Arab Islamic Republic - Failure of The Djerba Declaration

Failure of The Djerba Declaration

As a consequence of the ideological differences, there was also a considerable divergence as to what the merger would look like. As understood by Bourguiba, the states themselves would not dissipate, but rather their borders would become "cooperatively permeable" through "functional integration," in a similar manner to the contemporary Arab Maghrib Union, formed over a decade later. Conversely, Gaddafi was more interested in a complete merging of Libya and Tunisia into the Arab Islamic Republic. He saw Libya as a revolutionary movement rather than a territorial state. Gaddafi felt that they were one people, and that the borders were only a product of the ruling elites and imperialist divides by conquerors.

Finally, there were the regional political difficulties. As has been mentioned before, Libyan-Egyptian relations were steadily deteriorating following 1973. In light of the reduced Egyptian threat, Algeria felt it no longer necessary and even undesirable to merge with Libya and was not in favour of Tunisia doing so either. Thus, within twenty four hours of the Republic's announcement, Algeria threatened Tunisia with military intervention if Tunisia went ahead with the unification. There were also accusations of Tunisian foreign ministers being bribed by Libya. Whatever the case may be, the unification of Libya never ended up happening and relations between the two countries steadily deteriorated.