The Crystallization of the Arab State System: 1945-1954.

• Author: Talhami, Ghada Hashem

There is very little that could be added to our knowledge of inter-Arab rivalries during the immediate years leading to and following the creation of the state of Israel. A period of great upheaval resulting from the implanting of a new state in the heart of the turbulent Arab state-system, the decade of 1945-1954 was seared in the collective Arab consciousness. It was no accident that Arab writers refer to this period as al-nakba, or the disaster. Having dealt a great shock to Arab aspirations for national unity and meaningful independence, these critical years have been subjected to a great deal of study, scrutiny, and analysis by Arabs and non-Arabs alike. Those who attempted to wring some meaning out of these disastrous years range from policy-makers, to scholars, to military experts, and to ideologues. Furthermore, the rush to analyze and examine this period began as soon as Egypt's Nasserite revolution drove the first nails into the coffins of most of the discredited monarchic regimes in the Arab World. Save for a few later studies during the 1970s concerning the institutional structure of the League of Arab States, most students of Arab affairs felt that this was a sorry but closed chapter. Interest in the League's ability to bring about the settlement of inter-Arab disputes percolated again with the intensification of the most recent Iraqi-Kuwait crisis. Additionally, recent Israeli studies detailing the extent of the collusion of Jordan's Hashemite regime and the young Israeli state merely fleshed out what most knowledgeable students of this period, as well as Arab public opinion in general, suspected all along.

In this study, Maddy-Weitzman feels that the story of this critical decade needs retelling. He, thus, presents us with a micro-diplomatic history of the relations between major Arab League members as an illustration of how the Arab state-system solidified into rival but balanced relationships following the creation of the League. The basic nature of this system, he theorizes, was "one of loosely structured, fluid alliances existing in a state of uneasy equilibrium." He examines two crucial tests to which the system was subjected, namely, the Palestine issue as member states sought to swallow the remains of that dismembered entity, and dynastic unity schemes which aimed at spreading their hegemony into neighboring but less stable states. He proclaims forthrightly that his book alms at clarifying such questions as the nature...