Arab Nationalist Movement
Kate Dastur
App: Idea Sketch
What encouraged the development of nationalism?
- The geographic merging of Arab and Muslim worlds in southwest Asia and north Africa
- Versions of Arab nationalism linked to the religious forcing of Islam was appealing to nations that wanted to discourage European and U.S. influences
- Gamal Abdel Nasser provided leadership for Arab nationalism
- Helped by Israel who tried to embolden Arab-Muslim opposition to the state
- Arab unity did not come about
- Although Arab lands shared a common language and religion, divisions happened often and alliances shifted
- The cold war caused a division because some members of the Arab-Muslim world allied with the United States while others sided with the Soviet Union
- Some of them, for example Egypt shifted between the two.
- Governments consisted of military dictatorship, monarchies, and Islamist revolutionary regimes.
- Religious differences complicated unity
- Anwar Sadat replaced Nasser as Egypt’s president, was the one in charge of the Yom Kippur War, and facilitated peace (United States helped facilitate the peace)
- 1976 Sadat renounced his nation’s friendship treaty with the Soviet Union
- 1977 he traveled to Israel in attempt to break a deadlock in the negotiations
- Between 1978 and 1980 the leaders of Egypt and Israel signed peace treaties
- Sadat assassinated in 1981 by people that did not agree with his policies towards Israel (Arab states and the Palestinian Liberation Organization wanted to isolate Egypt)