ABSTRACT
Arab nationalism–the belief that Arab states should unite under a common government, particularly to resist non-Arab control—is a strong sentiment in the Middle East. Until the aftermath of World War I, many Arabs were under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, a situation of some ambivalence for the Arabs, since their overlords in most cases were Turks or other non-Arabs, though the rulers were also the Islamic coreligionists of their Arab subjects. Even though Arab nationalists strove to liberate themselves from Ottoman rule, there is detectable even today in Arab nationalist thought a strain of nostalgia for the lost days of a united and powerful Islamic empire that subsumed what are now separate, weak, and often bickering Arab nation-states. There is also some uncertainty about whether Arabs who seek a greater unity ought to consider themselves Arabs first or Muslims first. The Arab experience with the West has, unfortunately, been less ambiguous. As summarized in the following essay, Arabs repeatedly dealt with Western powers that promised them independence from the Ottomans but then established for themselves spheres of influence in the Middle East, formalized soon after World War I as mandates, which were little more than colonies in disguise. Even after the Arab states’ eventual independence, they still remain sensitive to perceived instances of Western meddling and power mongering in the Middle East. To many Arabs, the establishment of the State of Israel in Palestine in 1948 is a highly charged emblem of Western intrusion and duplicity, in that it violated previous Western assurances and displaced a great many Arab Palestinians, leaving them without homes, property, or a country of their own.
