Pan-Arabian Knights

Egypt's Premier Mustafa El Nahas Pasha and Iraq's Premier Nuri Pasha Es-Said are two of Britain's best friends in the Arab world. Nahas and Nuri poked cautiously last fortnight at the most vexing question in the Middle East: Pan-Arabism. The two pashas said they were looking for ways to "increase our cultural, economic and political cooperation." Their talks looked toward more talks with other Arab pacemakers, perhaps eventually an Arab congress.

Said Nuri Pasha after canvassing Arab leaders and rulers of Trans-Jordan, Syria, the Lebanon and Palestine: "I found general agreement among the majority [on] reunion of these countries into a united Syria as it existed before the last great war."*

Principal stumble points for this dream solution: 1) French interests in Syria and the Lebanon; 2) British mandates in Trans-Jordan and Palestine; 3) Zionism; 4) the still undisclosed attitude of Saudi Arabia's powerful, circumspect Ibn Saud.

It may have been fear of the shadow of Great Powers that led Moshe Shertok of Palestine's Jewish Agency to warn: "It would be wrong to consider the Jews incapable of deeds of despair".

Wrote Christian Science Monitor's Joseph G. Harrison from Cairo: "Some form of federation ... is approaching faster than many persons believe. ... If the present attempt fails, other attempts will succeed. . . . Modern economy and politics demand international cooperation on a regional basis."

* The Pan-Arab idea was started in the '90s to extend the authority of the Ottoman Empire, revived by Lawrence of Arabia in World War I to win the Arabs for the Allies, squelched by the postwar mandate system.

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