The Syrian Social Nationalist Party Read online

  THE AIM OF THE SSNP

  Saadeh’s objective was not only to define the national identity of the Syrians but also to set in motion a movement that would revive the Syrian nation and make it possible for Syria to become a modern and viable entity. This meant the need to change the pattern of the social, political, and economic life of his people. The SSNP was thus conceived as an agent of change and represents the first concrete effort in Syria towards the total modernization of society. The change that the Party envisages is a comprehensive one that seeks to rebuild society in accordance with a distinct social philosophy. In the formulation of the text of the Aim of the SSNP, visionary and practical issues are juxtaposed:

  “The aim of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party is the creation of a Syrian Social Nationalist renaissance, which will fulfill its declared principles and return the Syrian nation to vitality and strength; the organization of a movement seeking the complete independence of the Syrian nation and the vindication of its sovereignty; the establishment of a new order to protect its interest and raise its standard of living; and the endeavor to form an Arab front.”

  National revival is the central theme in the program of the SSNP. The elements of this revival are embodied in the principles discussed above namely the establishment of the concept of nationhood, the guarantees for sovereignty and independence, and the assertion of social unity, judicial equality, and justice. The aim of the SSNP embraces all elements of national life and is not restricted to a political form of purpose. It is based on a new outlook to national life embodied in its principles.

  The revival of the Syrian nation and the progress of its life are clearly linked with the unification of the nation. National unification is the primary objective on which political unification is built. Saadeh had clearly stated that the elimination of the separatist political forms is dependent on the will of the people. “As to the question of the political unification of Syria, my long-maintained unambiguous position is that its occurrence should be on the basis of the success and triumph of our principles and movement and not on the basis of the reactionary or arbitrary movements of any origin.” 56

  There are multiple separatist movements in Syria based on the artificial states created by colonial powers and sustained by the interests of ruling elites and factions. Some of the separatist movements are based on ethnic and religious tendencies. The prototype for the latter is Lebanese separatism and the position of the SSNP toward it can illustrate the general approach. The SSNP considers the origin of Lebanese separatism to represent the collusion of French colonial interests with the interests of leaders of Christian sects chafing from past persecution under an Islamic majority rule. The genesis of the Lebanese state found its impetus in the inequalities in rights among the religious sects, and its promoters among the clergy and reactionary politicians in collusion with colonialists.57

  The French Mandate created a political framework for this separatism in the guise of the state of the Grand Liban. This separatism was further perpetuated by other colonial interests. The separatists strived to formulate an alternate narrative in the form of an invented Lebanese nationalism. They contrived to create a nationalism based on Phoenician particularism and the administrative quasi-independence during the feudal period (the emirates of Fakhreddine and Shehab respectively) and the period of the Mutasarrifyat. The SSNP acknowledges that Lebanese separatism and other ethnic religious separatisms are based on objective grievances, but such grievances would have their reasons eliminated with the applications of the principles of Syrian nationalism as promulgated by the SSNP principles.

  While the SSNP opposed Pan-Arabism, it maintained the adherence and inclusion of Syria in the Arab World. “As regards the Arab World, the Party favors recourse to conferences and voluntary alliances, as the only practical way to cooperation between Arab nations. … As a matter of foreign policy, the SSNP aims to create an Arab Front from the Arab nations. This front should serve as a bulwark against foreign imperialistic ambitions and prove of considerable moment in deciding major political questions.” National sovereignty, however, should not be surrendered in such pacts and alliances.

  Place des Martyrs at Night - Beirut, Lebanon, 1932.

  French military forces in Beirut, Lebanon, 1930.

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  1 The Sykes-Picot agreement negotiated in 1916 between the French Francois George Picot and the British Sir Mark Sykes is a famous example of such colonial schemes. The Fertile Crescent was to be divided into five sectors. France was to have the northwest sector that included coastal Syria extending north into Anatolia. Great Britain was to have the southeast sector constituted by the vilayets of Basra and Baghdad. Between these were areas A and B which would be respectively, French and British spheres of interest. The fifth sector was Palestine from Acre to Gaza and from the coast to the Jordan where an international administration would be established. (R. Sanders: The High Walls of Jerusalem: A History of the Balfour Declaration and the Birth of the British Mandate for Palestine, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1983, pp 305-307 and Saadeh, Collected Works, Volume XIV, pp 158-171).

  2 On the demarcation of the northern boundaries of Palestine, see: Gideon Biger: The Boundaries of Modern Palestine, 1840-1947. Routledge, NY, 2004. Review of the various boundaries can be found in a series of specific boundary papers prepared by The Geographer, Office of Strategic and Functional Research, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State, USA. International Boundary Study No. 75 – February 15, 1967 Israel – Lebanon Boundary. International Boundary Study No. 94 – December 30, 1969 Jordan – Syria Boundary. In addition, International Boundary Study No. 98 – April 15, 1970 Iraq – Jordan Boundary.

  3 A most peculiar component is the request of delegates of the Assyro-Chaldean community to the Peace Conference in Versailles to have their own state in the upper curvature of the Fertile Crescent. According to the Revue du Monde Musulman (Paris, 1920, Volumes XL-XLI, p 155).

  4 Friedman, Isaiah: Palestine, a Twice-Promised Land. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ, 2000, page 73. Sicker, Martin: Reshaping Palestine: From Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831-1922. Praeger/Greenwood publishers, Westport, CT, 1999, page 142. Paris, Timothy: Britain, the Hashemites and Arab Rule, 1920-1925. Routledge, London, 2003, page 60.

  5 International Boundary Study No. 100 – May 15, 1970 Iraq – Syria Boundary, The Geographer, Office of Strategic and Functional Research, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State, USA.

  6 Quoted in David Kenneth Fieldhouse: Western Imperialism in the Middle East 1914-1958, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006, p254.

  7 See the text of the letter in Revue Générale de Droit Internationale Public, volume IV, 1930, pp 671-672.

  8 Article 1 of the Mandate issued on 24 July 1922 states: “The Mandatory shall frame, within a period of three years from the coming into force of this mandate, an organic law for Syria and Lebanon. This organic law shall be framed in agreement with the native authorities and shall take into account the rights, interests, and wishes of the population inhabiting the said territory. The Mandatory shall further enact measures to facilitate the progressive development of Syria and the Lebanon as independent states. Pending the coming into effect of the organic law, the Government of Syria and Lebanon shall be conducted in accordance with the spirit of this mandate”. Stephen Hemsley Longrigg: Syria and Lebanon under French Mandate. Oxford University Press, London, 1958, p109.

  9 See article by P. Pic: “L’Evolution du Mandat Français en Syrie et du Mandat Anglais en Palestine de 1924 à 1931 », in Revue Générale de Droit Internationale Public, volume V, 1931, pp 428-465.

  10 Article 2 of the Palestine Mandate officially approved by the League of Nations on July 24, 1922 states: “The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative, and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the Preamble, and the development of self-governing
institutions, and also for the safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion”. Quoted in: Ronald Sanders: The High Walls of Jerusalem: a history of the Balfour declaration and the birth of the British Mandate for Palestine. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, NY, 1983, p 658.

  11 Moshe Mossek: Palestine Immigration Policy Under Sir Herbert Samuel: British, Zionist and Arab Attitudes, Routledge (UK) 1978; Sami Hadawi: Bitter Harvest; Palestine Between 1914-1967, New World Press, ١٩٦٧; May Seikaly: Haifa: transformation of a Palestinian Arab society 1918-1939, I.B.Tauris, London, 2002; Selwyn Ilan Troen: Imagining Zion: dreams, designs, and realities in a century of Jewish settlement, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2003.

  12 On the policies of the British mandate in Palestine and the bankruptcy of the Palestinian leadership, see Rashid Khalidi: The Iron Cage: The Story of Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. Beacon Press, Boston, 2006.

  13 Michael R. Fischbach: State, Society and Land in Jordan. Brill, Leiden, 2000, pp 65-66.

  14 Randall Baker: King Husain and the Kingdom of Hejaz. The Oleander Press, 1979, pp 187-189.

  15 Efraim Karsh and Inari Karsh: Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East. Harvard University Press, 2001, pp 314-326.

  16 Kamal S. Salibi: The Modern History of Jordan. I.B. Tauris publisher, 1998, pp 113-140.

  17 Katibah, Habib Ibrahim. Syria for the Syrians, under the guardianship of the United States. Boston, Syrian National Society, 1919. In Egypt, nationalists of that period used the slogan “Egypt for the Egyptians!”

  18 Letter to Hamid Frangieh, November, 1935. Complete Works, Volume 2, pp. 9-12.

  19 Saadeh, Antoun: Nushu’ al-Umam, Complete Works, volume 3, pp. 1-159.

  20 Originally, Saadeh had intended to write two books: The Emergence of Nations, and The Emergence of the Syrian Nation, but the notes and research for the second book were confiscated at the time of his first arrest in November of 1935 and never returned to him. He subsequently prepared them again, only to have them lost after his arrest and execution in July of 1949.

  21 Ibid., p. 5.

  22 Ibid., p. 130.

  23 Ibid.

  24 Ibid., p. 132.

  25 Ibid., pp. 133-147.

  26 Ibid., p. 139.

  27 From the poem A Welcome to Alexandra by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) on the occasion of the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Princess Alexandra of Denmark, on March 10, 1863.

  28 Ibid., p. 16.

  29 Ibid., p. 143.

  30 Ibid., p. 143.

  31 Ibid., p. 5.

  32 Ibid., pp. 110-112.

  33 Ibid., p. 149.

  34 All quotes in this section are from the exposition of the principles of the SSNP by Antoun Saadeh (Fourth Edition, 1947), a translation of which can be found in the Appendix.

  35 The Balfour declaration came in the form of a letter that Arthur James Balfour addressed on November 2 to Lord Rothschild. Balfour’s letter stated: “I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to and approved by, the Cabinet: ‘His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.’ I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.” (R. Sanders: The High Walls of Jerusalem: A History of the Balfour Declaration and the Birth of the British Mandate for Palestine, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1983, pp 623).

  36 N.J. Mandel: The Arabs and Zionism before World War I, University of California Press, Berkley, 1976.

  37 The collaboration between the separatist groups and French imperialism are illustrated in: W. Shorrock: French imperialism in the Middle East, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1976; and Meir Zamir: The formation of Modern Lebanon, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1985.

  38 The terminology ‘Syrian sea’ is not peculiar to the literature of the SSNP, but has been utilized by European geographers and cartographers. Indeed, a perusal of ancient maps reveals the term to have been used as early as the second century AD by Claudius Ptolemy (Mare Siriacum). The practice was continued in Renaissance and sixteenth century maps and by British, Dutch, German and French cartographers until the beginning of the 20th century. Kenneth Nebenzahl: Maps of the Holy Land. Abbeville Press, N.Y., 1986.

  39 Several theories have been advanced to explain the origin of the name Syria. It is, in form, a Greek name (Suria) first used by the Greek historian Herodotus (Herodotus: The Histories, Penguin Books, 1986, pp 466-467). He does not use a distinction between Syrian and Assyrian consistently and states: “These people used to be called Syrians by the Greeks, Assyrians being the name for them elsewhere.” The Syrian writer Lucian, writing in Greek, referred to himself interchangeably as “Syrian” and “Assyrian”. Lucian: The Works of Lucian, in eight volumes. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1961.

  40 Ameli Kurht and Susan Sherwin-White (editors): Hellenism in The East. University of California Press, Berkley, CA, 1987.

  41 Millar F: The problem of Hellenistic Syria. In Ameli Kurht and Susan Sherwin-White (editors): Hellenism in the East. University of California Press, Berkley, CA, 1987, pp 110-133.

  42 Al-Hizb al-Qawmi yarud ala al-Hizb al-Shuyu’ee (Memorandum of the SSNP to the Lebanese Parliament in rebuttal of the Communist Party Memorandum), April 10, 1945, pamphlet.

  43 Many political commentators and writers, then and now used this label of fascist and proto-fascist, to characterize many of the political parties that were founded in the 1930’s in the Near East because of their “militaristic” organizations and displays. While some similarities in appearance may have engendered this appellation, it has no ideological foundation and is in this author’s opinion a manifestation of intellectual laziness and perpetuation of facile and useless labels.

  44 For a detailed discussion of these developments see: Muhammad Muslih: “The rise of Local Nationalism in the Arab East” in The Origins of Arab Nationalism. Reeva Spector Simon, Lisa Anderson, Muhammad Y Muslih, Rashid Khalidi (editors), Columbia University Press, NY, 1993, pp 189-203. Also, Muslih, Muhammad: The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism. Columbia University Press, NY, 1989, pp 131-154.

  45 Complete Works, volume 1, pp 241-244.

  46 Balagh ila ar-Ra’y al-Aam (A Public Statement, otherwise known as the Blue Memorandum because of the color of the cover of the printed copy), Complete Works, Volume 2, pp. 31-36.

  47 Muzakirat al-Hizb as-Souri al-Qawmi ila al-Usbat al-Umamiya wa al-Umam al-Mutamadinat (Memorandum of the Syrian National Party to the League of Nation and Civilized Nations), ibid., pp. 133-37.

  48 See Leonard Stein: The Truth about Palestine: A Reply to the Palestine Arab Delegation. Zionist Organization, London, 1922.

  49 Thawrat Filastin (Rebellion in Palestine) Complete Works, volume 2, pp187-188.

  50 The lack of organization and central leadership on the Palestinian side and the benefits the Jews accrued from the activities of the revolt of 1936 have been amply documented by historians. See Benny Morris: Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999, Knopf, 1999, pp 130-145.

  51 Complete Works, volume 6, p 213.

  52 Complete Works, volume 6, pp140-141.

  53 The article in which these comments figure is titled “Falsafat al-Qawmiyah al-Usbawiyah” (The National Philosophy of al-Usba). This article does not currently figure in the Complete Works published in 2001, but was included in previous compendia (See Antoun Saadeh: al-Athar al-Kamilah, Beirut, 1980, volume 4).

  54 Hillel Cohen: Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zio
nism, 1917-1948, University of California Press, Berkley, 2008, p25.

  55 The SSNP Political Bureau: al-Qadiyyah al-Filistiniah (The Palestinian Question), 1945. Memorandum presented to the Congress of the Arab Front in Jaffa September 21, 1945. The Congress was cancelled, but the memorandum was printed and circulated at the time. “We demand that the Mandate puts no obstacles in the way of the initiatives that an independent Palestinian state deems necessary to effect the departure of the Jews who came to Palestine during the period of the British mandate with the proviso that such departure be gradual, and under the supervision of an international committee with the membership of the countries of origin of the Jewish immigrants. This would need to be accomplished in a time span no longer than the duration of the Mandate.”

  56 Letter to Ghassan Tueini 13 Dec 1946, Complete Works, Volume 11, pp. 285-88.

  57 Saadeh, A: Ikhtiraa al-Qawmiyat al-Lubnaniyat (The Invention of Lebanese Nationalism), Complete Works, volume 6, pp. 161-67. Mehzelat Istiqlal Lubnan (The Farce of Lebanese Independence), ibid., pp. 180-82. Awham Ba’d al-Mutalabninine (The Illusions of Some Lebanese), ibid., pp. 232-35.