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newly established League of Nations in July 1922, along with a declaration of a strictly limited independence for Egypt and Iraq. Against such a background of foiled political aspirations, it is hardly surprising there were wide- scale revolts aimed at the colonial power in both Egypt (1919) and Iraq (1920), but they were soon quashed. Both these events have often been used by litterateurs writing in all genres as a symbol of resistance to foreign domination in any form and of the expression of the popular will.
Within such a scenario of political expediency and broken promises, the relationship between the Arab nations and the Western powers (British and Finance) during the interwar period was, not unnaturally, one of suspicion and distrust. In Palestine the British found themselves bogged down in a political quagmire largely of their own devising; what few attempts were made to reconcile the unreconcilable only succeeded in antagonizing both the indigenous Palestinian and the increasing number of Zionist immigrants. On the political front, Egypt and Syria were granted a modicum of independence: in the Arabian Peninsula the Saudi family was allowed to consolidate its control; in 1943 an agreement between Sunnis and Maronites in Lebanon led to the foundation of a Lebanese state, one that was based on a tragically fragile balance as the events of the last decade have shown all too clearly. However, for the majority of nations in the Arab world, the limited nature of the political gains during this period was abruptly underlined by the actions of the occupying powers at the outset of the Second World War. Whatever gestures of “independence” may have been granted were now abruptly s