The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict Read online

  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.