Table Of ContentSyria and the Palestinians:
The Clash of Nationalisms
Ghada Hashem Talhami
University Press of Florida
Syria and
the Palestinians
The Clash of Nationalisms
Ghada Hashem Talhami
Syria and the Palestinians
Florida A&M University, Tallahassee
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton
Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers
Florida International University, Miami
Florida State University, Tallahassee
University of Central Florida, Orlando
University of Florida, Gainesville
University of North Florida, Jacksonville
University of South Florida, Tampa
University of West Florida, Pensacola
Syria and the Palestinians
The Clash of Nationalisms
Ghada Hashem Talhami
University Press of Florida
Gainesville ·Tallahassee ·Tampa ·Boca Raton
Pensacola ·Orlando ·Miami ·Jacksonville ·Ft. Myers
Copyright 2001 by the Board of Regents of the State of Florida
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
All rights reserved
06 05 04 03 02 01 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Talhami, Ghada Hashem.
Syria and the Palestinians: the clash of nationalisms / Ghada Hashem
Talhami.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8130-2063-8
1. Syria—Relations—Palestine. 2. Palestine—Relations—Syria.
3. Palestinian Arabs—Politics and government—20th century.
4. Nationalism—Arab countries—History—20th century.
5. Arab countries—Politics and government—20th century. I. Title.
DS95.6.P19 T35 2001
320.54'089927—dc21 00-051052
The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for
the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M
University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University,
Florida International University, Florida State University, University of
Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida,
University of South Florida, and University of West Florida.
University Press of Florida
15 Northwest 15th Street
Gainesville, FL 32611–2079
http://www.upf.com
Contents
Preface vii
1. The Struggle for Geographic Coherence:
Reclaiming Southern Syria 1
2. The Earthquake of the 1948 Palestine War 25
3. The Political Co-optation of the Palestinians 47
4. The Guerrilla Factor and Syria’s Vulnerability 78
5. When Brothers Collide: The Confrontation over Lebanon 112
6. The Clash of Nationalisms 154
7. Peace or Pax Americana? 195
8. The Search for a Unified Strategy 212
Notes 221
Bibliography 233
Index 241
Preface
Western scholarship on pan-Arabism has tacitly accepted Fouad Ajami’s
thesis heralding the demise of this ideology. First articulated in his Foreign
Affairs article “The Death of Pan-Arabism” (Winter 1978–79), this devel-
opment was blamed for the resurgence of inter-Arab clashes, Israeli-in-
flicted defeat, and the replacement of the paper independence of Arab
states by the steady growth of neocolonialism. A new reality emerged from
this transformation, namely, a collection of individual Arab states that are
steadily winning the hearts and loyalties of their citizens through their
distributive capacity and monopoly over the resources of the nation.
Ajami called on scholars to acknowledge the emergence of what he termed
“raison d’état,” which has replaced the grandiose objectives of the pan-
Arabists.
No better refutation of this sweeping thesis can be found than in a
careful reading of Syria’s recent history. It is here that one begins to recog-
nize the wisdom of Moshe Ma(cid:2)oz and Avner Yaniv, who reminded us in
Syria under Assad (St. Martin’s Press, 1986) that the dissolution of the
grand pan-Arabist idea was only partial. Both stated, based on the work of
Gabriel Dor, that individual states have yet to be fully legitimized as dis-
tinctly different from the larger conceptualized and unified Arab entity.
Arab states, they argued, have indeed emerged, but only against the endur-
ing concept of a single Arab nation.
Clearly, we have just begun to study the implications of this assessment
of the changing reality of the pan-Arabist idea, particularly as it relates to
Palestinian-Syrian relations. We still lack a full and comprehensive study
of the dilemma of Palestine in the Arab context, particularly as this Arab
fragment sought to define its position vis-à-vis the pervasive notion that
Palestine is fated to remain the ward of the Arab states. Although most
would argue that the creation of Israel was the factor most responsible for
the decline of pan-Arabism, few have analyzed other than in military and
economic terms the reasons for this phenomenon. The few studies on
Jordan’s secret relationship with Israel, for instance, such as Avi Shlaim’s
Collusion across the Jordan (Oxford University Press, 1987), do shed
some light on the consequences of fragmenting the anti-Israel struggle. Yet
little is learned about the Palestinian and Arab dilemmas as they, the
pseudostate and the full states, attempted to reconstruct their relations in
the twilight of the pan-Arab idea.
viii | Preface
Even the latest effort to articulate and propagate pan-Arabism—that of
the Ba(cid:2)th—failed to anticipate the problem of subsuming Palestinian na-
tionalism under its finely tuned ideology. Ba(cid:2)thist nationalism, as Albert
Hourani reminded us in A History of the Arab Peoples (Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1991), turned out to be but one strand of nationalism vying
with such newly emergent ideas as the “Third World” for a position in the
postcolonial world of the Arabs. Michel (cid:2)Aflaq, the Ba(cid:2)th’s original ideo-
logue, was preoccupied with the problem of reconciling secular nation-
alism and the Arabs’ historical experience of Third World revolutions as
the inspiration for their own struggle. As Hourani has indicated, Fateh
in particular determined to remain independent of Arab regimes after the
1967 failure to protect the remaining Arab parts of Palestine. Yet the
survival of pan-Arabism became, in Hourani’s words, “a pretext for the
interference of one state in the affairs of others.” When Syria’s Ba(cid:2)th re-
gime attempted to interfere in the affairs of the Palestinian guerrillas in
order to contain them, differences between Palestinian particularism and
Arab nationalism loomed on the horizon.
The Palestinians’ mistake, as will be illustrated here, was the failure to
recognize when to move with the Arab tide and when to balk. This was
partly due to their illusion of absolute independence from the Arab states.
According to Bassam Tibi’s interpretation in Arab Nationalism: A Critical
Inquiry (St. Martin’s Press, 1971), this illusion was fostered by the Fan-
onesque idea of an emerging nationalism that is born in the process of the
anticolonial struggle. But unlike the classic Third World revolutions, such
as those of Cuba and Vietnam, which the Palestinian Liberation Organiza-
tion (PLO) took as its model, the PLO and particularly Fateh lacked some
of the important elements of a mass revolution. As Samir Amin stated in
his classic work The Arab Nation: Nationalism and Class Struggles (Zed
Press, 1983), the PLO defined the armed struggle in military terms only,
having missed the social revolution entirely.
This book brings home the message elucidated even in the literature of
the Arab League of States—namely, that its members constituted several
states but only one nation. Thus, all the league’s members who were sov-
ereign states, with the exception of the Palestinians, coexisted in this
mythical framework of equal representation and rights. This structure
inevitably encouraged the interjection of each member in the affairs of the
other in the name of common nationhood. But along the way, as the Pal-
estinians’ struggle took them from one Arab theater to the next, absence of
a clear view of Arab nationalism and Palestinian particularism led to the
tragic battles of Amman, Beirut, and Tripoli. This book offers a modest
