In the Middle East, national revolutions must operate against both feudal reaction and foreign control and are thus extremely weak, tending towards compromise and opportunism. Middle Eastern oil supports both foreign capital and Arab feudalism without relieving the general misery of the Arab population to any noticeable degree. There are many Arab countries and “independent” sheikh-doms within them, each, by itself, incapable of successfully opposing a modern capitalist state. The first condition for a resurgent Arab nationalism is, then, unification, and this unification is constantly sabotaged by the ruling groups of the various Arab nations. There exists, however, some kind of cooperation between them—a defense of their separate interests against foreign imperialism, which confronts them all. However big the sums allotted to the Arab rulers by foreign oil companies, they always remain just part of the profits gained from Middle East oil production. There is the desire for more and, if possible, for all of the profits. Meanwhile political pressure may increase the Arab rulers’ shares, as it did in the wake of the abortive nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. At any rate, to make a show of nationalism and to divert resentment over the prevailing misery from themselves to foreign enemies is a trick the Arab rulers know as well as anybody.

While foreign oil-exploitation turns the “nationalism” of oil-rich Arab countries into a bargaining-instrument for Arab rulers and foreign concessionaires, Egypt forms the spearhead of Arab nationalism because of her relative lack of oil-resources and a consequent weaker association between internal feudal and foreign capitalist interests. Yet, in view of the feudal conditions prevailing throughout the Arab countries and in order to gain and retain their support, Egypt’s national revolution does not concentrate on the abolition of feudalism but feeds itself upon attacks on foreign imperialism and Israel. Unable, and perhaps unwilling, to risk radical internal measures to alleviate some of the miseries of the rural poor at the expense of concentrated land ownership, Egypt emphasizes possible future gains through national independence, Arab unification, and native control of national resources. Arab unity—the precondition for effective international actions—prevents effective social revolutionary actions within the Arab countries.

To be sure, the strictly national character of the Arab movement indicates nothing with regard to the future. At the bottom of this movement, obscured but not removed by it, lies the terrible misery of the Arab masses, yearning not for national independence, unification, and native control, but for sufficient food, shelter, clothing, health and a human existence. Thus, in time, it may come about that the national-revolutionary aspirations take on an increasingly more social-revolutionary character and direct themselves against the internal feudal conditions as well as against foreign capital.

At a time when even the most sophisticated working classes in highly-developed capitalist countries are under the spell of nationalism, it could hardly be expected that the illiterate masses of backward nations would clearly recognize their true class interests. Yet their activities, though directed by ideologists, may very well imply something other than that indicated by the labels under which they operate. Nationalization of foreign property may spill over into nationalization of native property and the rage of poverty may recognize the enemy in the native as well as in the foreign rich. Thus, while in progress, nationalism must be stressed with always greater fanaticism so as to direct the restive masses from the path of social transformation.

As regards Egypt it is also true, of course, that neither the nationalization nor the distribution of land could really improve her deplorable economic and social conditions. Though either policy would change the character of Egyptian society, it would still need supplementation through industrial development in order to affect living conditions to any appreciable extent. But in view of the extreme poverty that prevails and the dearth of natural resources, effective industrialization lies beyond the possibilities of any national effort. Only in cooperation with other Arab nations and on the strength of their possession of large oil resources—indispensable to Western capitalism—is Egypt’s and the Middle East’s industrialization feasible at all. Even so, this will be a long-drawn-out process.

For the present, however, social stirrings in the Arab nations are under the control of both true nationalists and of pseudo-nationalists. While the first are as yet unable, the second are still unwilling, to forge an Arab bloc in defiance of Western capitalism. Egyptian nationalist fervor may spread over the whole Arab world, or it may be crushed by both Arab reaction and Western imperialism. It is this situation which explains the vacillating policies of Western nations, and particularly of the United States, towards Arab nationalism. Understood as a diversion from the real social problems in the Arab countries, the rising nationalism is also feared for its possible detrimental effects upon Western interests.

The Soviet Role

Western control of the Middle East could not really be challenged by Arab nations were it not for the existence of the Eastern power bloc and its sympathetic support of newly developing and as yet “uncommitted” nations. For reasons of both defense and expansion, Russia is quite ready to support “national self-determination” wherever it is directed against the Western power bloc. To enforce Western policies in Arab countries by withholding economic and military aid would merely lead to Russia’s supplying both. To ruin Egypt’s cotton market through dumping—as was once considered—would only radicalize Egyptian nationalism and further Russian influence in the Middle East.

The meagerness and the slowness in the improvement of socio-economic conditions in the Arab nations forces national-revolutionary governments to emphasize political changes in order to make their own existence secure. Hardly is one nationalist goal reached than another must be tried for. The end of the British occupation of Egypt led to demands for the evacuation of the Suez Canal zone; the evacuation of the zone, to its nationalization; the nationalization of the canal, to the “Egyptianization” of foreign holdings and enterprises. And thus it goes on in the general direction of complete independence and control over all national resources. In this general direction lies also the re-incorporation of Palestine in a projected Arab bloc of nations and the transformation of these nations into a unified Arab state, even though both projects involve revolutions in and war between, Arab countries as well as war against Israel. This trend may be beset with failures and setbacks and the Arab “heroes” of today may be tomorrow’s “traitors.”

Appeasement of Arab nationalism can be both useful and dangerous to Western imperialism. Because nationalism was considered useful in the light of America’s “global policy,” it found some American support, and because it threatened to become dangerous this support was withdrawn. The danger lay in the increasing readiness of Arab nations to accept Russian economic and military aid and in their persistent refusal to change from a position of “neutralism’” to full support of Western policies. The trend is rather in the opposite direction, as indicated by anti-Western policies in Syria and Jordan, the growing enmity between Egypt and the nations of the Baghdad pact and the defection of Iraq. To indicate the limits of appeasement, to put Egypt “in her place,“ the United States refused to honor a previously made promise to finance the Aswam dam project. America’s refusal was correctly interpreted as a political move against Arab nationalism in general and the Nasser regime in particular, and it led directly to Nasser’s countermove—the nationalization of the Suez Canal.

Nationalization of the Suez Canal not only spelled the end of a very lucrative business, hitherto largely controlled by French and British capitalists, but also provided Egypt with a powerful weapon to combat Western imperialism. To control the flow of oil through the canal—oil indispensable to the proper functioning of the West European economies—was an Egyptian advantage much too great to be acceptable to Western capitalism. Nasser’s action was recognized as a great triumph of Arab nationalism and found sympathy, or at least lip-service, in all nations emerging from, or still opposing, Western rule. It gave fresh impetus to national-revolutionary movements everywhere and was particularly hailed, and hated, in embattled Algeria. It threatened France’s precarious position in North Africa still further and set back her hopes of crushing Algerian nationalism. It was humiliation added to the loss of imperial rule for Great Britain, and it increased Israel’s fears of Arab nationalism to the point of obsessive combativeness.

Not immediately affected by the canal’s seizure, the United States merely tried to pacify the opponents and to find ways of appeasing both its Western Allies and Arab nationalism. The search for a compromise solution, which would be satisfactory to all nations, including Egypt, destroyed France’s and England’s special positions in the canal’s control and exploitation, and helped increase their difficulties in Cyprus and Algeria. They were, however, convinced that a fait accompli on their part would force the United States to declare herself on the side of her Western allies, the more so because about half of Middle Eastern oil is in American hands. Still, some hesitation must have accompanied the build-up of the British-French invasion force. Acting in unison with Israel, they did not need to look for a “motive” justifying the invasion of Egypt; yet, no motive, real or false, could stop Russia from intervening on behalf of Egypt. Such intervention would be answered by the United States. However, as neither Russia nor the United States was anxious to go to war, the risk that the invasion would end in a third world war was not too great, and became even smaller because of Russia’s serious troubles with her satellites. Apparently, here was an opportunity to gain a limited objective —the subjugation of Egypt—regardless of Russian and American attitudes, and without risking general war.

The Problem of Israel

The Israeli-Arab conflict is not the Middle East’s major problem. It is just one aspect of the larger problem of Arab nationalism in its relation to Western imperialism. Assuming there were no Israel, there would still be an Arab struggle for self-determination, unification, and control over national resources. The existence of Israel, however, accentuates Arab nationalism and provides a raison d’étre for its increasing militancy. On this issue, all Arab nations can unite. Hatred of Israel provides the pseudo-nationalism of Arab feudalism with the aureole of true nationalism. But it is also the medium for a possible growth of Arab unity beyond the confines of feudal interests, and an ever-present incentive to radicalize Arab nationalism.

The state of Israel is a product of both Jewish nationalism and Western imperialism. Although striving towards statehood for many decades—implicitly in the Zionist movement and explicitly since the first World War—Jewish nationalism could not have reached its goal without the support of Western capitalism and a United States-controlled United Nations, From the time that Palestine became a British-administered mandate of the League of Nations, the Arab countries protested and fought the mandate and its provision for a Jewish national home as expressed in the Balfour Declaration. They feared that Jewish immigration and land acquisition would displace the Arabs. Their fears were only too justified. While in 1922 the Jews accounted for eleven per cent of Palestine’s total population, in 1945 they accounted for over thirty-one per cent.

Jewish emigration from Europe after the Second World War intensified the Palestine conflicts. The Arab countries fought against the continuation of the mandate; Jews opposed the formation of an Arab state, Arabs that of a Jewish state, and both opposed a bi-national state with equality for Jews and Arabs alike. Existing immigration and land-purchase regulations were overruled by “illegal” Jewish immigration and “illegal” Arab land sales. Hostilities between the mandate-power, the Arabs and the Jews, took on warlike proportions; nor were they resolved by United Nations resolutions for the partitioning of Palestine. The defeat of the Arabs in the 1948 war, however, changed the situation radically; while almost a million Arabs fled the country, a million Jews moved in, and with the help of the West, particularly the United States, the state of Israel came into being.

Disregarding the irrelevant Jewish claim to Palestine for reasons of ancient history, present-day Israel was established through aggression and war. Recognition by the United Nations did not alter but only “legalized” this fact. For the Arab countries, the existence of Israel meant not only displacement of Arabs and loss of property and territory, but the continued close proximity of a hostile state allied to the Western powers. It involves the prospect of further Jewish aggression, for in order to assure its existence, Israel must become strong enough to match not only the strength of any of the neighboring Arab countries but the strength of all these nations together, because their unification is a real possibility. Israel will force her population increase by further immigration, will require more territory, acquire greater productive capacity and strive for military dominance. Meanwhile Israel’s miniature imperialism remains attached to Western imperialism.

Of course, Jewish nationalists speak of the “progressive” role they wish to play in the Middle East’s development. After all, they did introduce modern capitalist methods of production, corresponding social relationships, and forms of government far advanced over those prevailing in the Arab countries. These things, however, are not entirely unknown to the Arab people, for they experienced them before, by way of French and British imperialism. The fictitious “long-run” benefits to be derived from an emulation of Israel’s example are no compensation for present and future losses sustained by Israel’s “success,” a success, furthermore, based primarily on generous hand-outs from abroad. Without American financial aid in various forms, private Jewish contributions from all over the world and German reparations, Israel could not exist at all. In 1955, for example, Israel’s imports amounted to three hundred and twenty-six million dollars and her exports to only eighty-six million dollars.

As the external manifestation of Jewish racial, national and religious sentiments and idiosyncrasies and, according to Abba Eban, as a means to prevent “the danger of both physical extinction and of spiritual assimilation,” Israel exists as both an ethnic curiosity and an instrument of Western policy. For as long as she finds compassionate and political support in Western nations, she cannot object to the policies of these nations without endangering her own existence. Political “independence” would require a striving towards “self-sufficiency”. But this, too, spells expansion of Israel’s power and influence, which could not help but sharpen Arab-Jewish rivalries. “Self-sufficiency,” however, may well become a necessity, as support from abroad may slowly dry up, or be turned off entirely. Mere survival, then, implies an expansionist Israeli policy, and the accompanying economic and industrial development is bound to conflict in increasing measure with similar aspirations in Arab nations.

Israel and Arab Radicalism

Far from strengthening progressive elements in the Arab world through the example of her own existence, Israel thus sustains Arab reaction and prevents Arab nationalism from emerging into a progressive social force. Feudal opposition to Israel supports feudalism in the Arab countries. But even an emergent national-revolutionary movement must seek political power by continuing opposition to Israel. Its struggle against the Jews is an aspect of its struggle against Arab feudalism, which failed to do away with Israel. For Israel Arab reaction is the “lesser evil,” as it signifies a weaker enemy. This explains why Nasser, and not any of the Arab kings, is denounced as a new “Hitler” in Israeli propaganda.

Though entirely indefensible as an expression of Jewish nationalism, Israel finds some justification in the fact that for many Jews her existence meant the difference between life and death. At least in part, Israel is the result of Jewish persecution, first in Czarist Russia, later in Nazi Germany. Not many of the Jews able to escape the horrors of Nazism were Zionists. They found refuge in Palestine because they could not find it elsewhere, and because the Nazi terror reawakened race and national attitudes. And being in Palestine, the Jews’ defense of their existence became the defense of Israel, quite independently of previous attitudes toward nationalism and the desire to live in peace with Arab neighbors.

There exists, no doubt, a real desire among large layers of the Jewish population to come to terms with Arab nationalism and to find a common basis for an enduring peace. Similar attitudes exist undoubtedly also within the Arab countries. However, national interests and aspirations are stronger than such subjective attitudes. A real basis for an “enduring peace” could only be the undoing of history, the return to those conditions where the Jews were no threat to the Arabs and the Arabs no threat to the Jews. A state of official and unofficial warfare, however, stretching over more than three decades, cannot easily be ended; particularly not within the confines of capitalism.

The Suez Debacle

For Israel the mere certainty of French and British support was reason enough to attempt the destruction of the Nasser regime, and thus deliver a powerful blow to Arab nationalism. Not that Israel, being the strongest military power in the area, needed military support from France and Britain—though this was also welcome—but she needed their political support against protesting nations and to win America’s assent. To strike at Egypt in alliance with France and England was “the chance of a lifetime.” And the Israelis made the most of it—all the while insisting that their march to the Nile was in sheer self-defense. Arab aggression had to be ended there and then, even though the invasion was hardly resisted and the Russian-armed enemy that provided the excuse for the attack was no match for Israel. This was a “preventive war” to avoid a possible future war under circumstances that might be less favorable to Israel. Of course, a weak adversary may still be a nuisance, and though Israel never doubted her military superiority, she complained bitterly and consistently about harassment by Arab marauders, the lack of peace on Israeli terms and the closing of the Suez Canal to her shipping.

Border conflicts and raiding parties are always used to justify aggression and may be dismissed for this reason, as well as for the reason that they are never one-sided affairs. It is true, of course, that the Arabs have never consented to Israel’s existence and are deadly serious in their intentions “to drive the Jews into the sea.” Yet intentions are meaningless without the ability to carry them out. Discrimination against Jewish shipping, though a fact, is a fact of long standing and was not the immediate cause of Israel’s invasion, which can be explained by Israel’s desire to crush a potential enemy and in the process of doing so to satisfy her own expansionist needs.

Israel’s offensive, justified by Arab “aggression,” served then to “justify” the British-French invasion as an attempt to safeguard the Suez Canal and international shipping. Apparently, the best way of accomplishing this consisted in the saturation-bombing of airstrips, the destruction of harbor installations and the flattening-out of Egyptian cities. The Canal was then quite useless, blocked as it was by scuttled ships and other obstacles. Pipelines in Syria were sabotaged, and the oil required for the West European economies had to be hauled around the Cape, or from the United States, in tankers owned mostly by American companies. The situation which the seizure of the canal had been designed to prevent was created by the seizure itself. There were oil reserves in Western Europe, yet without United States aid, the prospect of serious economic breakdown was not too far off. Freed from possible Egyptian “blackmail” by way of her control of the Canal, Western Europe was now more than ever dependent on the good will of the United States. France and England had their own brand of “blackmail” in the reasonable assumption that the United States would not let them down, for fear of breaking up the Western alliance.

But this turned out to be a great miscalculation. America joined Russia in condemning the invasion and in trying to bring it to an end via the United Nations. Although Russia’s prestige in the Middle East was bound to rise as the result of her determined stand against the invasion, so was America’s. Long on the wane, the positions of France and England in the Middle East were now completely destroyed and had to be replaced by American influence in order to counter Russian penetration. To allow the three invading nations to stay in Egypt, even if it did not lead to war with Russia, would radicalize Arab nationalism and in all probability lead to guerrilla resistance which would receive Russian help. This might endanger oil production and delivery as well as American military installations in the Arab countries almost as much as if Russia controlled the area. For America there was only the choice between joining her allies in taking over the whole of the Middle East by force, or opposing their actions and urging them to get out of Egypt. Piqued as the American politicians were by the underhanded actions of their French and British counterparts, the latter course was not too difficult to execute.

American Policing in Middle East

What was of overwhelming importance for the United States in the Middle East was peace and continued control by Western capitalism. The invasion of Egypt, whatever its results, could only weaken the West European economy and alienate the Arab world still further. There was no point in sapping the strength of the Western world by catering to the particular interests of some of its nations; especially since these nations had already lost the influence they once possessed. Rather, it was necessary to supplant the bankrupt French and British imperialism with the much more powerful controls of the United States. The Eden Government was the first to recognize the futility of opposing the United States. More reluctantly, because hard pressed by the Algerian revolt, France gave in, and after much balking and bargaining, Israel, too, drew back. But Arab nationalism was also potentially checked by the—if only implicit—new invasion threat of the Eisenhower Doctrine.

America’s refusal to condone the invasion incorporated a rejection of national political “self-determination” within the Western power bloc. The national aspirations of the less-developed and weaker countries cannot be realized except insofar as they fit into the power schemes of the dominating imperialist nations. The various national rivalries in the Middle East, when kept in “reasonable” bounds, are more effective “self-regulating” levers of control than direct military intervention, which, as in the wake of the recent Iraqi revolution, is reserved as a last resort. Without “outside” interference, now restricted to Russian interference, the various national aspirations would grind each other into insignificance and allow for a successful control of all of them by that nation, or bloc of nations, able to isolate the Middle East.

The Eisenhower Doctrine, when actually supplemented by an American-installed “Iron Curtain” between Russia and the Middle East, excludes self-determination for any of the Middle Eastern nations. Russia, which never hesitates to destroy most ruthlessly any attempt at national self-determination in countries under her own control, now demands “noninterference in the internal affairs of the countries of the Near and Middle East; respect for the sovereignty and independence of these countries,” threatened as they are by the Eisenhower Doctrine. And America, which demands national self-determination for Russia’s satellites and their right to break through the Russian-installed “Iron Curtain,” does not hesitate to apply to the Middle East policies that she abhors in Eastern Europe.