Iam from the generation that experienced the October 1973 War. Starting in 1968, I took part in the student protests calling for the battle to reverse the Aggression of 1967.
Even after joining the army, I tried to time my leave to coincide with the demonstrations. The war brought out the best in us, not just Egyptians, but the Arabs in general. It coupled a military starting point with an economic uprising through the first ever use of the oil weapon. It was part of a stroke of political and diplomatic genius that artfully combined weapons with negotiations.
Last week, Egypt celebrated the anniversary of the liberation of Sinai. That event crowned a long process that led from the War of Attrition in the late 1960s through the 1973 War, the first and second military disengagements, the full Israeli withdrawal from Sinai, and the restitution of Taba in accordance with a ruling by the International Court of Justice.
The entire process took 22 years, from 1967 to 1989. Warfare, oil, diplomacy, and international arbitration were brought to bear along the way. But the crucial ingredients of success were national unity, courageous leadership, astute international and regional alliance-building skills, the subordination of arms to political ends, and vast reserves of patience, stamina, and moral fortitude.
Syria had followed a similar path since the 1967 defeat. However, it has so far been unable to liberate its occupied territory. Palestine, which has been fighting its struggle for liberation since 1948, has not yet managed to establish a state.
Today we find many Arab states that had won their independence decades ago but are now torn by various forms of strife being exploited by regional and international powers. Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Iraq are the prime examples in which arms have their own agendas. In Palestine, the plague of division had sunk in its claws before the establishment of the state.
Egypt’s history lesson starts with thousands of years of foreign occupation and thousands of years before that when the country was ruled only by Egyptians. The British were the last foreign occupiers. Before them came the Ottomans. On 28 February 1922, the British formally recognised Egypt’s independence in accordance with a “Unilateral Declaration.”
But it fell short of full sovereignty due to clauses known as the “four reservations.” Some Egyptians at the time opposed this nominal independence. But it was decided to obtain statehood first so as to begin building national institutions, a unified market, and the indelible bonds between the state and society.
Egypt has long had all the components of a modern state under both monarchic and republican systems of government. When it transitioned from the former to the latter, the transfer took place smoothly without shedding a drop of blood.
The colonial presence had begun to recede before this. British forces confined themselves to the Suez Canal base after an agreement with Cairo in 1936. On 18 June 1956, the evacuation was completed. Those forces returned some months later, accompanied by French and Israeli forces in the tripartite invasion. But they were gone again before the year was out.
The Palestinians have never stinted on dedication and self-sacrifice for the sake of independence. But they followed slogans that generally signified “either all or nothing.”
Despite the courage it took to accept the Oslo Accords, Hamas, and dozens of other radical factions, be they Islamist, liberal, or Marxist, were forever at hand to denounce such beginnings a treasonous and to do all in their power, including suicide bombings, to undermine the agreements and the consensus.
States can only be established by forging an indivisible national identity inimical to internecine strife, building national institutions from the constitution and laws to parliament and a unified market, and assimilating new generations into the body politic, all of which requires considerable perseverance.
In contrast to the Palestinians who have lived in their land for thousands of years and share a single language and stable identity, Israel gathered its disparate peoples and tribes from across the earth to speak a single language and build governing institutions that combine government, policy, and arms under a single roof. Meanwhile, in Palestine, division remains the law and the politics of arms is spread among diverse groups.
The challenge today in the Arab region is to build a unified Arab state. I am not referring to a single state stretching from the Atlantic to the Gulf, but rather to a cohesive state entity as defined by a single people, on a certain territory, and with a single political authority. In previous articles in this space, I have cited the examples of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. But they are not alone.
All Gulf countries also feature similarly unique bonds forged between their peoples and their historic traditions of leadership characterised by the resolve and determination not just to solidify their unity but to develop it more fully.
The same applies to the monarchies in Jordan and Morocco. Despite the many pressures those countries face, there has always been a strong bond deeply rooted in the land and a common identity forged through the millennia and resolved to safeguard the factors that promote cohesion and avert fragmentation. For Algerians, the war of liberation created a bond that embraces a sprawling geopolitical entity that is simultaneously able to merge Arab and Amazigh identity into a single fabric.
We find the reverse of the foregoing in the countries that have fallen prey to the forces of violence, internecine strife, and identity disintegration. Such is the state to which they have been reduced that it has become impossible to build anything, concrete or human, in a shared geopolitical space with unified institutions and a common language, without its being torn down again by suspicion and hate, foreign affiliations and influences, and influxes of money and arms.
The biggest problem facing the Arab region today resides in that group of non-state entities that thrive in the grey area between government and militia.
While on the surface they form the “axis of resistance” to Israel, the West, and the US, above all, in fact, their main aim is to fight and undermine the cohesion of the unified Arab nation state, the guardian of Arab heritage which seeks to advance their societies and enable them to compete on par with other countries of the world economically, culturally, and technologically.
These are the countries that regain and preserve their land, instead of crying over its loss.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 2 May, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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