The Arab world is not going to be the same without President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Perhaps the world too, for what happens next in the United Arab Republic can have momentous repercussions beyond the confines of West Asia. Political firebrand though he was when he seizes the reins of power in his country in 1954, Nasser mellowed with the years and developed into a statesman of international stature and a powerful force for moderation in the highly volatile and trigger-happy Arab world. His fellow Arabs have many things to be grateful to him for, but his greatest service to them was that he inculcated in them a sense of common identity and gave them leadership at a time of defeat and despair. Though he had to learn it the hard way, he was the only revolutionary Arab leader to realise that pushing Israel into the sea was not a practical proposition and it would be best for the Arabs to accept that country as a fact of life, albeit an unpleasant one. It was this realisation that made him agree to negotiations with Israel on the basis of the American peace proposals, a decision which needed great courage on his part because some of his closest Arab allies and the Palestinian guerilla organisations, which he himself had done much to foster, were thirsting for war and not for a negotiated settlement. His premature death at this critical juncture, when the negotiations for a settlement are stalemated, when the militant Palestinian guerillas are straining at the leash, and when China and other outside elements are trying to fish in the troubled waters, throws the whole West Asian problem into the melting pot again.
