(MME) Modern Middle East Conflict and Change Lesson

Modern Middle East Conflict and Change

As the birthplace of one of the world’s first civilizations, the Middle East has a long history full of regional conflicts. In fact, the region is the home to the longest religious conflict the world has known. The Middle East’s tumultuous history makes it a great region to use in the study of our theme Conflict and Change.

Establishment of Israel

Long before the common era (the time period in which we live), a civilization formed between the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Eventually, a patriarch living in the region named Abraham emerged and taught the people there to worship God. The people of the region became known as Jews and they considered many sites in the region and particularly in the city of Jerusalem, to be holy.

Eventually, the Babylonians conquered the southern part of the Jewish territory and destroyed the Jewish temple. As part of conquering the territory, the Babylonians forced the Israelites (Jews) into exile. The Jewish people were called Israelites because they were children of Israel (a descendent of the founding patriarch, Abraham). After seventy years, the Israelites were allowed to return to their holy lands. Once they returned to power, they rebuilt the temple, but their rule would not last.

In 63 BC, the Jews (Israelites) were once again conquered, but this time by the Romans who incorporated their lands into a territory called Palestine. The Romans did not immediately force the Jews into exile. Instead, the Jews were allowed to continue living in their homeland and practicing their religion. An uprising against the Romans eventually caused the Romans to exile the Jews from the area and destroy the temple they had built. From that point forward, the Jewish people no longer had a nation that they could call their own. Instead, they lived throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia as a minority ethnic group. This scattering of Jewish people in exile became known as "the diaspora."

As a minority group, Jews around the world found their rights and opportunities limited by many of the governments under which they lived. Nowhere was this truer than in Eastern Europe. By the 1800s, a movement had emerged called Zionism. The Zionists advocated for the Jewish people to be allowed to return to the lands they considered holy in order to create their own nation. Zionists believed that the Jews of the world would only be truly safe if they were allowed to resettle Palestine and develop a homeland. At that time the movement began, Palestine was still a part of the Ottoman Empire, and Jewish immigration there was limited. At the end of World War I, Palestine became a British mandate and Jewish immigration was allowed to increase. In 1917, the British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour stated that Britain would work toward the creation of a nation for the Jewish people. By the end of Great Britain's mandate, one out of every three people living in Palestine was Jewish, but Palestine was not a Jewish state. Instead, Great Britain and other nations considered Palestine to be an Arab country; an Arab country that allowed and protected the rights of its Jewish minority. Although immigration to Palestine increased during this time, there were still many Jews who lived throughout Europe - an area that was increasingly anti-Semitic. As the Germans conquered much of Europe, the Jews living under German rule suffered increasing persecution. As you probably know, this German land aggression led to World War II and the eventual discovery of the German atrocities toward minority groups.

At the end of World War II, people around the world learned the fates of millions of European Jews. Under Hitler's authority, Germany had exterminated approximately six million Jews along with millions of other people deemed unworthy of life. The genocide of these people is known as the Holocaust. Those Jewish people who survived the Holocaust looked for greater protections and often chose to immigrate to Palestine. This increased their demand, as well as the demand of others, to make the region a Jewish state. Arabs living in Palestine found themselves in a rather unusual predicament. For the first time ever, it seemed that the world supported a Jewish state being located were Arab Palestinians had lived for thousands of years. The Arab Palestinians pushed against this decision.

In 1947, Great Britain threw its hands up in frustration as to how to handle Palestine- should it become a Jewish state to ensure that nothing like the Holocaust could happen again OR should the Arab Palestinians continue their rule over the region as long as they protected the rights of the Jews living there? Great Britain handed the problem of "one land- two people" over to the newly-formed United Nations. In the end, the United Nations decided to divide Palestine. Fifty-six percent of the territory would become a Jewish state and the rest of the land would remain an Arab state while the holy city of Jerusalem (which is of religious significance to both groups) would be ruled by the United Nations itself.

In 1947 when 60% of Palestine's population was Arab and only 40% was Jewish. The United Nations' decision had given the majority of Palestine to the minority of people living there. The moment the British troops and government left Palestine, Arab armies marched. They had never agreed to the United Nations' decision and were determined to end the creation of a Jewish state where they lived.

Continuing Conflicts

Palestinian-Israeli

The first conflict following the creation of Israel was the 1948 war. During that conflict 700,000 to 800,000 Arab Palestinians fled the new nation after seven months of fighting. From that time on, many Arabs living in the Middle East came together on the single issue of ridding the area of Israel. Disputes over Israel's borders and the return of the Arab Palestinian refugees led to further conflicts between Israel and its neighbors. In 1956, Israel joined Great Britain and France in a war over the Sinai Peninsula with Egypt.

At the end of that conflict, the United Nations forced Great Britain, France, and Israel to remove their claims on the Sinai Peninsula. However, another war broke out again in 1967 between Israel and Egypt. The fighting this time lasted for six days. Known as the 6-Day War, the result was that Israel took control over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and the Arab territories of the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank. The fourth war between Israel and neighboring Arab countries occurred in 1973 as Egyptians and Syrians tried to reclaim the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights respectively.

At the time of the fourth Arab-Israeli War, the nation of Israel was only twenty-five years old. Each decade of its existence had contained a war that resulted in gaining more territory for Israel. But the cost was to further alienate Israel from its Arab neighbors. Then in 1979, the Israeli prime minister and the Egyptian president met in the United States and signed a peace treaty titled the Camp David Accords. The signatures on this treaty brought an end to the fighting between Egypt and Israel and returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Israel's southwestern border was settled. However, disputes over Israel's other borders continued.

A group of Palestinians hoping to reclaim their homeland formed the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. Originally, the PLO wanted to completely rid the Middle East of Israel and return the land to Palestinian rule. Later, though, they decided to focus on forming a separate Palestinian nation located in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The PLO built up its operations outside of Israel in neighboring countries. In 1982, Israel attacked Lebanon, their neighbor to the north, in an attempt to settle its northern border and conquer the PLO bases of operation located in Lebanon. The attack was not popular with most Israelis, but the fighting continued for three years while Israeli armies occupied Lebanon. Eventually, the Israeli army pulled out of Lebanon unsuccessful in erasing the existence of the PLO.

 

With the amount of Palestinian land shrinking in Israel, the PLO encouraged Palestinians living within Israel to "rise-up" against the Israeli government. These uprisings, known as intifadas, occurred sporadically over the years in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The first major intifada happened in 1987 and lasted for years. This, more than anything else, caused the Israeli government to seriously consider the role of Palestinian nationalism within Israel. Once again, an Israeli prime minister sat at a table with the leader of an enemy force. In 1992, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin met with PLO leader Yassir Arafat to sign a series of agreements that established Palestinian rule in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. Another peace treaty was signed between Israel and Jordan, Israel's neighbor to the west. Rabin and Arafat have rewarded with the Nobel Peace Prize that year and people around the world felt that they were witnessing the end of hostilities between Israelis and Arabs. Perhaps the two people would be able to live in one land after all.

The optimism soon died out when Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli fundamentalist in 1995. The new, more conservative leaders of the Israeli government were unable to get along with the PLO. They ignored the agreements reached between Rabin and Arafat and encouraged an increase of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Another intifada was unleashed in 2000. This new uprising led to an increase in violence previously not seen between Palestinians and the Israeli government, with the use of both Palestinian suicide bombings and Israeli military strikes in civilian areas. The world watched as the two people tore each other apart over the one land at increasingly desperate measures.

However, it was not just the "two people." For decades, the PLO had been in charge of the Arab fight for a Palestinian state. But those decades had passed without much success and younger generations began looking for new leaders to help in the Palestinian fight. Groups like Hamas and Hezbollah emerged to take the place of the weakening PLO and its aging leader, Yassir Arafat. With Arafat's death in 2005, these groups found their path to leading the Palestinian cause unblocked and stepped up their attacks on Israel. In 2006, Israel again attacked Lebanon- this time in an attempt to annihilate the Hezbollah that had launched attacks on Israel from within Lebanon. The war only lasted 34 days and yet thousands died and over a million Lebanese and Israeli people temporarily lost their homes. But most importantly, nothing political changed because the war ended in a stalemate. Two years later, Israel attacked the Gaza Strip in an effort to end rocket launches into Israel from there. Again, there were disastrous results. The fighting only lasted 22 days, but demolished Gaza's infrastructure system and killed thousands of Palestinians resulting in a United Nations investigation into Israel's conduct.

More than half of a century has passed since the world recognized Israel as a nation and the first Arab-Israeli War was fought. Yet the questions over whether or not Israel will ever be able to exist in peace with its neighbors and whether or not Palestinians will ever be granted a sovereign nation continue to this day.

Sunni-Shia

Although Arabs are usually Muslim (people who practice the Islamic religion), there are different sects of the Islamic faith and the denominations have different beliefs about how to practice Islam. The two most common sects of Islam are the Sunni and the Shi'a. Originally, the Sunni and the Shi'ite Muslims split over how to select the leader of Islam. The Sunni Muslims felt that Muslim leadership could be passed along to elected Muslims; whereas the Shi'ite Muslims considered only descendants of Muhammad to be the rightful leaders of Islam. As you can see, different sects or divisions can exist within a group of people who share the same overarching religious beliefs. The division between these two groups has deepened over the years as the two were often forced to live in the same nation and fought for control over the nation shared. This is what happened in Lebanon during its Civil War. Another example of enmity between the two sects could be seen in Iraq. Prior to Saddam Hussein's fall from power in Iraq in 2003, the minority population of Sunni Muslims ruled over the majority population of Shi'ites. Hussein was able to keep control by ruling with an iron fist over the different sects of Muslim Arabs in Iraq. However, Arabs are not the only ethnic group living in Iraq.

Kurdish Nationalism

The Kurds are the largest non-Arab minority ethnic group in Iraq today. This ethnic group has existed for thousands of years but has never had its own sovereign nation. Instead, they have lived in Kurdistan ("land of the Kurds") which is a region that is located within the nations of Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. The majority of Kurds actually live within Turkey's borders and they make up about one-fifth of Iraq's population. Kurds share a belief in Islam with their Arab neighbors; but their language, Kurdish, is closer to Persian than Arabic. Since the creation of the Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish governments, Kurds have fought for their own independent nation. Their attempts, however, have met with no success and they continue to be a fairly oppressed minority within Iraq, Iran, and Turkey.

US Involvement

Click on each topic to learn more.

 

Conflict and Change Challenge

 

Take Away

 

Southwest Asia, also known as the Middle East, has a long rich history dating back to the birth of civilizations. Looking at just the recent years specifically the post-World War II era, the Middle East has seen drastic changes not only with its geography but also with its politics and culture as well. Its ongoing conflicts have made it forefront in the news. It is important to understand how the tensions that exist today began and what the world is doing to solve them.

IMAGES CREATED BY GAVS