Pan-Arabia

Like a muezzin's cry, a realization was quivering through the dusty air of the Middle East last week: The war in Europe was almost over. The Arab peoples still had done next to nothing to win favors at the peace table. And Pan-Arabia was still a mirage.

There had been Pan-Arab parleys aplenty but no action. Every race-proud Arab knew that the time was long overdue for telling the world that Pan-Arabia wanted to play a greater part in fashioning her own future. From the Tigris to the Nile the desert air was sultry with more than summer heat.

Three astute, calculating men were ready with a forum and a plan for Pan-Arabia. They were: Egypt's Premier, cagey, ambitious Mustafa El Nahas Pasha; Syria's President, handsome, able Shukri Kuwatly; Iraq's ex-Premier, shrewd, far-seeing General Nuri Pasha Es-Said. Nahas Pasha had finally fixed the much-postponed Pan-Arab talks to open in Alexandria's garden-girdled Antoniades Palace after Ramadan (which ends Sept. 17); Kuwatly and Nuri Pasha had produced a joint plan to turn the mirage of Pan-Arabia into a reality.

Plans. Nahas Pasha reportedly had his own pet plan--a large, loose coalition embracing, under Egypt's leadership, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Syria, the Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, the Yemen.

The Kuwatly-Nuri plan was less spacious, more workable, stood a better chance of success. It aimed to reunite into a Greater Syria Federation four countries--Syria, the Lebanon, Palestine, Trans-Jordan--that had formed part of the old Ottoman Empire. Arab unity would be achieved in two stages: 1) the Greater Syria move under an agreed form of government; 2) a larger League of Arab States, to which the new Greater Syria and Iraq would immediately adhere. Other Arab States might come in when they wished.

Problems. No one knew better than the three men how great were the obstacles confronting any architects of Arab unity: the dynastic rivalries of the Middle East, its feudal economies, the age-old jealousy between the men of the desert (Bedouin) and of the city (effendi). And there is the ever-present prickly problem of the Jewish and Christian minorities.

To the 350,000 Lebanese Christians who fear engulfment in a Moslem bloc, the Greater Syria plan offers a "privileged" regime. To the 600,000 Jews of Palestine the plan promises "semi-autonomy" inside the larger Arab framework, with Jewish local government in predominantly Jewish areas (e.g., Tel-Aviv), but Arab government elsewhere.

Prospects. Great Britain, principal partner in all Arab enterprises in the Middle East, once looked favorably on the idea of Arab unity, which might have buttressed Arab loyalty to the Crown in the dark days when Rommel was at El Alamein. Now latest reports had it that the British approved only religious, cultural and economic ties, would frown on wartime political unions.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.