Nevertheless, in spite of the obvious
diminution in the calls for unity, Arabism continued to express itself in a variety
of ways, for example by the joint action to expel Egypt from the Arab League
after its peace treaty with Israel in 1979, or the support given to Iraq by Egypt and Jordan during its long war with Iran from 1980 to 1988. In each case, the
unity of the Arab ranks was broken, the first time by Egypt, the second by Syria,
who sided with Iraq’s adversary, Iran. But in each case, too, the ties of Arabism
were strong enough to encourage a high degree of cooperation between the
great majority of the other Arab states.
The same tendencies were reinforced in the 1970s by the oil boom, which
encouraged a whole new breed of schemes of intra-Arab cooperation based on the
planned redistribution of wealth from the richer countries to the poorer in the
interests of the more rapid economic development of the Arab region as a whole.
Even more important were the decisions to use oil revenues in support of the socalled
‘front line’ states in the wars against Israel and to bolster the resolve of those
opposed to the Camp David agreement of 1978. As a result, Syria was promised
$1.8 billion a year for ten years, Jordan $1.2 billion and the PLO and the
Palestinians of the occupied West Bank and Gaza $150 million each.27 However, it
should also be noted that, as a result of falling oil revenues, the financial demands
of the Iraq/lran war and the changes in political relationships between donors and
recipients, it is very unlikely that all this money was actually delivered