Pan-Arabism’s own logic undercut the moral force of Arab claims against Israel.

Evidence

Arab spokesmen were also becoming aware of a theoretical weakness in the pan-Arab position affecting their stand against Israel. If the Arabs were indeed one nation and the Arab lands one country, then they had suffered the loss only of a province and a very small one at that, compared with the enormous area of the greater Arab fatherland. The loss of territory and movement of people were far smaller and less significant than those endured by the Poles, Germans, Indians and Pakistanis between 1945 and 1947—that is, in the brutal aftermath of the Second World War and in the years immediately preceding the first Arab- Israel conflict. If, on the other hand, the Palestinians were a nation and not merely a small part of one, then their position vis-a`-vis Israel was substantially different. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 922

Categorization

• XREF: This is an internal, self-corroborating logic of the pan-Arab position that complicates the standard ‘Zionism won by force’ narrative — relevant to the Said cluster on how Arab claims were framed and delegitimized.
• SEED: A contradiction inherent to expansive territorial nationalism: the larger the claimed nation, the smaller any single province’s loss appears — usable angle on why pan-ideologies tend to weaken rather than strengthen particularist claims.
• DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely counterintuitive tension: a maximalist territorial claim (all Arabs are one nation) paradoxically deflates the grievance over a specific lost province, while a minimalist claim (Palestinians are their own nation) strengthens it. The frame you choose for identity inversely shapes the weight of your loss.