Middle East Conflict Primary Sources | Speech to the Officers' Club

Excerpts from Gamal Abdel Nasser's Speech to the Officers' Club
(April 25, 1959)

Speech given in Cairo, Egypt
Reprinted in The Arab States and the Arab League: A Documentary
Record
Published in 1962

"The obliteration of Arab nationalism from any Arab country means that our turn will come to defend nationalism in our country."

Well before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, a vast empire of southwest Asia, northeast Africa, and southeast Europe that reigned from the thirteenth century to the early twentieth century, in 1918, Arabs in the Middle East had dreamed that they would attain political independence, perhaps in a single state encompassing the entire Arabian peninsula. Husayn Ibn Ali (1852–1931)—who held the title of Sherif of Mecca, making him the leading Muslim religious figure on the Arabian peninsula—led an Arab...