Arab states frame irredentist annexation claims as reviving pre-imperial unity

Evidence

More troublesome are the cases where the claim is not to rectify but to remove the frontier and annex the entire country. This was the nature of the Iraqi claim to Kuwait, of which we have recently been reminded, but which was by no means new. According to this claim Kuwait was Iraq irredenta, part of Iraq unjustly separated by British imperialism. For a long time there was a similar Egyptian claim to the Sudan, but this now seems to have been abandoned. The Syrians maintain—though they do not always assert—their claim to Lebanon in its entirety, and not just to Lebanon but also to Greater Syria, including all the lands between Taurus and Sinai. The Moroccan claim to the former Spanish territories to the south is of the same nature. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1612

Categorization

• XREF: Complements the reader’s Said-adjacent cluster on how Middle East territorial logic was constructed; irredentism is a post-imperial riposte to imposed frontiers.