The end of an endless conflict?

Writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict requires us to dispel three inaccurate assumptions. The first is to think that this conflict is more complex than others –

 yet the Caucasus, Sudan, and the Great Lakes region of Africa are areas no less complicated, or deadly, far from it! The second error is to believe that this conflict radiates geopolitical toxicity throughout the Middle East, indeed the entire world. It is true that irresponsible persons across the globe (including, unfortunately, in France) are attempting to import the conflict, and that governments are affected by rising extremism, but it is equally true that, in recent decades, very few regimes or economies have collapsed as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict! Finally, the conflict is said to be so “deep-rooted” and/or “inextricable” that it cannot be resolved or settled. This defeatist, if not apocalyptic, stance has no analytical value, and reflects a lazy resignation that benefits extremists waiting for Armageddon.

Here, we will briefly put the Middle East conflict in context, and then outline prospects for a lasting settlement.

The Constants

Exploiting religion for political gain

This phenomenon is neither new, nor exclusive to the Middle East. Nevertheless, since at least the 1990s – a period during which Islamism partially supplanted Nasserist and Baathist nationalism (1) in the Arab world – it has been a factor exacerbating tensions more than was the case in the past and in other places. The Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, co-founder of a secular and Marxist-leaning PLO, ended his 40-year career by calling for jihad; while the secular Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu, after each of his many electoral successes, pays a visit to the highly sanctified Western Wall (Kotel haMaaravi), rather than to a military base, school, or construction site. This trend can be seen throughout the region, but negotiating for territory by invoking transcendence, or threatening to go to war for theological reasons, never bodes well...

Borders established long ago from outside

The problem with almost all of the borders in the Middle East is not that they are the result of power relations – this has been the case for borders since ancient times – but that they were established by powers outside the region, mainly at the beginning of the twentieth century. Conservative Muslim political forces accuse France and the United Kingdom of being “crusader” powers that fractured the Ummah (community of believers), forgetting that many of their border choices simply embraced the former administrative or political boundaries of the Ottoman Empire! (2)

As for traditional nationalists, they use anti-ex-imperialist sophistry to challenge borders that have deprived them of what they claim is their original territory (Arab tribes that once migrated across the Arabian Peninsula, Greater Israel, Greater Palestine, Greater Syria, etc.). Finally, once they gained independence, every Middle Eastern state has attempted to modify its borders either for geostrategic purposes (the Golan Heights between Syria and Israel), or oil and gas interests (squabbles between the petromonarchies of the Gulf).

Nation states supplanted by tribalism, ethnicism, and …