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Peace In The Middle East? One State Tried It (And Failed)
A vision for a peaceful and united Levant
Peace in the Middle East has been an elusive concept for generations. Since World War I, the Middle East has been a mess of weakened states, colonial rump kingdoms, and near constant warfare. Peace in the Middle East seems like a pipe dream, but that didn’t stop some from dreaming about the concept in recent memory.
The old Ottoman Empire embodied an idea that still tantalizes some — Pan-Arabism. Pan-Arabism is the idea that there should be one massive state by and for the Arab people. The Ottomans attempted to keep their large Arab population under control by using the idea of Pan-Arabism, but the fact that Turks ruled the empire always chaffed the Arab people and was ultimately seen as unacceptable.
During World War I, the British promised the moon and stars to the Arabs which included visions of their own state if they would rise up against the Ottomans and help the British win the war. The Arabs did their part. They rose up in a mass revolt that shook the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire ultimately fell, but there was still no Pan-Arab state. But the dream never fully died.
In 1958, the firebrand Gamal Abdel Nasser attempted to revive the idea of such a Pan-Arab state. Running high on victory…
