Évolution de la pensée politique arabe au Proche-Orient depuis juin 1967

Abstract

Trend in Arab political thought in the Near East since June 1967, by Olivier Carré Since the Six-Day War, the two most prominent lines of Arab political thought in the Near East have been, on the one hand, the Palestinian theories of the Arab revolution and, on the other, the Islamisation of the Arab socialism inherited from Nasser. The basic texts put out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Popular and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP), and also the more moderate studies carried out by intellectuals close to el Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organisation give a new lease on life to political susceptibilities characteristic of the Near East. The "Palestinian revolution" is deliberately seen as both local and provincial on the one hand, and as national-Arab and non-state on the other. In seeking Islamisation, Arab socialism has the benefit of the social and political thinking of the Moslem Brothers. Arab socialism and Islamic socialism come together, their priority being an economic project of obvious urgency. The political intransigeance and fanaticism of the Brothers has diminished. This reasonable resurgence of what is authentic in Islam is perhaps the opportunity for a fervour capable of mobilizing the Arab masses. Each of these trends contests, in its own way, the political thinking inherited from the West. Some Arab thinkers have used the catastrophe of June 1967 to carry out analyses of the basic structures of present-day Arab societies: community feeling, "poetic" mentality and, in particular, the original experience of national identity. Sociological reflections which are sufficiently independent of ideological pressures to help provide an understanding of a phenomenon such as "Arab nationalism", for example. [Revue française de science politique XXIII (5), octobre 1973, pp. 1046-1079.]