Main Causes of the Middle East Crisis
It is a cliché to say that Middle East has always been in crisis. To a certain extent, it is true that the Middle East, as a crossroads of cultures, has seen more than its share of conflict. In ancient times, the Middle East was a battleground between major powers such as Egypt, Babylon, and the Hittites. In the Middle Ages, the Middle East was the site of intense fighting between Christian and Muslim forces for control over the area popularly known as the Holy Land. As the area where the Abrahamic religions were born, and where trade routes from Africa, the Mediterranean, and Asia meet, this piece of land has been strategically vital for centuries. However, the current Middle East crisis has its roots in the decisions made as World War I reached its end.
From the Middle Ages down to the end of the First World War, the Middle East had been under the control of the Ottoman Empire, which administered territories as diverse as Egypt, Lebanon, Mesopotamia, Syria, and the Holy Land. But the collapse of Ottoman power led to the collapse of Ottoman control over these territories, beginning with Egypt in the 1800s and including all of Turkey’s Middle Eastern territories by the end of World War I.
Into this power vacuum stepped the European imperial powers, notably France and Britain. Together, they used the League of Nations to divide up Middle Eastern provinces into artificially defined countries, many of which the League gave to them to administer. France administered Syria and Lebanon, for example, while Britain administered the newly formed Iraq and Palestine, which included modern Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories. Britain also helped to set up the Saudi monarchy to rule the Arabian Peninsula. These decisions led directly to the modern Mideast crisis.
The root of the problem emerges from the fact that the boundaries the Europeans carved were not representative of traditional ethnic, religious, national, or political divisions. Consequently, the populations of the new territories were primed before conflict because they were neither homogenous nor part of traditional political structures. For example, the British Mandate of Iraq combined territory from three traditional Ottoman provinces into one new state, one without any previous tradition of cooperation. Today, the Iraqi state threatens to break down into its component parts.
A second factor affecting the Mideast crisis was the British decision to resettle European Jews in the Mandate of Palestine, which Britain decided to make into a Jewish homeland. By changing the ethnic and religious composition of the Mandate without including its current residents in the decision, the British created a great deal of conflict as old and new residents competed for power and resources and began to wrap their conflict in religious terms. Britain devised a plan, approved by the United Nations, to divide the territory into a Jewish majority state and a Muslim majority state of Transjordan, but the division did not last. Consequently, when the Jews of the Mandate declared independence as Israel, this sparked a fervent reaction among Middle East Muslims, which in turn created an endless series of attacks and counterattacks that mark the modern Middle East crisis. Western countries supplied Israel with extensive aid and arms, creating a power imbalance and giving the Israeli government a definitive advantage in terms of defending itself against surrounding nations.
Over the six decades of Israel’s existence, the country has been the focus of both internal and external conflicts. Other countries have attempted to wipe Israel from the map, while Arabs living within its borders, or the borders of the Palestinian territories, have attempted to win freedom for the Palestinian territories through terrorism and resistance.
The history of the Middle East is one of conflict, but the cause and nature of the conflict has changed mightily over time, but the bottom line remains surprisingly similar: the struggle to control the resources and land by privileging one group over another. The current Middle East crisis is often presented as the story of Jews vs. Muslims, but there is a deeper underlying history of power dynamics that created this complex and seemingly insoluble situation. The situation remains tense, and it seems that no solution will come about until all sides agree to give up some of what they want to achieve peace.
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