Post-war developments in the Middle East (1945–2000)

The authority Britain was granted by the League of Nations in 1922 to govern Palestine.

Post-WWII exhaustion, financial strain, and rising Jewish–Arab violence made continued British rule unsustainable.

Dividing Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem under international control.

David Ben-Gurion, on 14 May 1948.

The displacement of roughly 700,000 Palestinian Arabs during and after the 1948–49 War, creating a lasting refugee crisis.

Israel declares independence (May 1948) → Arab states (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq) invade → disunited Arab forces are defeated → 1949 armistice leaves Israel controlling more land than the UN plan proposed.

To fund the Aswan Dam after the US and Britain withdrew financing, partly due to his Soviet-bloc arms deals and recognition of Communist China.

Superpower (US and USSR) pressure forced their humiliating withdrawal, showing they were no longer the Middle East's dominant powers, while boosting Nasser's Pan-Arab prestige.

Egypt's blockade of the Straits of Tiran, expulsion of UN peacekeepers, and troop build-up near Israel's border.

1948–49: Israel gains ~78% of Mandate Palestine; Jordan takes West Bank, Egypt takes Gaza. 1967: Israel additionally captures Sinai, Gaza, West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.

The idea that all Arab peoples should unite politically, an ideology boosted by Nasser's stand during the Suez Crisis.

The occupied territories captured in 1967 (Sinai, Gaza, West Bank, East Jerusalem, Golan Heights) became the central, unresolved issue in all future Arab–Israeli peace negotiations.

The belief that all Arab countries should unite politically as one people, rather than remain divided under separate, often Western-influenced, governments.

A 1958–1961 political union of Egypt and Syria under Nasser's presidency, formed to advance Pan-Arabism; it collapsed when Syria left after a military coup, resenting Egyptian domination.

Sadat's 'open door' economic policy from the 1970s that reversed Nasser's socialism, encouraging foreign investment and private business — it enriched a few but left many Egyptians poorer as subsidies were cut.

Mubarak (from 1981) kept the peace treaty with Israel but rebuilt Arab ties, and ruled cautiously through emergency law and one-party dominance rather than making dramatic reversals like Sadat did.

Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi's reform programme from 1963, including land redistribution, votes for women, and literacy campaigns — intended as reform 'without bloodshed'.

SAVAK was the Shah's secret police, used to crush political and religious dissent — its repression was a major cause of the resentment that fed into the 1979 Revolution.

A religious leader who became the figurehead of opposition to the Shah from exile; he returned to Iran in February 1979 after the Shah fled, and led the creation of an Islamic Republic.

Massive casualties on both sides, a devastated economy, no territorial change (stalemate), and the new Iranian regime used the war to unify the country and suppress remaining opposition.

A power-sharing system from the 1943 National Pact reserving the presidency for a Maronite Christian, the premiership for a Sunni Muslim, and the speakership for a Shia Muslim.

After being expelled from Jordan in Black September (1970–71), the PLO relocated to Lebanon and launched attacks on Israel from there, drawing Israeli invasions (1978, 1982) and deepening Lebanese divisions.

An agreement that rebalanced Lebanon's Confessional power-sharing formula to better reflect the growing Muslim population share, helping bring the civil war to an end in 1990.

Both used centralised, authoritarian control to drive rapid change, but Nasser pushed state socialism and Pan-Arabism while the Shah pushed westernizing capitalism — opposite ideological directions.