Abstract

The prevailing belief among many contemporary Middle-Eastern scholars is that the pioneer of neutralism in Egypt and the Arab world was Jamal cAbd al-Nasir. This article disputes this common wisdom and argues that the last Wafd government (1950-1952) preceded Nasir in formulating and implementing a policy of neutralism. Wafdist neutralism, however, did not emerge out of the blue. In fact, the ideological seeds of neutralism, as this article shows, had already been planted in Egyptian soil in the early 1940s by elements of the Egyptian left. Ideological and political cooperation between the Wafd's left wing and prominent circles from the Egyptian left bore dividends when the former, represented by Muhammad Salah al-Din, the last Wafdist-Foreign Minister, were to have a great influence on the formulation and realization of Egypt's policy of neutralism.

IN: British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1 (2003), pp. 5-24.

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/doSearch?AllField=“The+Egyptian+Left+and+the+Roots+of+Neutralism+in+the+Pre-Nasserite+Era”