Nationalism is almost never an unalloyed positive force. Just as the structures it seeks to supplant (typically 'empires') were never an unalloyed negative force.
This is as true in the Middle East — Zionism, Arab and Kurdish nationalisms etc — as elsewhere. History is never a simplistic morality play in spite of concerted efforts in the contemporary world to portray it as such.
The most obvious flaw in most expressions of nationalism is how easily it becomes a piggyback prop for more mean spirited and ultimately extremist modes of thought.
In the case of Arab Nationalism it is easy to trace the pattern, from resistance to both long-standing Ottoman domination and the European interference of the early twentieth century to a set of ideals that had been distorted by exposure to militant Islamism, itself a religious impulse contaminated by twentieth century secular western totalitarianism.
The end result is a form of nationalism which regards Arab sovereignty as inextricably Islamic sovereignty, constitutionally unable to share or even properly coexist with non-Islamic peoples and their own national aspirations. The deeper history of Arab presence in the Levant is one of conquest and colonialism, yet modern Arab nationalism not only denies this, it turns this denial into something SACRED.
And therewith issues which need to be pondered carefully when not picked apart, compromises always on the table, become matters of almost childlike commitment and obstinacy.
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