(صوتك في عالم أسكتت فيه الصهيونية والحديد والنار صوت العدالة)

The Dialectic of Unity and Liberation in the Arab World

By Ibrahim Alloush

Translated by SR

Since the 1950s and 1960s arguments have raged in the Arab world over which should come first: unification or liberation?  Must we unite the Arab Nation first in order to be able to achieve liberation?  Or is liberation possible without unity, since the task of liberation is something so urgent that it cannot await Arab unity?  Must we build our forces by and through a unified Arab state in the first place in order to be able to achieve the liberation of Palestine and other occupied Arab lands?  Or are the two tasks simply separate from one another, efforts that can proceed side by side, with one not necessarily depending on the other?

The consensus regarding these questions is divided into two camps.  One holds that unity must come before liberation, and the other believes in the priority of liberation over unity.  Those who regarded liberation as coming before unity dove into political work within the individual Arab states.  One obvious example of such an approach would be the dissolution of the Arab Nationalists’ Movement to form the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1967.  Those, on the other hand, who regarded unity as the precondition for liberation included some Arab regimes and political parties of Arab nationalist orientation. They authorized themselves to grant concessions on the Arab-Zionist front on the grounds that building a unified Arab state is their first priority.

In reality, contemporary Arab history gives us one of the most important examples of liberation without unity or a nationalist agenda: That is, the liberation of southern Lebanon in 2000.  One could also add to that the partial liberation of the Gaza Strip. In both situations, liberation resulted from organized activity of Arab people on the ground without the involvement of any Arab regimes. Both were carried out by local forces that were not related to any nationalist agendas, but had, rather, local agendas. Other examples, such as Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon and Palestine undoubtedly prove that the creation and continuation of a popular armed resistance struggle is possible without the presence of a unified state. In addition, local forces may produce an effective resistance, create arenas for doing battle, even liberate a given part of the land, and pose serious obstacles to the American-Zionist enemy’s progress. Precisely this has occurred in the way the Iraqi resistance has paralyzed the “”Greater Middle East” initiative in the region.  In these instances, the local resistance takes on a nationalist coloring, adopts a nationalist role, and consequently earns substantial support from the rest of the nation.

But can the whole Zionist program it the region – which includes its military presence, political weight, and imperialist backing – be defeated by local popular organizing alone, without a nationalist program? Furthermore, can the Arab nation as a whole rid itself of dependency (indirect occupation) without an Arab nationalist program? For example, could the Arabian Gulf countries rid themselves of the American military presence without a unified state that would protect Arab national security in the Arabian Gulf region? Also, is it possible for us to liberate the provinces of Iskandarun, Al-Ahwaz, and the islands of Abu Mousa and Greater and Lesser Tanb in the Gulf without a unified Arab state?

The fact is that the liberation of southern Lebanon differs qualitatively from the following events: Palestine’s liberation from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea; the Arab nation’s liberation from direct and indirect imperial hegemony; and the liberation of Arab lands from neighboring countries such as Ethiopia, Iran, Turkey and Spain. Local energies and capabilities are capable of achieving local goals for the benefit of the Arab nation and objectively can play an Arab nationalist role, that is, in terms of what they accomplish rather than because of any conscious Arab nationalist program. But, there is a huge difference between such cases of local liberation on the one hand, and liberation of the Arab nation and its territory from direct and indirect occupation.

Complete liberation in this sense is impossible to achieve without one united state and local liberation without a unified state will always remain incomplete, leaving the resistance politically or militarily blockaded, as in Lebanon and Gaza.

By “unified state” we do not mean that the entire Arab homeland has to be united before the program of liberation can be achieved. People who insist on this are like some of the alleged official representatives of Arab nationalism, towing the line of Arab regimes, who demand the creation of an Arab common market first and try in practice to evade their practical responsibilities under such an Arab nationalist program – specifically the task of confronting the Zionist-American occupations militarily. The unified state will only arise in the course of the bloody struggle with the Zionist-American enemy and its local stooges.

Therefore, what is meant by a unified state is the nucleus of a united state, which is imbued with a militant program, such as the state of Salah Ad-Din Al-Ayyubi (Saladin), established in northern Iraq and parts of Syria, Jordan and Egypt during the Crusades. That state was able to clutch the Crusader entity in a pincer and crush it. The unifying state is therefore the nucleus of comprehensive unity, and it simultaneously constitutes a liberation program. It is only when the liberation program becomes an Arab national program that liberation becomes possible. And it is only when the program of unification becomes a militant program that unity becomes possible. It is in this way that the dialectical relationship between unity and liberation can be put in its proper framework true liberation required an Arab nationalist nucleus and program, and unity cannot arise without a fighting program of military and mass liberation.