservation of the empire, at whatever cost.
They weren’t liberals but nor were they purely anti-colonial.
The threats to the Ottoman Empire
came from European powers or their regional allies,
but the Young Turks did not reject the West culturally or politically.
The 1909 counterrevolution
Led by common soldiers and theological students in Istanbul who voiced their resentments against the influence of the Europeanized army officers
Calling for the restoration of the shari’ah.
Silenced by the Young Turks.
Deposition of sultan Abdul Hamid II (succeeded by Mehmed V).
A transformation of the Ottoman state was required:
To give it a modern mass base (unifying patriotism).
What ideological appeal could hold the populations divided by language, religion and ethnic origin of the Ottoman Empire together?
The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) government
Abolished the millet system (stressing its commitment to Ottomanism and to the ideal of preserving all Ottoman territory).
But could not abandon the Islamic foundation on which imperial legitimacy had rested.
Continued to stress the role of the sultan as caliph and to use Islamic symbols to buttress its own claims to legitimacy.
Italian invasion (Libya)
Of the North African province of Tripoli (October 1911)
Ceding Tripoli, some Dodecanese Islands, including Rhodes
National separatist movements: (Ottoman European provinces)
Bulgaria proclaimed its final independence, Austria annexed the province of Bosnia, Crete declared union with the Greek mainland (1908);
Albania proclaimed independence (1912);
Ousted out of the Balkans (almost entirely) in 1912.
During the Balkan wars
about 100,000 Turks fled before the armies of Greece and Serbia;
15,000 Bulgars fled before the Greek army;
10,000 Greeks left Serbian and Bulgarian Macedonia;
70,000 Greeks left Western Bulgaria;
48,750 Muslims left western parts of the Greek peninsula,
and 46,764 Bulgars lefts eastern parts of the Greek peninsula.
In 1914, 265,000 Greeks were expelled from Turkey,
and 85,000 deported to the interior.
115,000 Muslims left Greece, and 134,000 left other Balkan states for Turkey.
The Arab cultural awakening (al nahdah)
Syria: the source of the first expressions of pre-war Arabism.
No organized political movement for national independence.
Arabism
Also a means through which some members of the Arab notable families protested against the CUP’s attacks on their political and economic status;
A desire for Arab identity to receive greater recognition by the government.
Political decentralization; cultural autonomy.
Arab nationalism:
Example: a Syrian reformer, Abd al-Rahman al Kawakibi (1854-1902), suggested that the Ottomans were responsible for the corruption of Islam.
A glorification of the Arab role in the development of Islamic civilization.
Kawakibi’s Arab nationalism:
The virtues of Islam – its language, its Prophet, its early moral and political order – were Arab achievements.
The decadence of Islam was caused by practices the Turks and other non-Arab peoples had introduced into the ummah.
Arab nationalism:
called for the Ottomans to relinquish their unjustified claim to the caliphate
and to restore the office to its rightful possessors, the Arabs.
The regeneration of Islam
would begin with the establishment of an Arab caliph in Mecca whose responsibilities would be confined to purely religious matters.
Egyptian nationalism
Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid (1872-1963)
Did not privilege Islam as the basis of national regeneration;
One of the very first nation-state nationalists in the Arab world.
The early (Arab) nationalists:
Grappled with conflicting notions of what an Arab state might look like.
Some imagined a kingdom centered in the Arabian peninsula.
Others aspired to statehood in discrete parts of the Arab world.
The CUP two-track policy:
For public consumption, it proclaimed a civic nationalism, open to any citizen of the state, no matter what their creed or descent.
On the other hand, it prepared for a more confessional or ethnic nationalism, restricted to Muslims or Turks.
Turkish cultural movement – departure from Ottomanism (two main currents):
Pan-Turkism (unifying bonds among all speakers of Turkish);
Turkism
stressed the crucial Turkish contribution to the success of the Ottoman Empire;
there was a pre-Islamic culture that distinguished the Turks from the other inhabitants of the empire.
Prior to the First World War:
Turkism did not develop into a coherent ideology defining specifically Turkish national state.
But the discussion of a Turkish cultural heritage as distinct from the Ottoman one sowed the seeds for a Turkish nationalist movement in the postwar era.
The Iranian constitutional revolution (1905-1911) and the Young Turk revolt:
Similarity: a way to limit royal autocracy (absolutist monarchy).
Difference: the Ottoman constitutional movement had been founded on a transformed bureaucratic elite and a reform-oriented officer corps. The Iranian movement was led by a coalition (merchants, ulama, European-oriented reformers).
The Iranian constitutional revolution (1905-1911) and the Young Turk revolt:
Another important difference: The Iranian movement was not secularizing constitutional movement.
Constitutional clauses stated that Islam was the official religion of the state.
The Iranian counterrevolution:
Internal forces: The royalist used ulama loyal to the shah to denounce the constitutionalists as atheists and to arouse popular sentiment in favor of the monarchy.
External forces: Effective division of Iran (Britain, Russia)
World War 1
The Ottomans side with Germany, Austria
Secret agreements
Italy,
Tsarist Russia,
France,
Arabs
The Constantinople Agreement (1915)
Britain, France, Russia.
Awarded Russia the right to annex Istanbul and the Turkish straights.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916)
Recognized long-standing French claims to Syria by awarding France a large zone of “direct control.”
Guaranteed the British position in Iraq.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916):
The independent Arab state lying in the two zones of British and French indirect influence.
Palestine was to be placed under international administration.
Sharif Husayn ibn Ali (the emir of Mecca) and the British
British officials sought out a Muslim dignitary who might be persuaded to ally with the Entente powers (as a counterweight to the prestige of the Ottoman sultan-caliph).
The emir of Mecca
was selected from among those families claiming direct descent from the Prophet and thus bore the honorific title of sharif.
Sharif Husayn ibn Ali (the emir of Mecca)
Sharif Husayn ibn Ali
Claimed to represent all the Arab people.
Distrusted the (Ottoman) CUP on both political and religious grounds.
The CUP regime is atheistic; it ignores the Quran and the shari’a.
Husayn-McMahon correspondence
July 1915 – March 1916
An exchange of ten letters that lie at the root of a controversy over whether Britain pledged to support an independent Arab state.
Husayn:
Requested British recognition of an independent Arab state embracing the Arabian peninsula, the provinces of greater Syria (including Lebanon and Palestine), and the provinces of Iraq– essentially the Arabic-speaking world east of Egypt — in exchange for his commitment to lead an armed rebellion against the Ottomans.
Britain informed Husayn that
The areas west of a line from Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Alepo could not be included in the proposed Arab state (because its inhabitants were not purely Arab!!!)
The real reason: France claimed control over the Syrian coast.
Britain promised to provide Husayn with
supplies,
weapons, and
funds for his revolt against the Ottomans.
To recognize an Arab caliphate should one be proclaimed.
Husayn committed himself to
an all-out armed uprising,
a denunciation of the Ottoman regime as an enemy of Islam and
abandoning the Arab claim to coastal Syria.
Husayn and Islamic solidarity:
Tried to portray his action as a duty to Islam.
Called on all Muslims of the empire to join him.
Careful not to attack the caliph, Husayn urged Muslims to rise up and liberate their caliph from the clutches of the CUP.
Palestine:
McMahon’s language was so ambiguous and so vague that it gave rise to widely conflicting interpretations.
Was Palestine included as part of the future independent Arab state?
British officials later claimed
that the region was part of the coastal Syrian territory that had been reserved for France and was thus excluded from the Arab state.
The Balfour Declaration (1917)
Britain agreed to favor the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
In an effort to
secure control over the territory adjacent to the Suez canal;
appeal to US, Russian, and German Jewry.
The Versailles Peace Agreements 1919-1923
Self-determination (selectively, as it turns out);
Secret diplomacy, treaties; and
The League of Nations.
The Treaty of Sevres (August 1920)
Anatolia: a partition of the original core of the Ottoman Empire (Italy and France were to divide southwestern Anatolia between them)
The (Bosphorus) straits placed under the jurisdiction of an international commission.
The Treaty of Sevres (August 1920) cont.
Granted Thrace to Greece.
Recognized an independent Armenian state in eastern Anatolia and Russian Caucasia (with no aid).
The Kurdish regions of eastern Anatolia would have a semiautonomous status (but with no aid).
The San Remo Conference (April 1920)
Detached the Arab provinces from Ottoman authority and apportioned them between Britain and France.
The former provinces were divided into entities called mandates.
Britain received the mandates for Iraq and Palestine, France the mandate for Syria.
Sharif Husayn
Emerged from the war as king of Hijaz.
The Syrian Kingdom (1918-1920) and the creation of Transjordan:
Amir Faysal formed an Arab government in Damascus;
The government was staffed by young Arab activists with dreams of a united Syria and Palestine, by ex-Ottoman officials and military officers who converged on Damascus, and by prominent local Syrian notables.
In March 1920, a general Syrian congress
proclaimed Syria an independent state with Faysal as its king.
The rebirth of an Arab kingdom on the site of the former Umayyad imperial capital.
The declaration of Syrian independence
A usurpation of French claims to the region and a violation of the Franco-British agreement to divide the Arab areas.
Britain had to renounce any support, it may have been prepared to give Faysal and his Syrian kingdom.
On July 24, 1920
the French forces defeated Faysal’s army, occupied Damascus, and forced the king of Syria into exile in Europe.
Transjordan:
Faysal’s brother, Amir Abdallah, led a tribal contingent from Mecca to Ma’an (a desert town east of the Jordan river).
His presence in Ma’an had the potential to rally dissident tribes in the region.
Transjordan:
Abdallah was offered the opportunity to set up an administration in Amman under British administrative guidance;
His territory would be part of the Palestine mandate, but it would be exempted from the stipulation of the Balfour Declaration.
The emirate of Transjordan came into existence.
From the Arab perspective
Britain had made a pledge it did not honor;
the Arabs had been misled and then betrayed.
The British pledges to Husayn had been sacrificed to the requirements of Allied harmony and imperial self-interest.
Pushes for independent Arab states (1919-1920)
The Syrian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference;
The Egyptian demand to participate at te conference (Egypt’s Revolution of 1919).
Egypt (1919):
The ancient mosque university of al-Azhar became one of the centers of the uprising;
A religious shaykh inside the mosque: “haranguing an audience of many hundred from the top of a pile of stones, telling them that hey must scorn death itself in their efforts to destroy the tyrant, and throw off his yoke, and promising Paradise to ‘Martyrs’ in the holy cause”
The Ottoman Empire
Embodied the achievements of the Islamic past,
Also offered hope, that a distinctly Islamic state could survive in a world of expansionist European powers (the religious foundations of Ottoman rule).
By 1920
Neither that state nor its Islamic institutions held sway in the Middle East.
Its former Arab and Turkish subjects were left adrift.
