Pan-Arabism is an ideological movement that supports the political, social and economic unification between Arab people and states in the Middle East. They defend a secular, socialist and anti-Western identity. They argue that by expelling the powers (and Israel) they will rebuild their states. Some believe that it is about an extension of the Umayyad (VIII Century) where only one authority governed from Pakistan to Spain. The idea was formulated for the first time in 1905 by Najib Azoury in The Awakening of the Arab Nation. Pan-Arabism was transformed into an executive idea led by Hussein Iben Ali, who according to his letters with McMahon (1915) intended to create a supra-national Arab reign. A more concise version of Pan-Arabism than that of Hussein Iben Ali was formed in the 1940s in Syria by Michel Aflaq, founder of the Baath party, according to Italian socialist and fascist elements. The Pan-Arab ideology was the base of many attempts of uniting the National Arab States into a political entity. The most famous one was the United Arab Republic, which united Egypt with Syria (between 1958 and 1961) and included Druze, Sunnis, Shiite and Christian Arabs.
The term Nasserism acted as a synonym for Pan-Arabism since it discussed the politics driven by Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt, a Pan- Arab radical. The Pan-Arab Party, Baath, is the current party governing in Syria. They also governed Iraq until the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime. The Pan-Arab movement reached its highest point in the 1960s decade, but the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War damaged deeply their support. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Pan-Arabism was substituted by the current Pan-Islamism. The decadent Arab League (founded in 1945) demonstrates the Pan-Arab ideals.