Syria and the Palestinians Copyright 2001 by Ghada Hashem Talhami. This work is li- censed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. You are free to electronically copy, dis- tribute, and transmit this work if you attribute authorship. However, all printing rights are reserved by the University Press of Florida (http://www.upf.com). Please contact UPF for informa- tion about how to obtain copies of the work for print distribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). For any reuse or distri- bution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the University Press of Florida. Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author’s moral rights. Florida A&M University, Tallahassee Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers Florida International University, Miami Florida State University, Tallahassee University of Central Florida, Orlando University of Florida, Gainesville University of North Florida, Jacksonville University of South Florida, Tampa University of West Florida, Pensacola Syria and the Palestinians The Clash of Nationalisms Ghada Hashem Talhami University Press of Florida Gainesville · Tallahassee · Tampa · Boca Raton Pensacola · Orlando · Miami · Jacksonville · Ft. Myers Copyright 2001 by Ghada Hashem Talhami Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper All rights reserved 06 05 04 03 02 01 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Talhami, Ghada Hashem. Syria and the Palestinians: the clash of nationalisms / Ghada Hashem Talhami. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8130-2063-8 1. Syria—Relations—Palestine. 2. Palestine—Relations—Syria. 3. Palestinian Arabs—Politics and government—20th century. 4. Nationalism—Arab countries—History—20th century. 5. Arab countries—Politics and government—20th century. I. Title. DS95.6.P19 T35 2001 320.54'089927—dc21 00-051052 The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida. University Press of Florida 15 Northwest 15th Street Gainesville, FL 32611–2079 http://www.upf.com Contents Preface vii 1. The Struggle for Geographic Coherence: Reclaiming Southern Syria 1 2. The Earthquake of the 1948 Palestine War 25 3. The Political Co-optation of the Palestinians 47 4. The Guerrilla Factor and Syria’s Vulnerability 78 5. When Brothers Collide: The Confrontation over Lebanon 112 6. The Clash of Nationalisms 154 7. Peace or Pax Americana? 195 8. The Search for a Unified Strategy 212 Notes 221 Bibliography 233 Index 241 Preface Western scholarship on pan-Arabism has tacitly accepted Fouad Ajami’s thesis heralding the demise of this ideology. First articulated in his Foreign Affairs article “The Death of Pan-Arabism” (Winter 1978–79), this devel- opment was blamed for the resurgence of inter-Arab clashes, Israeli-in- flicted defeat, and the replacement of the paper independence of Arab states by the steady growth of neocolonialism. A new reality emerged from this transformation, namely, a collection of individual Arab states that are steadily winning the hearts and loyalties of their citizens through their distributive capacity and monopoly over the resources of the nation. Ajami called on scholars to acknowledge the emergence of what he termed “raison d’état,” which has replaced the grandiose objectives of the pan- Arabists. No better refutation of this sweeping thesis can be found than in a careful reading of Syria’s recent history. It is here that one begins to recog- nize the wisdom of Moshe Maoz and Avner Yaniv, who reminded us in Syria under Assad (St. Martin’s Press, 1986) that the dissolution of the grand pan-Arabist idea was only partial. Both stated, based on the work of Gabriel Dor, that individual states have yet to be fully legitimized as dis- tinctly different from the larger conceptualized and unified Arab entity. Arab states, they argued, have indeed emerged, but only against the endur- ing concept of a single Arab nation. Clearly, we have just begun to study the implications of this assessment of the changing reality of the pan-Arabist idea, particularly as it relates to Palestinian-Syrian relations. We still lack a full and comprehensive study of the dilemma of Palestine in the Arab context, particularly as this Arab fragment sought to define its position vis-à-vis the pervasive notion that Palestine is fated to remain the ward of the Arab states. Although most would argue that the creation of Israel was the factor most responsible for the decline of pan-Arabism, few have analyzed other than in military and economic terms the reasons for this phenomenon. The few studies on Jordan’s secret relationship with Israel, for instance, such as Avi Shlaim’s Collusion across the Jordan (Oxford University Press, 1987), do shed some light on the consequences of fragmenting the anti-Israel struggle. Yet little is learned about the Palestinian and Arab dilemmas as they, the pseudostate and the full states, attempted to reconstruct their relations in the twilight of the pan-Arab idea. viii | Preface Even the latest effort to articulate and propagate pan-Arabism—that of the Bath—failed to anticipate the problem of subsuming Palestinian na- tionalism under its finely tuned ideology. Bathist nationalism, as Albert Hourani reminded us in A History of the Arab Peoples (Harvard Univer- sity Press, 1991), turned out to be but one strand of nationalism vying with such newly emergent ideas as the “Third World” for a position in the postcolonial world of the Arabs. Michel Aflaq, the Bath’s original ideo- logue, was preoccupied with the problem of reconciling secular nation- alism and the Arabs’ historical experience of Third World revolutions as the inspiration for their own struggle. As Hourani has indicated, Fateh in particular determined to remain independent of Arab regimes after the 1967 failure to protect the remaining Arab parts of Palestine. Yet the survival of pan-Arabism became, in Hourani’s words, “a pretext for the interference of one state in the affairs of others.” When Syria’s Bath re- gime attempted to interfere in the affairs of the Palestinian guerrillas in order to contain them, differences between Palestinian particularism and Arab nationalism loomed on the horizon. The Palestinians’ mistake, as will be illustrated here, was the failure to recognize when to move with the Arab tide and when to balk. This was partly due to their illusion of absolute independence from the Arab states. According to Bassam Tibi’s interpretation in Arab Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry (St. Martin’s Press, 1971), this illusion was fostered by the Fan- onesque idea of an emerging nationalism that is born in the process of the anticolonial struggle. But unlike the classic Third World revolutions, such as those of Cuba and Vietnam, which the Palestinian Liberation Organiza- tion (PLO) took as its model, the PLO and particularly Fateh lacked some of the important elements of a mass revolution. As Samir Amin stated in his classic work The Arab Nation: Nationalism and Class Struggles (Zed Press, 1983), the PLO defined the armed struggle in military terms only, having missed the social revolution entirely. This book brings home the message elucidated even in the literature of the Arab League of States—namely, that its members constituted several states but only one nation. Thus, all the league’s members who were sov- ereign states, with the exception of the Palestinians, coexisted in this mythical framework of equal representation and rights. This structure inevitably encouraged the interjection of each member in the affairs of the other in the name of common nationhood. But along the way, as the Pal- estinians’ struggle took them from one Arab theater to the next, absence of a clear view of Arab nationalism and Palestinian particularism led to the tragic battles of Amman, Beirut, and Tripoli. This book offers a modest Preface | ix explanation of this loss of vision on the part of Syrians and Palestinians alike. Several agencies and individuals contributed to the completion of this re- search. I am first and foremost indebted to the International Fulbright Commission for granting me a semester of study, the fall of 1997, in Syria. Without that opportunity I would not have been able to approach this subject with any confidence. This grant enabled me to lecture at the Syrian University at Damascus and to learn through lengthy contacts with people in all walks of life of the persistent centrality of the Palestine issue to Syria’s self-image in the Arab world. My thanks go especially to Professor Sadek al-Azm, noted Syrian philosopher and critic, who facilitated many of my contacts at the university. Emeritus professor of history Najda al- Khamash also was of great help in making possible my contacts with the university. While in Syria, I benefited from the support extended by the staff of the Institut Français des Études Arabes à Damas (IFEAD) and the Syrian National Archives (Markaz al-Wathaiq al-Tarikhiyyah). My great- est thanks go to Dr. Daad Hakim, the director of the archives, whose gracious support and remarkable understanding of the needs of visiting scholars made my research so much easier.