In Ecclesiastes it is written that there is nothing new under the sun. This certainly seems to apply to ideology in the Middle East. Ed Husain writes at National Review Online (reposted at RealClearWorld) that the Al-Qaeda jihadis in Syria are now promoting the concept of Bilad al-Sham literally the country of the North (al-Sham is also another term for Damascus) or Greater Syria. Bilad al-Sham consists of all the countries of the Levant and the interior behind them: Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. Husain writes that Syria could wind up as Al-Qaeda's first Sunni Arab base in the Middle East if they are successful.
It was first promoted as an ideology by King Abdullah I of Transjordan who dreamed of creating a Greater Syria under his control and so began by conquering the West Bank during the 1948 war and adding it to the East Bank to form the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. This was after he made a pact with the Israeli government through Golda Meir, who traveled to Amman in disguise to meet with him. Journalist Sandra Mackey wrote in Passion and Politics that there was a joke in Amman that Abdullah's one-eyed cat would yawn every time he mentioned Greater Syria or Bilad al-Sham (maybe the cat like the Hashemite monarchs was bilingual). He never got any further than that and the concept went out of favor with his grandson King Hussein, who did not want to alarm his Western patrons or Israel.
