10.3: The New Nations of the Middle East

Egypt

Independence came gradually to the Arab countries of the Middle East. Kingdoms like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Jordan had solidified between the two world wars and Arab republics were declared in Syria and Lebanon yet in the 1950’s Egypt came to embody the hopes of the whole Arab world. Egypt was a land of barefoot poverty beside well-heeled wealth with a vibrant political scene beneath an antiquated monarchy. Most Egyptians lived as landless farmers or fellaheen under pasha landlords. In the growing cities, the urban masses toiled while a cosmopolitan business class leisured in the European-themed cafes and casinos of downtown Cairo. The playboy lifestyle and increasingly inept rule of King Farouk estranged the monarch from his people, his government, and his military. In 1952 a group of Egyptian revolutionary officers, the Free Officers Movement, ousted the king in a coup d'etat. The officers declared Egypt a one-party republic, suppressed all other political groups, and in time a young officer named Gamal Nasser rose as president.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Nasser and Officers, in the Public Domain (Gamal Nasser (center) greets the Egyptian people. Charismatic and young, Nasser would win the adoration of the whole Arab world and promote Pan-Arabism.)

Nasser and his fellow military officers soon set about transforming Egypt. Land reform meant the vast cotton estates were broken up and redistributed to the landless farmers. Large commercial businesses, factories and banks underwent nationalization or became government-owned to reorient Egypt away from global exports to a self-sufficient national economy. Millions of rural Egyptians became landowners for the first time while aristocrats, industrialists, and foreign investors found their wealth and influence curtailed. Islamic courts were disbanded and religion deemed a private affair by the new secular state although Nasser still presented himself as a devout Muslim. State-run steelworks, cotton-weaving factories, and car-assembly plants promised factory councils, profit-sharing, and set work hours. To the urban poor Nasser gave subsidies and set price controls to keep bread and fuel costs low while expanding government social services to provide greater healthcare and education for all Egyptian citizens.  

These policies won Nasser the devotion of the Egyptian people as he set his nation upon a grand mega-project, the Aswan Dam. Built on the Nile River, Aswan would serve Egypt as a national reservoir, provide flood control, and give electricity to millions of Egyptians for the first time. Initially the United States offered to help fund construction but, in the summer of 1956, distrustful of Nasser, the Americans withdrew their aid offer. The timing could not have been more ideal for Nasser, who would turn this diplomatic drama into a geopolitical opportunity. The Suez Canal had long been under British control serving as the main artery of the British Empire. For Egyptians, foreign control over this waterway was flagrant imperialism and yet in the summer of 1956 only a few French and British Suez Canal Company employees operated the canal - the British military garrison having left only weeks before the United States reneged on their aid offer. Declaring its shipping tolls would fund the Aswan Dam, Nasser ordered the Suez Canal nationalized and Egyptian forces seized the canal. A jubilant Egyptian public celebrated while the British and French governments were livid. With memories of World War II still fresh, the British and French had no intention of appeasing Nasser who they viewed as a dangerous dictator, and they looked to remove him. Publicly, Britain and France turned to the United Nations to resolve the crisis, but even as the UN debated the two powers secretly planned to seize the Suez Canal back with the help of Egypt’s new neighbor, Israel.

Israel

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): A Group of Former Buchenwald Inmates arriving in the Holy Land, Government Press Office - Israel, is licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0

With the end of World War II, the Holocaust convinced many European Jews that Europe could no longer be home. Zionism – the belief Jews should return to their ancestral homeland to establish a state for the Jewish people – grew, and many European Jews, their lives already uprooted, headed to the British Mandate of Palestine. For decades Britain had struggled to keep the peace between the local Palestinian Arabs and arriving Zionist Jews. By 1947, as ever larger waves of Jewish refugees came ashore, tensions between the two peoples reached a breaking point. With violence spiraling out of control across the territory, Britain passed the Palestine Question over to the United Nations. The United Nations proposed partitioning the territory into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab. For the Jewish community, partition meant an independent Israel and they agreed; however, the Palestinians refused, as partition meant an imposed division of their homeland, and they took up arms. When Israel declared its independence, it began fighting a year-long war on all fronts, against the Palestinians and against the armies of the seven surrounding Arab countries. Against the odds, Israel won; unfortunately, the conflict left over half the population of Palestinians as refugees. These exiles found little welcome in neighboring Arab states and were left to settle in refugee camps on the borders surrounding Israel. At the same time, the Arab countries refused to recognize Israel and vented their fury over their defeat by launching a series of pogroms against local Jewish populations, creating another wave of refugees. These Middle Eastern or Mizrahi Jews would flee to Israel by the hundreds of thousands and in the years after the creation of Israel would become the majority population of the new state. Thus, by the 1950’s Israel found itself surrounded by hostile Arab neighbors, the largest being Nasser’s Egypt, with porous borders from which Palestinian insurgents or fedayeen often launched raids into Israel and who vowed to one day liberate Palestine.

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Map of the Proposed UN Partition of Israel and Palestine, Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, in World History Commons

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): Jaramana Refugee Camp, in the Public Domain (A Palestinian Refugee Camp. Called the Nakba or Catastrophe by Arabs, the Arab Israeli War of 1948-49 scattered the Palestinian people. Over time, some found their homes become part of Israel or transformed into the territories of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Others became refugees and in the 21st century most Palestinians live outside of their historic homeland.)

Review Questions

• How did the United Nations seek to maintain peace between Jews and Arabs as the British Mandate of Palestine ended?
• Why did Jews migrate to Israel both before and after independence?
• Both the Israelis and Palestinians hoped to establish independent states; why were the Israelis successful and the Palestinians not?