THE WAVE

Evening Star, Issue 22460, 3 October 1936, Page 2

THE WAVE

ARABS ON THE MOVE [Wrkton-'l>y'M: H. Hoi.cuofx for the ■ Evening Star.’] Most Europeans are disappointed when thev come to a famed city or the East—to Damascus, for instance, lying white and virginal on the green plain that slopes down from Anti-Lebanon. ,\Vo are used to gardens, to countries that are clothed in green for the spring of tho year. We have been spoiled by plenty, and know nothing of the miracle of transition that visits the Arab. He comes out of the desert with the glare of the sun in his eyes, and at the end of his wanderings is the queen of all cities, this lovely place in the bosom of waters with villas and towers and crowded bazaars. It is a contrast which symbolises the age-old longing of a desert people for running' water and the fruits of tho earth*, . - . The average nomad is passive .beneath the heat and scanty feeding. He drives his flocks to a new pasture, and sets up his booths until the thin herbage ns eaten away; he dozes_ through _ the hours, and is content with smell joys: with coffee in the cool of evening, and the idle gossip of the tribe. His world is small enough* for_ all 1 the great spaces round about; it is 'hounded by the limits of his pasture lands, by tho oasis where he conies for dates and for cheap goods down from Damascus, and by the fume of heat that makes all his hbrizons hazy. These are not the men, one would think, to be fitted by Nature

for conquest. Yet if there are some amongst them who can rise-above the lassitude and the dim life of sense they can find much near them which can. be the source of vivid thought and relentless action. To an emancipated mind the empty land can be the background for strong ideas; and if an impulse is at work with a generous spirit it can be extended to others in a sort of tribal excitement that will sweep through the long-passive folk like a flame in undergrowth. The empty life has been nothing more than a waiting; and it is now, when "the nomads are on the move, that their essential attributes come into play. Under a vigorous leadership they will rouse themselves up and display qualities of endurance that can scarcely be ’bettered in this world. In ancient times a movement or the tribes ended sooner or later among the hills of Palestine. Small country though it was, Canaan was of strategic importance to the great nations of the past. It lay alongside the road that came up from Egypt, along the borders of the sea whore the Philistines dwelt, across the plain of Megiddo—famed battleground of the ages—and inland towards- the flat lands of Assyria. It was constantly shaken by the"shock of contending armies.. The Assyrians came down to hammei at the gates of Egypt, and would pause on their way . to take captive the petty * kings of the Israelitish tribes. And up from the Nile, with chariots and tall spearmen, would como tho generals of the Pharaohs, seeking revenge or conquest. Those were times when the wise ruler of a tribe would close ihe_ gates of his mountain stronghold, and from the safety of his walls watch the dust of an army rolling high abovo the

Hut this was not all. Palestine is Guarded on the east by the .long anddeep ditch of the Jordan. On the other side are hills which slope down to the plains of Arabia, and 'it was a hi a j s nut of the east that new tribes came up to Palestine. As far tack as goes we have news of the wild . ■ moving up, flinging themselves against the barriers of the fertile crescent, breaking through into Assyna establishing themselves beyond the Jordan, flawing for a foothold upon a green and pleasant land. No doubt the ancestors of Abraham wandered into Mesopotamia out of Arabia; most of the tribes that bickered on the brpken Palestine had their origins-thus. But many wore beaten back, or bad tend for the rich, rolling hills of Moab and Ammon —until there came a. tamo and a man; and under t }l\ lea f ers ' ll f3 of.Mohammed and his caliphs the tuH power of these people gathered itself like a wave that broke through, all harriers, and poured its floodtide into tho west. . . , That was true swarming time of tlie Arabs. They carried their holy wars into Africa, and brought into subjection the native Berbers'of the countries to the north of the Sahara. They l v an the Berbers to their cause, and led the best of their soldiers to tho conquest of Spain. Afterwards, under the caliphs, came the time of disintegration. The language and religion' remain to this day in North African lands; but to the nomads of Nejd the Moors are foreigners—notable for their quarrelsome moods and their talent for fighting. There is no literature to keep alive the memories of a past that belonged to a nation; the legends are tribal, and have. been, handed dawn as ,'thc stories of old men, so that history in Arabia shares the close horizons of the plains and the vagueness of a landscape which lies so often under the haze of heatJ, . ~ . ■ It is necessary to think of these things if we are to have any clear view of what is now happening in Palestine. The enmity between Jew and Arab is something more .than a .result of the Zionist movement; although in recent years the influx of Jews from European countries has brought the long di§ T content more swiftly to a crisis. To the Arab the- Jew is an alien from outside. It is jnany .hundreds of, years since the dispersal, and since then the Jews have made their homes in all the

countries or the world; to tho Arab mind—concerned with a history which docs not go much beyond the period of Turkish dominance, in the later nineteenth century—he has no real claim to a country that lies at the threshold of the deserts. The real cause of discontent, therefore, is in the nature of the great peninsula and its people. As of old, the tribes are moving up towards their only outlet. No doubt their leaders have been influenced by events abroad, and perhaps by the agents of interested countries. It is impossible to know how far the body 7 of a people such as tho Arabs can share in a national movement; and it may bo true that the tribes of El Hejflz have followed courses which are viewed with indifference by tho roving peoples of the inland plains. But since the war there have .been coalitions in the south, and in Ncjd wo have seen the rise of the Wahabi sect to pre-eminence. If war comes in Europe there may bo nows of Arab armies in the desert, and once again the great wave will roll down upon Palestine.

This time there may he no outpouring upon, the west, for the greatness of a race seems to come only once in the liistorv of the world. It is even possible that there will nob again bo a united Arabia. But nationalism seems to have taken the place of religion as a crusading impulse, and the backward countries respond violently and suddenly to ideas that have had their slow growth elsewhere. Strange possibilities loom upon , us, when we ; glance at tho miapi'of Asia and try to look a little way into the ifuture. H. IG. Wells’s dream of a purified civilisation in the hands of scientists fades to a shadowy outline when we remember the peoples of the steppes and tho deserts who would bo quick to make use of a break-; down in the West. In the meantime there- are strikes and shootings in Palestine, and no news comes out of the great deserts inland. The shepherd people follow the springing herbage and drive their camels and flocks as in the days of a distant past. The tribes are on the move. ' \