The release of an audio recording of a conversation between Gamal Abdel Nasser and Muammar Gaddafi has shocked and angered many, perhaps even creating a crisis of conviction. The year he died, Nasser did not hide his exasperation with the radicals calling for war, ripping into the zealots, showing contempt for them and their maximalist demands, and stressing that he preferred to avoid war and seek a peaceful resolution for the conflict.
Nonetheless, only those who had believed in the image manufactured for him should be surprised. He had long been portrayed as a living breathing blend of sanctity and insanity: he boldly defended “the Arab nation’s interests in liberation and progress,” paying no mind to the balance of power or the costs of war, and he kept the fight without regard for the humiliating lessons of the 1967 defeat.
However, the real Nasser was neither of those things. It is true that he endorsed the famous “Three No’s” of the Khartoum Summit and came out with slogans like “What was taken by force can only be regained by force.” When he was not addressing “the masses,” however, he accepted United Nations Resolution 242, and later, the Rogers Plan. Both opened the door to peace, whereby the territories that had been occupied would be given back in return for the recognition of the right of every country in the region to exist, without exception.
We also know that Nasser’s reputation for militancy did not shield him from the insults and accusations of treason that roared through the armed Palestinian factions' demonstrations in Amman to denounce his “treasonous and cowardly positions.”
As for the last act of his life, it was convening an emergency Arab League Summit to end the Jordanian civil war whose eruption sufficed to convince a seasoned politician like Nasser that open warfare with Israel was futile and senseless.
Noting the Egyptian roots of this behavior could help us liberate the naïve militant narrative around the Palestinian cause from its lies. Attention to this matter provides insights into how positions on the question were often linked to broader societal and political structures in the Arab world, and by extension, to legitimacy.
In other words, the Egypt Nasser governed had been more socially cohesive than any of the Levantine countries nearby, and its state traditions went back further than those of other countries in the region. This reflects a causal relationship between countries’ social and national cohesion, as well as the foundations of their regimes’ legitimacy, and their inclination to turn to realism and diplomacy when possibilities and opportunities narrow.
If a lack of legitimacy helps explain the Syrian and Iraqi Baathists’ intransigence with regard to the Palestinian cause, which they sought to make into a substitute source of legitimacy, the same cannot be said of Egyptian Nasserism. Despite establishing the model for the police state of the Arab world, it could be credited with real achievements, or it was at least successfully portrayed as deserving credit for achievements: from the nationalization of the Suez Canal and “repelling the Tripartite Aggression” (1956) to unifying with Syria (1958) to the role Nasser began playing on the global stage after the 1955 Bandung Conference. His record meant that Nasser had less of an incentive to shore up his legitimacy through the Palestinian cause than the similar regimes to his.
One cannot but notice that the two sides were not equally reliant on appropriating and "representing" the Palestinian cause. One important dimension of the Palestinian armed struggle that Fatah launched is its split from Nasserism, which was no longer seen as the “pan-Arab path” to “liberating Palestine.” Nonetheless, Nasserism did not wage a civil war against the Palestinians in response to this rupture, nor did it assassinate their leaders or establish militant groups to rival Fatah. That is precisely the course of action that Baathist regimes in Damascus and Baghdad took, creating factions to rival Fatah (like al-Saiqa and the Arab Liberation Front) and orchestrating a long list of assassinations. While in Nasserism’s “response to the defeat,” the slogan of “liberating Palestine” was replaced by that of “erasing the ramifications of aggression,” the state discourse in Syria (and Iraq) was brimming with calls for “a war for popular liberation” that Assad’s defense minister, Mustafa Tlass, excelled at. After 1973, retrieving Egyptian territory and an end to the conflict came to define the approach of Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, whereas Hafez al-Assad sought to incite civil wars, both Lebanese and Palestinian, to obtain “arenas” for a frozen conflict with Israel for his regime.
We could also speak of the deeper background of Nasser’s divergence from the Syrian and Iraqi radicals, as well as some Palestinian factions. Between the forties and seventies, the “Arab nationalism” of the Asian Levant was tainted by rabid rhetoric that was crowned by the Baath Party. In Egypt, where Arab nationalism had never been at the center of traditional political culture, Nasser embraced it in pursuit of a developmental and geopolitical vision that could not afford not to weigh gains and losses. This approach was probably one factor behind Egypt’s early ventures into “clandestine diplomacy” aimed at reaching a peace deal with Israel which Syria did not do. From British MP Richard Grossman’s meeting with Nasser at Ben-Gurion’s request to the “Alpha Plan,” then the “Gamma Project,” and to the mediation efforts of Nahum Goldmann and Yugoslav President Tito in 1958, the diplomatic pursuits never stopped.
These are not reasons to shower Nasser with praise. Rather, they highlight a lack of knowledge and sentimental frivolity that the Egyptian leader had played an immensely important role in instituting.
