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 INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC

embarked upon its career as a fully independent state under its president Shukri al-Quwatli with hope and aspiration but with no rosy path in sight. It soon found itself beset with a multiplicity of thorny problems, both internal and external. There was first its relation with its twin sister Lebanon, with which it shared the common interests of tariff and customs duties, concessionary companies, the administration of antiquities and the guarding of the common frontier. With Turkey it wished to settle the problem of Alexandretta, now the province of Hatay. Vis-à-vis Jordan it faced the question of Greater Syria long and ardently advocated by King Abdullah. In 1946 the king declared that in furthering this project he was motivated not by dynastic interests but rather by the ideal of a Pan- Arab state nucleated around a joint Syria-Palestine unit. An influential Syrian group favoured the plan. Another, the People's Party, advocated the Fertile Crescent project, sponsored by Iraq, which would bring Syria, Iraq and Jordan into one entity as a preliminary step towards the realization of a Pan-Arab union. Iraqis could claim that their king as the son of Faysal was entitled to both thrones; but their treaty relations with Great Britain made Syrians hesitate.

Different from all these groups and distinct by itself was the Syrian Nationalist Party, which preached the doctrine that there was such a thing as a Syrian nationhood independent of and unrelated to Arabism. Syria, in their definition, included Lebanon. The organization was authoritarian in its administration, aggressive and determined in its propaganda, and soon won converts mainly from among the educated youth. Its founder, a Lebanese Christian who had Rh