The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict
Page 3
Explaining the Sea Change
Close Enough for the Israelis
Palestinian Support Eroding
Arafat Loses a Friend
A Bird in Hand
Part 7: Why Can’t We All Get Along?
22 The Oldest City’s New Rulers
Chipping In for Peace
Money from the West
Pittance from the Arabs
Talk Is Cheap
The Slippery Slope Toward Statehood
Threats Posed by a Palestinian State
Stimulating the Arab States
Israel and Jordan Shake on It
Roadblock in Damascus
The Economic War Continues
A Jewish Extremist Sets Off More Violence
Gaza and Jericho First
Syria Doesn’t Budge
Big Day for the Little King
Oslo II
The Palestinian Authority Emerges
“Peace” Doesn’t Quiet Arafat
23 The Shot Heard ’Round the World
The Unthinkable Happens
Killed by Amir—and Hot Politics
Funeral for a Hero
Assad Overplays His Hand
Stopping Peace in Its Tracks
Terrorism Hurts Peres’s Campaign
Israel Turns Right
The Thirteen Percent Solution
Clinton Asks, Wye Not?
Arafat’s Dream Approaches Reality
A Palestinian State Is Inevitable
24 O Jerusalem!
If I Forget Thee
A City Divided
Denial and Desecration for Jews
Christian Restraints
Jerusalem Is Unified
Freedom of Religion
For Muslims
For Christians
Civil Liberties for Palestinians
Arab East Jerusalem?
Religion and Politics Mix
Hopes for Their Flag
For Jews: Not Negotiable?
Congress Versus the President
25 Arabia and Beyond
A Bad Breakup
Dividing the Middle East
From Faisal to the United Nations
Palestine Influences Iraqis
Rise and Fall of the King
Iraq Takes a Baath
Then Came Saddam
Evildoers
Inspection Games
Grave Threats
Unfriendly Friends
Get Out of Town by Sundown
Saddam Is Trapped
This Is Winning?
Taking Control
The First Domino?
Democracy in the Middle East
Iran Resists Change
Greater and Lesser Syria
Promises, Promises
Tumultuous Times
Moving to the Other Side
Musical Governments
Assad Takes Command
Hama Rules
Syria Loses Its Patron
26 Shifting Arabian Sands
Egypt’s Internal Conflict
Revolutionary Tidings
All for One—as Long as It’s Nasser
Opposition to Israel Unites the Arabs
Enter Sadat
Uncertain Succession
Transjordan: Churchill’s Baby
Hussein Takes the Reigns
Jordan Becomes Vital
Losing to Israel
The PLO Attempts a Coup
Hussein Survives Again
Jordan Loses the West Bank Again
Lebanon?s Fragile Family
Careful with Israel
Religion and Politics
A New Imbalance
Lebanon Goes to Pieces
Christians Versus Muslims and Palestinians
Syria Seizes Its Opportunity
Under Syria’s Thumb
Saudi Arabia: From Arabian Nights to Statehood
Oil!
Money Starts to Flow
A New King
Fence-Sitting
Arab Threats
27 Middle East Terrorism and Its Victims
Who Is a Terrorist?
Terror Out of Palestine
Something Arabs Agree Upon
Arafat Is Born
Turning Defeat into Victory
Arafat Takes Command
Terror Takes Flight
An Olympic Bloodbath
Israelis Killed, More Taken Hostage
A Fiasco
Redemption at Entebbe
The PLO Gets Political
Americans Meet the Terrorists in Lebanon
Peace Goes Overboard
Pan Am
The PLO Goes Legit, Sort Of
Palestinian Fundamentalists
Terror Strikes America
A New and More Dangerous Terrorist
9/11
The United States Fights Back
Israel Takes Terrorists Out
28 So Close, Yet So Far
Another President, Another Summit
Sharon Visits the Temple Mount
Blood and Tears
Back to Washington
Sharon the Phoenix
Israel Turns Right Again
Mitchell Reports
Human Bombs
It?s a Hit
You Go First
Arafat’s Revolving Door
Israel’s Defensive Shield
Ending the Siege
Reshuffling the Palestinian Deck
Bush Has a Vision
29 Mapping the Road to Peace
The Quartet Steps In
Tracking Performance
You Go First
Fences and Neighbors
Making Terrorism a Challenge
Israel?s Court Martial
Israel Is Called on the International Carpet
Bad Choices
Israel’s Options Narrow
The Population Bomb
Talk, Talk, Talk
Let’s Disengage
Should We Stay or Should We Go?
Bush Backs Israel
The Money Trail
Arafat?s Final Days
Arafat?s Death Changes (Almost) Everything
Mutual Engagement
Trouble on the Homefront
30 Waiting for the Messiah
The Oil Weapon Is Sheathed
Thirst for War
Armageddon?
Ayatollahs with Nukes
Impotent Inspectors
Osirak Redux?
Biochemical Warfare
Building a Better Mousetrap—or Missile
Peace in Our Time?
Appendixes
A Timeline of Middle East History
B Bibliography
Index
Foreword
These days we are forced to think about the Middle East nearly every day. Four years ago, the World Trade Center was destroyed by Middle Eastern terrorists, and since then young men and women have been shipped off to cities we can no more easily pronounce than locate on a map. Suddenly, we stop to wonder. What’s eating those nations over there? Why can’t they just settle in with the evening sitcoms, call a meeting the next morning, and split the difference?
But what’s really amazing about the Middle East is that even the experts, officials, and journalists who get paid to think about it all the time find it just as baffling.
The answers to these questions lie far beyond the events of 9/11. In fact, the West has a long and richly documented history of not having a gosh-darn clue about the Middle East, from Beirut to the Persian Gulf. This goes back to 1947, when the United Nations tried to divide British Mandate Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, and thereby solve the dispute between the two communities. Instead, the move set off the longest and bloodiest war in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
As observers, we all bring a certain amount of baggage to our study of these events. Those who see the Middle East as a perennial powder keg, with ancient, hopelessly opposed religious forces fighting to the death, are caught off guard when diplomatic breakthroughs actually work. At the same time, those who apply modern, user-friendly catch phrases such as “border disputes” or “struggle for independence” are stumped when homemade economic and political answers fail, even fanning the flames of violence.
That is why this book does the impossible. Dr. Bard has created a volume that truly unravels the Middle East, taking apart the history, theology, archeology, and geo-politics that converge so dangerously in the sound bites and suicide bombs.
As we witness the erosion of the lines that shaped the twentieth century, it is increasingly necessary to break down a remaining wall: the myths and confusion that prevent the West from understanding the Middle East. This volume is a refreshing eye-opener.
—Jeff Helmreich
Jeff Helmreich is an award-winning journalist, who has written columns on the Middle East and related topics for the Los Angeles Times, the Jerusalem Post, and the Psychoanalytic Review. He has interviewed dozens of Middle Eastern political leaders, including Yasser Arafat, Benjamin Netanyahu, Shimon Peres, the late King Hussein of Jordan, and the Jordanian Hamas leader Ibrahim Ghousheh.
Introduction
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Middle East Conflict, Third Edition, doesn’t go back to the beginning of time, but almost. Starting with the time of Abraham, the book traces the origins of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as the wars between the peoples of the Middle East that began in biblical times and continue to the present.
A book of this length cannot possibly cover every aspect of the region’s history in detail or all the countries that make up the modern Middle East, but you’ll get the basics and then some. You’ll learn about some of the greatest empires in world history—the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Muslims, and Turks. Many of these peoples ruled for centuries and then disappeared. The Jewish people, the least powerful of all and among the most persecuted, ironically, are the only of the ancient peoples to have survived to the present.
Although they never had an empire, the Jews did once rule a great kingdom, which was eventually dissolved because of internal dissension and then was gobbled up by its avaricious neighbors. Roughly two centuries later, however, the Jewish state was reborn in Palestine—a miracle for the Jews and a nightmare for the Arabs, which rekindled a near-century-old conflict.
But this is not a book simply about politics and military battles. Religion is a crucial element that has shaped the beliefs, policies, and behavior of the region’s peoples from the days of ancient Egypt. Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem became focal points of religious faith and, in Jerusalem’s case especially, a geographical center of conflict.
Much of this book is concerned with the hostility between the Jews and Arabs, but it also documents the long history of disputes among Muslims and Arab states. The Arab-Israeli conflict is often characterized as the source of instability in the region, but the truth is that the Middle East was a tumultuous place long before there was an Israel. Even today, it is rife with dissensions unrelated to the Jewish state—just look at the internal upheaval in Syria, the terrorist attacks carried out by Saudis against the Saudi government, and the U.S. war with Iraq and its aftermath.
Studying the Middle East’s past is essential for understanding its present. The schisms in Islam help explain some of the disputes between Muslim nations such as Iran and Iraq. And historical arguments over borders are at the root of longstanding disagreements between countries in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
The Middle East is important today because it’s the location of the world’s largest known source of petroleum reserves. The United States considers the protection of Western oil supplies one of its vital interests. The United States also has a longstanding special relationship with Israel that has led it to devote a disproportionate share of its foreign aid and diplomatic resources to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The proliferation of weapons, particularly chemical, biological, and possibly nuclear ones, makes the Middle East one of the most dangerous places on earth. And, as Americans discovered on September 11, the threats of the radicals in that region can reach us here at home.
The Middle East is a loosely defined region, and many consider it to extend from Turkey at one end to Morocco at the other. But in this book, I focus only on those countries that are most closely associated with the region’s conflicts: Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen. In no way am I implying by this that the history of the other countries is any less interesting or important.
What You’ll Find in This Book
Part 1, “In the Beginning,” introduces you to the Middle East and explains why this part of the world is important and receives so much attention. It also traces early Jewish history, the establishment of the Jewish kingdoms, and the dispersion of the Jewish people.
Part 2, “Religion and Politics Mix,” looks at the rise of Christianity and Islam and the expansion of the empires created under their banners. This section begins with the loss of Jewish power and ends with its renewal through the Zionist movement.