Contenu du sommaire : Moyen-Orient et conflits au XXe siècle

As political forces destabilize the states stemming from the Ottoman Empire, this article surveys the last century in order to throw light on recent events. Analysis is developed along three main lines. In the first place, the formation of modern Turkey buried the project of Kurdish independence. However, the war they are waging against the “Islamic State” allows the Kurds, a forgotten community, to entertain the hope of an international recognition. Secondly, attention will be paid to the creation of the Arab States that “Islamic State” is presently threatening. Finally, the war leader Abû Bakr al-Baghdâdî claims to have restored the caliphate, an age-old institution abolished in 1924.

Lebanese emigration stopped with the outbreak of war. Maritime blockade by the Entente and land blockade by the Ottomans impoverished the autonomous province of Lebanon. Famine decimated the population. In that context, Lebanese emigrants and their associations in Egypt, in the USA, Argentina and France tried to mobilize the diaspora and Western governments in order to relieve the country from Ottoman pressure. They lobbied to persuade Western Powers to free Lebanon and/or Greater Syria from the Ottomans, leading to the establishment of mandates, of the Arab Kingdom promised to Faisal, or complete independence. They took part in the postwar peace conferences that decided the fate of Lebanon and the neighbouring countries.

France's military interventions in the Near East were more modest than what its diplomats envisioned, especially in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The Navy took part in the defence of the Suez Canal in February 1915, and then secured the blockade of the Syrian coast. The only French Force on the ground was the DFP (détachement français de Palestine), created in April 1917, with 7,000 men, who fought in the British army (100,000 men), from Egypt to Syria. Moreover, some specialists, notably artillerymen, were present in the army of the Arab Revolt, led by the Hashemites. The overall weakness was due to a shortage of troops, obliging the French Command to give priority to other fronts in France as well as in the Balkans.

Linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, Africa and Asia, the Suez Canal is a major pathway for the control of the Middle East. During the 20th century, it was one of the maritime routes that brought to the fore the most passions, geopolitical conflicts and economic stakes internationally and regionally. During the two world wars, it became essential to the mastery of the Mediterranean. From the 1950s to the 1970s, it concentrated regional tensions both as a symbol of decolonization in a Cold War context and a military front in the Arab-Israeli wars. Finally, the Suez Canal represents a prime factor for the stability of Egypt, on the one hand, as an emblem of its political restoration and economic independence, on the other, as a focus of tension in an area dominated by oil issues and faced with risks of terrorism and piracy.

The Middle East was one of the theatres of military operations during the Second World War. The conflict revealed the highly strategic dimension of the region; it was the crossroads of communication between three continents and subject to the rival ambitions that recent oil discoveries had sharpened. Since 1939, the Axis Powers had planned a partition of the Middle East and North Africa. During a second phase, from the conferences of Teheran in 1943 and Yalta in 1945, the Middle East became the object of intense rivalry between the winners seeking “zones of influence”. The purpose of this article is to shed light on this period, and on the geopolitics of the Great Powers in the Middle East, particularly in the Arabian Peninsula, a centerpiece of regional politics since the Roosevelt-Ibn Seoud Summit in February 1945.

Starting from an analysis of the 1922 House of Lords debate on the Mandate on Palestine, this paper proposes a reading of the history of the transformation of Palestine based on three structuring moments: 1917-1922, 1947-1949, and 1989-93. The rules of the game that were set during each of these moments have predetermined the range of possible outcomes for the following decades. Each moment is characterized by a different recourse to international law by the Zionist movement, then by Israel: at first, a legitimation of the project by an indirect recourse to international law, via the mandatory power; then a selective recourse to international law as a State actor; and finally a bypassing of international law by a removal of the negotiating process from the realm of the UN.

Arab nationalism, the dominant political current a mere generation ago, was supplanted by Islamism. The ideas of nationality, even of the nation-state, seem to have become outdated. Yet, governing Tunisia and Egypt between 2011 and 2013 proved detrimental to Islamism; failure and rejection were unusually swift. In the meantime, the problems and challenges that nationalism confronted – such as the struggle for independence, unity, modernization and development – remain unresolved. Insofar as they are still topical, the historical experience of Arab nationalism has not lost its relevance. This article revisits its attempt to achieve advances on the four basic fronts previously referred to. Arab nationalism was an agent in the quest for progress, modernity and emancipation. Although it is possible that it has definitely been relegated to the past, the fact that the aspirations it embodied did not materialize renders its resurgence conceivable.