After the French imperialist troops in Syria finally left in
1946, formal political control over Syria was assumed by the Syrian Nationalist
Bloc/Kutla Bloc group of Syrian elite politicians. But although the “Kutla Bloc
maintained power under the guise of a parliamentary democracy led by” Syrian
President Shukri al-Quwatli, “the 1947 parliamentary election gave visible
indication of…increasing public disenchantment” in Syria “with the Kutla Bloc
politicians,” according to Trinity University Middle East History Professor
David Lesch’s Syria and the United States.
A political split then developed within the Kutla Bloc; and
members of the al-Quwatli regime’s ruling wing of the Kutla Bloc formed Syria’s
Nationalist Party, while members of the non-ruling, dissident faction of the
Kutla Bloc formed a second economically and politically conservative political
party, “Hizb al-Sha’b or Populist (People’s) Party in August of 1948,”
according to the same book.
The non-communist, but Pan-Arab nationalist,
anti-imperialist and secular Baath (a/k/a/ Arab Socialist Resurrection) party
that Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din Bitar had created in the 1940s also became
more active in Syria in 1947; and, following the United Nations’ November 1947
vote to partition Palestine and the Zionist movement’s establishment of the
State of Israel in Palestine in May 1948—that was strongly opposed by most
people in Syria—the Baath party organized protest demonstrations that expressed
support for Palestinian Arab national self-determination rights in Palestine.
For example, as Philip Khoury’s Syria and The French Mandate
recalled:
“…To mark the first anniversary of the 1947 United Nations
vote on the partition of Palestine, the Baath brought the students out on strike….Demonstrators
petitioned the Government demanding an immediate resumption of hostilities in
Palestine, the rejection of all alliances with foreign powers, and the
cancellation of a recent decree increasing the price of bread…”
In response, however, the Syrian “police reinforced by
gendarmeries used tear gas to disperse the crowd;” and when the student strikes
in support of Palestinian Arab national self-determination rights spread to
other towns in Syria, the following events happened in Syria in late 1948 and
early 1949, according to the same book:
“Police fired on mobs killing four people in Damascus. A
state of emergency was declared over the whole country, the army moving into
the capital with armored vehicles to impose a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew and to
prohibit gatherings of more than 3 persons.”
In response to the Zionist movement’s establishment of the
State of Israel in 1948 in Palestine and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands
of Palestinians from Palestine in the late 1940s, the civilian Syrian regime of
Nationalist Party leader al-Quwatli had joined other Arab regimes in
confronting militarily the Zionist movement’s military wing during the late
1940s Arab-Israeli War. But, as Syria and The United States
recalled, “the regime of Shukri al-Quwatli was utterly discredited by its
corrupt mishandling of a war that resulted in a humiliating defeat for Syria”;
and “the discontent among the populace and in the military created an opening
for the entrance of the army into Syrian politics with the overthrow of Quwatli
by General Husni al-Za’im in March 1949, a position from which they have yet to
retreat,” according to the same book.
The situation of Syrians of Jewish religious background also
worsened especially following the Zionist movement’s establishment of the State
of Israel in Palestine. As the Encyclopedia
Judaica noted:
“Of about 15,000 Jews in Syria in 1947, only about 5,300
remained in 1957. Most of them left during the 1940s...From 1948, the condition
of Syrian Jewry continued to decline… Jewish property was confiscated, and
Palestinian refugees were housed in the dwellings vacated in the Jewish
quarters of Damascus and Aleppo…In addition, various limitations were imposed
on them, in particular one forbidding them to leave the country…In March 1964,
a decree was enacted which prohibited Jews from traveling more than three miles
beyond the limits of their home towns….In 1968 the number remaining in Syria
was estimated at about 4,000. Most lived in Damascus
and Aleppo , and
belonged to the middle classes and the poor.”
Yet, as The Encyclopedia Judaica also noted,
between 1948 and 1968 the Syrians of Jewish religious background who lived in
Qamishli, Syria still “lived among Muslim Kurds, who were not hostile;” and the
Syrians of Jewish religious background who were “wealthy” generally “succeed in
escaping” from Syria after 1948, “sometimes even with their capital.”
Syria and The French Mandate also indicated some additional
reasons the civilian Syrian Nationalist Bloc’s regime that was established
after the 1946 French military withdrawal was not popular with the Syrian
military’s officer corps--that the newly independent civilian Syrian government
had inherited from the French authorities:
“[Syrian] nationalist leaders distrusted the [Syrian]
officer corps: they accused it of serving the French outright, or at least of
serving French interests by remaining aloof from the nationalist struggle.
After the French departed in 1946, one of the very first things the
independence government did was to assert its control over the army by bringing
it under civilian authority. It actually reduced the size of the army from
7,000 to 2,500 men between 1946 and 1948…The [Syrian] army’s reduction in size
at a time when war in Palestine loomed large on the horizon and the scandals
associated with the government’s inadequate provision of the army during that
war exacerbated civilian-military relations and contributed directly to the
army’s entrance into the Syrian political arena with the first coup in 1949.”
(end of part 13)
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