Pan-Arabism In The Middle East

With nineteenth century coming to an end, the Middle East has come across both penetrating changes and continuity. The Middle East became the playground for the imperial powers of Britain and France and succeeded by both implicit and explicit control of Western powers leading to permanent consequences that trouble the region to this day. This period of fluidity: through the increase in women’s rights in the region and Pan-Arabism and paradoxically, continuity: through foreign intervention in the region due to significance of the Middle East in the world economy and the prolongation of religious and ethnic tensions that arose due to the mandate system, provide for insights into the potential opportunities of improvement for the future following

“This nationalist trend and the accompanying radicalization provided the main impetus for a wave of fundamental regime changes and other upheavals in the Arab world in the middle and late1950s” (Khalidi 539). Pan-Arabism was nonexistent before the Free Officers Movement, which allowed for the rise of Nasser, which significantly contributed to his legitimacy as Egypt’s strongman. His ideologies and revolutionary ideals strengthened his claim of being the “liberator of the Arabs.” “Suez destroyed any slim possibility that Britain and France would remain major powers in the Arab World. As damning in Arab eyes as the perceived sin of attacking Egypt and Arab Nationalism (Nasser was increasingly representative and symbolic of both) was the fact that the two powers had collaborated with Israel” (Khalidi 538). This mutual resentment allowed for the continued prominence of Arab nationalism throughout the 1950, 1960s and 1970s. With the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1978 came the breakdown of the ideal where Egypt unified the Arabs against the common enemy of Israel. The rise of Arab nationalism came with the assertion of influential leaders raising awareness about the Palestinian condition. This situation, along with the recent independence from

The natural resource of oil emerged to become a major source of energy during this time period, hence its continued prominence to this day. The Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 allowed for the penetration of the imperial powers of Britain and France in the Middle East’s economy through the mandate system. The Middle East, with its large oil reserves allowed for the institution of foreign companies, which exploited this energy source. “The use of gasoline-powered engines in various vehicles during World War I showed that oil was the fuel of the future” (Ellis 862). Oil continues to serve as the driving force for the intervention in the Middle East as evidenced through the 2003 Iraqi invasion. “Middle Eastern oil continues to be necessary to the United States. American dependence on foreign oil has grown steadily over the years” (PBS), which influenced the 2003 invasion of Iraq: “Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq's domestic oil industry was fully nationalized and closed to Western oil companies. A decade of war later, it is largely privatized and utterly dominated by foreign firms” (Juhasz). There have not been attempts to affect change in this trend of foreign intrusion in the Middle East based on economic gains because these economies were dependent on European support, and were