ABSTRACT
THE Palestine war and the emergence of the State of Israel—'a dagger in the heart of the Arab world'—have had far wider repercussions throughout the Middle East as a whole than were immediately apparent. In the first flush of enthusiasm and thoughtless optimism, the fight against the Jews brought the Arab countries closer together than, possibly, they had ever been before; it breathed new life into the Arab League; and it even seemed to dim the fierce rivalries which had separated Arab rulers. It was, too, for the Arab world generally, an even more successful means of distracting the attention of the masses from their own hopeless plight and the futility and inefficiency of their governments than had been even the long-drawn-out struggle against foreign 'oppression' of various kinds. But with the end of the war and the knowledge, which even a strict censorship and the continual publication of utterly false claims could not entirely conceal, that Arab arms had failed dismally, bitter disillusion swept through the Middle East, a disillusion which quickly found its immediate expression in mutual recrimination amongst the member States of the Arab League and its final flowering in the castigation of England, in particular, and also America for having let down the Arabs, encouraged treachery amongst them, and given ample support to the Jews.
