Now I am no Historian so the Biblical and Historical Origins of the Problems in the Middle East are to say the least some what beyond me.

Anyway for what its worth here is my stab at explaining the Middle East.

Tell me if I am wrong.

In light of the attacks of 9/11 the big question to answer was why.

Why do these people hate us so much.?

So much that they are willing to give their own lives simply to kill, to start a war, or make a statement.

The answer to this question truly lies in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East and the utter failure that Westernization has been in the Middle East.

As far as I can see the present day situation in Israel may be the most difficult political situation in world history.

It alone dates back to thousands of years before Christ when the Israelites left Egypt after two hundred years of bondage they began forty years of wandering the desert in which they encountered many enemy tribes such as their sworn enemies, the Amalekites.

While these days, the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict takes place at a domestic level, its roots, as well as the frequent failed attempts at peace that spanned the 20th century, stemmed from international interference and mismanagement.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been one of the defining political issues in the Middle East for decades.

Since its inception the State of Israel has been at war with the Arab countries surrounding it.

The ethnic conflict theory explains that it is not territory, politics, or economics that prevents the achievement of peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people’s, instead, it is a deep-seated hatred of one another that neither group can overcome.

Unless they do so by some miracle and form one nation (which will be the saving of the Middle East) there will be no coming back from a full scale perhaps nuclear war.

It is simplistic and self serving for political leaders in the West to tell us that the terrorists attacks happen because they “hate freedom,” or “hate our democratic values” or “they despise our love of liberty.” Many, in fact, hate what they perceive as materialistic Western values, but this is not what leads them to kill themselves in suicide bombings, or to murder thousands of innocent civilians it is the paranoid rhetoric about Western attacks against Islam elsewhere that is spreading from the religious fringe to the mainstream and now ISIS.

Indeed, the events of the past few years have broken the precarious old Middle East order without replacing it with a new order. And although rival
external and regional players have been pushing their own agendas for a new
regional order, none of them has prevailed. The competition among these rival visions and forces appears destined to continue in the years ahead.

So what is the middle east?  It would be easy to describe it as an area of the world, a simply a breeding ground for turmoil, and has been for centuries.

Now, however, the region can expansively be said to contain “the area from Libya E to Afghanistan, usually including Egypt, Sudan, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the other countries of the Arabian peninsula”so the Middle East can only be loosely defined, and it is important to know that these countries are separate and do not truly form one cooperative unit.

Within this vast area there are many different nationalities within their population including Arabians, Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanians, Egyptians, Saudi Arabians, and many more.

The most common religion found in the Middle East is Muslim. However not every Middle Easterner is Muslim, there are also other religions just as in any country such as Christian and Jewish.

So here is no set definition for the area known as the Middle East since shifts in global power over the years have affected the topography.

Many dynasties and kingdoms have ruled the area of what we now call the Middle East.

In almost all of the societies, it is the wealthier, educated, and a particular race or ethnicity that ruled. These positions were usually acquired through power, either by a civil war or an overthrow of the previous government.

Not every country mentioned above has the same access to the water sources, which will naturally cause problems. …. (Water Issues in the Middle East One would think there are enough conflicts to be had in the Middle East.)

Of the many conflicts that revolve around the area’s history, politics, religion, territory or ethnicity, one more can be added to the group: Water.

These societies all need water, but not all have the same resources to get to that water.

This is a hotbed of vice in this area as only a few of the countries in the Middle East have total control over their own water, leaving most of the others to depend on the graces of those few countries to manage their water magnanimously enough to supply them with what they need.

For example, Israel has control of the Golan, and Egypt of the Nile, and Kuwait of the Persian Gulf. Oil is in abundance, but only to a limited number of countries in the Middle East causing great economic disparity between those who have, and those who do not. Kuwait, having access to the Persian Gulf, produces a large supply of oil to international players. Given its high value internationally, and its worth.

But this is not the main reason behind the difficulties of bringing Peace to the Middle East.

A major source of conflict in the Middle East during the last fifty years has been the dispute between Arabs and Jews over Palestine.

For hundreds of years, the great majority of the people living in Palestine were Arabs. But at the end of the nineteenth century some Jews in Europe were becoming increasingly bitter about growing anti-Semitism. They started to talk about setting up a state of their own where they would be free from persecution. The conflict itself can be dated to 1948, when the state of Israel established independence, but the underlying problems responsible for the creation of Israel, and as a result, the conflict, can be traced back as far as the 19th century.

Now it far too difficult to track back through the centuries the History to the sorry state of the Middle East.

Lets just say its full of stories of betrayal. If you want one just look at what the British did with caretaker of Mecca Sharif Husayn in 1914.

Anyway its water under the bridge, but for any serious understanding it will have to be swum in.

We will put our toe in.  At the end of world war one when the Allies had secretly carved up most of the Middle East among themselves in what came to be known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement 1916 which I am sure you have all heard about.

No. Not surprised. It was a secret agreement between the British and French involving the partition of the ottoman empire.

It effectively handed over the control of Syria, Lebanon and Turkish Cilicia to the French and Plalestine, Jordon and areas around the Persian Gulf and Baghdad to the British. It was never completely fulfilled because Valdimir Lenin who was to have influence in Turkish Armenia and Northern Kurdistan took the hump and released it to the press.

Moving on.

The Arab League Secretary Azzam Pasha said this statement below on September 16, 1947, eight months before the state of Israel was established.

” But it’s too late to talk of peaceful solutions”

The Arabs held this mentality in a time when Israel was not yet a fact.

To Day there can be no solution to the Middle East until the Israelites and  Palestinian people come together. If they form separated states the war will go on and on.

At the moment we have numerous conflicts that have the potential to join up into a WAR.

Conflict: A state of disharmony between incompatible or antithetical persons, ideas, or interests; a clash.  War: A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties“

To stop this happening  America should set a time-table to withdraw its financial and military aid to Israel unless it offers a one nation solution giving equal right to all. The hatred of a few holds the hopes of many hostage.

There are more than seven million Muslims living in America what has Israel to fear.

I know that this is a very simplistic solution’s to a problem that has been festered for centuries and has now burst like a boil into a Barbaric group called ISIS.

Bombs and guns (which will swap hands) will no doubt change frontiers and kill many but they will not and can not eradicate ethnic conflicts that are well rooted in the world’s history and perhaps inherent in human nature.

Come on Israel extend the hand of peace and tear down the walls of occupation.

PS. You might wonder why I HAVE LEFT OUT recent Invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and all other recent developments. It seems to me that there is little point in highlighting the mistakes that have contributed to worsening of the present day state of play.  We will all have different fingers of blame to point whether they are pointed at Osama bin Laden, Bush, Blair, Bush, Saddam Hussein, Obama , Bashar al-Assad, Hamid Karzi, over the centuries we HAVE ALL CONTRIBUTED.