The Establishment of the Arab Common Market and Its Failure: The Political Dimension and the Israeli Connection

Limor Lavi

The main concerns of this article are the motivations for the establishment of the Arab Common Market (ACM) in 1964, its implementation and the causes for its failure. I argue that the founding and development of the ACM are consistently linked to the emergence and unfolding of the economic relations between the European Common Market (EEC) and Israel from the late 1950s until the second half of the 1970s.
The main claim of this article is that a primary motive for the establishment of the ACM was Israel’s attempts at economic cooperation with Europe. The ACM was formed as part of the Arab boycott of Israel in order to keep this country from joining the EEC. Pan-Arab ideas that gained currency in the Arab world during the Nasserite era created a suitable atmosphere for the creation of the ACM. As for its failure, it was due not only to the weak economic basis of this union but also to the disillusionment of the Arab world with the pan-Arab ideals following the Arab defeat in 1967. In addition, political tensions between the Arab states and the decline in Egypt's regional status versus the rise in the status of the oil countries which were not members of the ACM were contributing factors.