Bloudan Conference of 1937

[2] The Arab Higher Committee originally petitioned the British Mandate administration to hold the conference in Jerusalem, but the request was rejected and the small town of Bloudan was chosen instead.

In a sign of further pan-Arab support for the conference, solidarity messages and telegrams were sent by Ahmad al-Sabah, the Emir of Kuwait and by Islamic-oriented groups from several Egyptian cities and towns, as well as from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.

[5] The French Mandate government of Lebanon opposed Lebanese participation in the conference, with the pro-government newspaper stating it was in the country's interests not to antagonize the Jews or the Arabs alike.

[8] Fu'ad Mufarrij, a leading delegate at the meeting, believed the Bloudan Conference was an expression of the aspirations and goals of the Arabs as well as a major step to further develop programs to achieve those aims.

However, Lebanese historian Raghid al-Solh believed the Bloudan Conference and other pan-Arab conferences held after it during the late 1930s, focused specifically on the Palestine issue and only sought to consolidate the political status quo in the region in which Iraq and Transjordan leaned towards the Hashemite vision of a limited federal Arab union, an idea the British sympathized with, while Syria, Lebanon and Egypt each held their own initiatives.