264 • 15 EGYPT'S STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCEoppressor. Second, the prestige of the Western democracies rose following
their decisive victory over Germany, Japan, and Italy. Many people hoped
that the new United Nations organization, of which Egypt was one of the
founders, would rid the world of war and colonialism. Third, the commu¬
nists, who might have had the discipline to lead a revolution, were not
nearly as strong in Egypt as were their counterparts in Europe. Besides,
there were no Red Army soldiers in Cairo as there were in Warsaw and Bu¬
dapest. Fourth, Egypt's government managed to distract the people with a
novel enthusiasm for Arab nationalism.
Although few Egyptians had viewed themselves as Arabs before, both
King Faruq and the Wafd began to identify Egypt more closely with the rest
of the Arab world. They may have been reacting to the rising Arab-Jewish
contest for Palestine. A more pressing challenge, we think, was Iraqi Premier
Nuri al-Sa'id's 1942 proposal for an organic union of all the Arabic-speaking
countries of the Fertile Crescent: Iraq, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and
Palestine. Egypt, backed by Saudi Arabia and Yemen (which would also have
been left out of Nuri's proposed union), countered by calling for a league of
Arab states. This Arab League, formally set up in 1945, preserved the sover¬
eignty of each Arab country while coordinating their policies on key Arab
issues. Hoping to uphold its own influence at France's expense, Britain en¬
couraged this trend toward Arab cooperation. The drawback was that the
Arab states could agree on only one issue: They did not want the Jews to
form a state in Palestine.
Frustration and Failure
Thus Egypt, with all its domestic problems, plus the unresolved issues of
British rule in the Sudan (which almost all Egyptians wanted restored to
their country) and British troops within its own borders, diverted its at¬
tention and energies to the Palestine issue. To be sure, the Egyptian gov¬
ernment went on negotiating with Britain to reduce the number of its
troops in the Nile Valley. Egypt's ablest palace politician did manage to ne¬
gotiate a treaty with Britain that would have evacuated British troops from
all parts of Egypt except the Canal Zone. But Wafdist opponents proved
that Britain and Egypt had not really settled the status of the Sudan, and
so the treaty was never ratified. In 1947 the Egyptian government took the
Sudan question to the UN Security Council, claiming that the 1936 treaty
had been negotiated under duress and that it was contrary to the UN
Charter. The Security Council, unimpressed by these arguments, called on
the two parties to resume their long and fruitless negotiations. The British