318 • 17 ISRAEL'S REBIRTH AND THE RISE OF ARAB NATIONALISMthe Sham'un regime. Many groups made the short trip to Damascus to hail
the union with Egypt. Demonstrations took place in many cities and vil¬
lages. When Beirut's Muslim sections put up Nasir posters, Christians fes¬
tooned their quarters with pictures of Sham'un. Tension mounted during
the spring. The spark that lit the fire was the assassination of a pro-Nasir
newspaper editor in May 1958. Arab nationalists were quick to blame the
government and to accuse Sham'un of plotting to amend Lebanon's consti¬
tution to secure himself a second term as president. A heterogeneous oppo¬
sition, led by city politicians and rural grandees, banded together as a
"national front." Shooting incidents reignited ancient feuds in the country¬
side, the government declared a curfew, and the first Lebanese civil war be¬
gan. In some ways, the war was like a comic opera: Bombs exploded at
random, rebel leaders had access to the government phone and postal facil¬
ities, and the army did nothing. The Sham'un regime accused Nasir of aid¬
ing the rebels by smuggling arms across the Syrian border. It appealed to
the Arab League and then to the UN Security Council to stop this threat
to Lebanon's independence. A UN observer group could not corroborate
charges of massive infiltration from Syria, but observers confined their op¬
erations to daylight hours on major roads, so they could not see much.
Lebanon's civil war might have wound down, once President Sham'un
let the parliament elect his successor. The rebel leaders did not really want
Lebanon to join the United Arab Republic, even if they welcomed Nasir's
support. What brought this war into the wider arena was a concurrent
event in another Arab state, the Iraqi revolution of 14 July 1958. In a sud¬
den coup, a group of officers seized control of the police headquarters, the
radio station, and the royal palace in Baghdad. They murdered King Faysal
II and his uncle, Abd al-Ilah, hunted down and shot Nuri al-Sa'id, and de¬
clared Iraq a republic. Most Arabs rejoiced at the monarchy's downfall,
but the West was horrified. The new regime seemed the embodiment of
Arab nationalism and communism combined, a triumph for Nasir, a har¬
binger of the fate awaiting Jordan and Lebanon, and a stalking horse for
Soviet imperialism in the Middle East. Despite its refusal to stop Nasir in
1956, Washington now wanted to invade Iraq.
The US government dispatched marines to Lebanon, responding to
Sham'un's plea for aid under the Eisenhower Doctrine, and British troops
were flown to Jordan, where Husayn's regime seemed to be in peril. The
West would have intervened in Iraq if there had been any hope of restor¬
ing the monarchy, but Hashimite rule was finished in Baghdad, and few
Iraqis wanted it restored. The new military junta ensured its own popular¬
ity by instituting land reform, proclaiming its support for Arab unity, and