The defeat of Egypt and Syria in the 1967 is often described as a deathblow to pan-Arabism, and it did indeed gravely undermine the regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Egyptians, Syrians and Palestinians had in fact already begun to shift towards narrower nation-state nationalism even before the 1967 war, which merely confirmed this reorientation.

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. He has taught at the Lebanese University and the American University of Beirut. He is a past President of the Middle East Studies Association. His books include The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (2006); and Sowing Crisis: American Dominance and the Cold War in the Middle East (2009).

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