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The Middle East problem in a nutshell Last update 31-12-2011 |
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In
1902, right at the
beginning of the twentieth century English investors became interested in
the oil and gas that from the dawn of time came bubbling up from the
surface in Persia, nowadays Iran, that was occupied by England and Russia.
It took a while before an oil rig in the province of Khuzestan became
profitable, but as soon as the black gold came spouting out, contracts
were signed with Russia, leaving them the north and, completely ignoring
the Shah, with nomad clans like the autonomous local Bachtiari tribe and
from that moment on the oil companies became a state within a state. The
Bachtiari still pitch their tents trying to get by with the little they
always had. The Turks were kicked out of Syria and Iraq and soon the loot
was divided between Companies Française des Petroles, Royal Dutch Shell,
the Anglo-Persian oil company and the Near East Development Company of the
Americans that were reluctantly brought in by the British who needed funds
for the development of Iraqi oilfields. The area itself was divided
between the British and the United States; Arabia for the Americans, Iran
for the British. Iraq and Kuwait became a joint venture of the both of
them. In Arabia the British installed as monarch the 20 year old Ibn Saud
whose family in the 18th century had made a pact with the Wahhabi tribe of
an obscure sect leader Abdul Wahhab who as a reaction to the Western
domination preached a return to the pure teachings of
As is explained by Soner Cagaptay, for Weekly Standard, the Sunnis of the region--from Baathist loyalists in Iraq and hardcore Wahhabi zealots in Saudi Arabia to secular-minded elites in Amman, Cairo, and elsewhere--are now united around a common anxiety: Since the Shiite Muslims constitute more than 60 percent of Iraq's population, a democratic Iraq will likely be a Shiite-dominated Iraq. This is anathema for most Sunnis in the region, many of whom regard Shiite Islam as a perversion. (The feeling being mutual, the Shiites don't think very highly of the Sunnis either.) Thus, the possibility that another Shiite state may emerge next to Shiite fundamentalist Iran has exposed some raw nerves in the region, awakening ancient religious prejudices and creating modern political fears. Those anxieties, together with festering anti-Americanism, explain the reluctance of the region's Sunni regimes to extend America a sincere hand in transforming Iraq. when the Shiite Safavids came to power in Iran in the 16th century, they brutalized the country's Sunnis. The mullahs who took charge in Iran with the 1979 Islamic revolution gladly continue this tradition today. In Saudi Arabia, the opposite is true: The Sunni fundamentalist Wahhabis have turned the country into a prison camp for its Shiite minority since they ascended to power in the 19th century. In Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the secularist Baath Party, ruled by the Sunni minority, oppressed the country's Shiite majority for three decades. The legacy of this history of persecution is that Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the Middle East view each other with distrust. In most cases, mutual hatred is almost as deeply rooted as any aversion they may have towards non-Muslims. What does this mean for Operation Iraqi Freedom? With the exception of Iran and Syria (which is ruled by an Alawite minority--an offshoot of Islam distinct from both Sunni and Shiite orthodoxies, if somewhat closer to Shiism) all Muslim states in the Middle East are run by Sunnis, who view a Shiite-ruled Iraq as a potential threat. (The only exception to such authoritarian regimes, Turkey--which is democratic--is also a Sunni majority country.) The Sunni states of the Middle East are unwilling to whole-heartedly support Operation Iraqi Freedom because of what it may produce in the end. This predicament can also be helpful, however, by showing a way out of sectarian hatred within Islam. It is time now for Muslims--clerics and secular pundits alike--to begin a frank debate towards healing sectarian divides through ecumenical dialogue. The discovery of oil in the middle east has been not a blessing but a curse for those countries. ... and it's not just England, France, Russia or the US, the big Satan, nor just the Oil companies, but since these countries have plenty oil money their leaders -who were mostly put in place by "the West"- don't need to collect taxation of their people. That 's not so bad you'd say, but the point is that they therefore do not need to pay any attention to the good will of their people. They can mistreat them, suppress them and brutalize them as much as they wish. They have no need of popular support and they have therefore no need of popular assemblies of any kind. And in this respect the discovery of oil and the commercial exploitation of oil has been a disaster for the region as a whole. But it is not as if al the troubles in the Middle East started with the arival of the Brits and Americans. Prior to Muhammad's ascendancy, the tribes of northern Arabia engaged in raiding and feuding, fighting among themselves for livestock, territory, and honor. Muhammad's genius was to unite the fissiparous, feuding Bedouin tribes into a cohesive polity. Nothing is more common in the history of tribes in the Middle East and North Africa than battles between tribes, the displacement of one by another, and the pushing of losing tribes out of their territories. Sometimes, losing tribes became dependents of stronger tribes, allowing them to continue to access territory while, at other times, losing tribes retreated to peasant areas from where they were absorbed into the peasantry, and lost their tribal nature. Muhammad's genius was to unite the fissiparous, feuding Bedouin tribes into a cohesive polity. Just as he had provided a constitution of rules under which the people of Medina could live together, so he provided a constitution for all Arabs, which had the imprimatur not only of Muhammad but also of God. Submission—the root meaning of the Arabic term islam–to God and His rules, spelled out in the Qur'an, bound into solidarity Arabian tribesmen, who collectively became the umma, the community of believers. Building on the tribal system, Muhammad framed an inclusive structure within which the tribes had a common, God-given identity as Muslims. This imbued the tribes with a common interest and common project. But unification was only possible by extending the basic tribal principle of balanced opposition. This Muhammad did by opposing the Muslim to the infidel, and the dar al-Islam, the land of Islam and peace, to the dar al-harb, the land of the infidels and conflict. He raised balanced opposition to a higher structural level as the new Muslim tribes unified in the face of the infidel enemy. Bedouin raiding became sanctified as an act of religious duty. With every successful battle against unbelievers, more Bedouin joined the umma. Once united, the Bedouin warriors turned outward, teaching the world the meaning of jihad, which some academics today say means only struggle but which, in the context of early Islamic writing and theological debates, was understood as holy war. The Arabs, in lightning thrusts, challenged and beat the Byzantines to the north and the Persians to the east, both weakened by continuous wars with one another. These stunning successes were followed rapidly by conquests of Christian and Jewish populations in Egypt, Libya, and the Maghreb, and, in the east, central Asia and the Hindu population of northern India. Not content with these triumphs, Arab armies invaded and subdued much of Christian Spain and Portugal, and all of Sicily. Since the Roman Empire, the world had not seen such power and reach. Almost all fell before the blades of the Muslim armies. (http://www.meforum.org/1813/the-middle-easts-tribal-dna) Recently in 2011, the people of Tunisia and Egypt have revolted against their dictators and other Islamic countries, Libya, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, Syria and even Iran have followed. All this probably to great discontent of Osama Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader must have realized his failure. In his last years the power of Osama who used to be the people's voice had faded into a vague state of an icon and his death by the hand of the US Seals who executed him in his hiding place in Abbottabad, Pakistan turned him into a martyr. Not what he had in mind when he started it all. He must have seen himself as the future leader of an Islamic Caliphate he was trying to establish incorporating the entire Islamic world and possibly the rest of the world as well. His promises of overthrowing the pro-American or non-Islamic Arab dictators were however fulfilled by the people of Egypt and Tunisia – and perhaps soon by Libyans and Syrians –in their Arab Spring revolution but not by al-Qaeda and its violence. Which on one hand is a good thing but on the other hand many are fleeing confusion, some are seeking jobs, others are worried about violence. Libya's despotic president Muammar Qaddafhi was captured as Sirte fell to the rebel forces on 20 October 2011, and shot dead soon after. It is now up to the Libyan people to establish a democratic form of government in a country after nothing but Qaddafhi regime for the past four decades. 2011 was a year that brought the downfall of several leaders in the Mediterranian area. Syria's President Bashar al-Assad looks more isolated with each passing day as his regime continues a bloody eight-month crackdown on pro-democracy protests. His Arab neighbors signaled their displeasure with him this week by suspending Syria from the Arab League. The future of the region is uncertain to say the least.
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The Jews have been living in what is now known as Israel since the God of Abraham promised it to his seed. Jacob a.k.a. Israel lived in the area known as Canaan, which according to the Bible; reached from Sidon toward Gerar as far as Gaza, (City-state of Palestine) and then toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, as far as Lasha. (Genesis 10:18-20) The sons of Noah settled the Old Testament land in Gen. 9 and 10. The descendents of Ham would eventually populate the land of Canaan before Abraham's arival. Many of the events on any Old Testament map took place in modern day Israel and Jordan. The ancient kings Og and Sihon, defeated by Moses, ruled kingdoms occupying much of modern day Jordan. This extent of territory, about 60,000 square miles, was at length conquered by David, and was ruled over also by his son Solomon. This vast empire was the Promised Land and Palestine, that has fittingly been designated "the least of all lands, was only a part of it. Western Palestine, on the south of Gaza, is only about 40 miles in breadth from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, narrowing gradually toward the north, where it is only 20 miles from the sea-coast to the Jordan. The West Bank has been an area of dispute since Abraham. The mighty Anakim occupied the land during the time of Abraham and the Conquest of Joshua. Hebron was their capital city, said in Joshua 14:15 to have been previously called Kiriath-Arba. Arba was the greatest among the Anakim, descendants of the Nephilim found in Genesis 6:4. According to the Bible, Jacob and his sons had lived in Canaan and were forced by famine to go into Egypt for four generations until Moses, a great-great grandson of Jacob, led the Israelites back into Canaan in the Exodus.
The Land of Israel, known in Hebrew as Eretz Yisrael, has been sacred to the Jewish people since Biblical times. According to the Torah, God promised the Land of Israel to the three Patriarchs of the Jewish people. Scholars place the period of the three Patriarchs somewhere in the early 2nd millennium BCE. According to Biblical evidence the first Kingdom of Israel was established around the 11th century BCE. Subsequent Israelite kingdoms and states ruled intermittently over the next thousand years, and are known from various extra-biblical sources. Between the time of the First Kingdom of Israel and the Muslim conquests of the 7th century, the Land of Israel fell under Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Sassanian, and Byzantine rule. Jewish presence in the region dwindled after the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 CE. Nevertheless, Jewish presence in the Land of Israel remained continuous and the Galilee became its religious center. The Mishnah and part of the Talmud, central Jewish texts, were composed during the 2nd to 4th centuries CE in Tiberias and Jerusalem. Following years of persecution at the hands of Byzantine rulers, the Jews revolted in 610 CE, allying themselves with the Persian invaders. After capturing Jerusalem, the Persians and Jews killed thousands of Christians and destroyed many churches. The Byzantine emperor Heraclius recaptured Jerusalem in 628–629 CE, and was responsible for the massacre and expulsion of the Jews. Jews have been living in Saoudi Arabia and Jemen since the days of King Solomon and were doing fine untill the introduction of, and mass conversion of the population to Islam. As Ahl al-Kitab, protected Peoples of the Scriptures, the Jews were assured freedom of religion only in exchange for the jizya, payment of a poll tax imposed on certain non-Muslim monotheists (people of the Book). Active Muslim persecution of the Jews did not gain full force until the Shiite-Zaydi clan seized power, from the more tolerant Sunni Muslims, early in the 10th century. As the only visible "outsiders" the Jews of Yemen were treated as pariahs, second-class citizens who needed to be perennially reminded of their submission or conversion to the ruling Islamic faith. Under the Zaydi rule, the Jews were considered to be impure, and therefore forbidden to touch a Muslim or a Muslim's food. They were obligated to humble themselves before a Muslim, to walk to the left side, and greet him first. They could not build houses higher than a Muslim's or ride a camel or horse, and when riding on a mule or a donkey, they had to sit sideways. Upon entering the Muslim quarter a Jew had to take off his foot-gear and walk barefoot. If attacked with stones or fists by Islamic youth, a Jew was not even allowed to defend himself. Due to the changes in the Ottoman Empire citizens could move more freely and in 1869 travel was improved with the opening of the Suez Canal, which reduced the travel time from Yemen to Palestine. Emigration from Yemen to Palestine began in 1881 and continued almost without interruption until 1914. The Yemenite Jews were the first group of Jews to return to Palestine. Jerusalem was Jewish until the Romans killed its inhabitants in the second century after Christ and declared the city a forbidden zone. Then came the Christians who went on humiliating the Jews in Palestine by using the Temple Mount, Har ha-Bayit the most sacred part of town to Jews, as a waste dump. The Muslims cleared up the rubbish but, humiliated both Christians and Jews by building the Dome of the Rock; Kubat al Sahr on the same spot and the Al Aqsa Mosque close by. A few centuries later the Crusaders were kicked out of town after inflicting a bloodbath by murdering every Jew they could get their hands on and all Muslims that had fled into the Al Aqsa Mosque. Muslims put each other over the sword because of the Holy City and Turks, French and English would follow and all those centuries Christian monks of different feathers that had divided up the city battered each other up with homemade bludgeons. During the initial Muslim conquests, in 635 CE, the Land of Israel, including Jerusalem, was captured from the Byzantine Empire. Control of the region transferred between the Umayyads, Abbasids, and Crusaders throughout the next six centuries, before falling in the hands of the Mamluk Sultanate, in 1260. In 1516, the Land of Israel was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the region until the 20th century. The second half of the 19th century saw the emergence in Germany and Austria-Hungary of the so-called Völkisch movement, which as developed by such völkisch thinkers as Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Paul de Lagarde, presented a pseudo-scientific, biologically based racism that saw Jews as a "race" locked into mortal combat with the "Aryan" race for world domination. Völkisch anti-Semitism, though drawing upon stereotypes from Christian anti-Semitism, differed from the latter in that Jews were considered to be a "race" rather than a religion. (Wikipedia) During World War 2 about 6 million Jews were brutally murdered in concentration camps by the Nazis. Exodus 1947 was a ship that carried Jewish emigrants, that left France on July 11, 1947, with the intent of taking its passengers to the British mandate for Palestine. Most of the emigrants were Holocaust survivor refugees, who had no legal immigration certificates to Palestine. Following wide media coverage, the British Royal Navy seized the ship, and deported all its passengers back to Europe. The Exodus 1947 passengers were successfully taken off the vessels in Germany, although a number were injured in confrontations with British troops that involved the use of batons and fire hoses. The would-be immigrants were sent back to DP camps in Am Stau near Lübeck and Pöppendorf. Although most of the women and children disembarked voluntarily, the men had to be carried off by force. Within a year, over half of the original Exodus 1947 passengers had made other attempts at emigrating to Palestine and were detained without trial in prison camps on Cyprus. Britain continued to hold the detainees in Cyprus until January 1949 when it formally recognized the State of Israel and all surviving passengers made aliyah With the end of World War I, Britain was given a mandate over the area known as Palestine, which it had conquered from the Ottomans. In 1936 the Peel Commission suggested partitioning Mandate Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, though it was rejected as unworkable by the government and was at least partially to blame for the 1936-39 Arab revolt. In the face of increasing violence after World War II, the British handed the issue over to the United Nations. The result was Resolution 181, a partition plan to divide Palestine between Jews and Arabs. The Jewish state was to receive around 56% of the land area of Mandate Palestine, encompassing 82% of the Jewish population, though it would be separated from Jerusalem, designated as an area to be administered by the UN. The plan was accepted by most of the Jewish population, but rejected by much of the Arab populace. On 29 November 1947, the plan was put to a vote in the United Nations General Assembly. The result was 33 to 13 in favor of the plan, with 10 abstentions. The Arab countries (all of which had opposed the plan) proposed to query the International Court of Justice on the competence of the General Assembly to partition a country against the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants, but were again defeated. The division was to take effect as part of a British withdrawal from the territory (to be no later than 1 August 1948[2]), though the UK refused to implement the plan, arguing it was unacceptable to both sides. The modern State of Israel was declared in 1948, and traces its historical and religious roots to the Biblical Land of Israel, also known as Zion, a concept central to Judaism since ancient times. Political Zionism took shape in the late-19th century Europe under Theodor Herzl, and the Balfour Declaration of 1917 formalized British policy preferring the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people. Following World War I, the League of Nations granted Great Britain the Mandate for Palestine, which included responsibility for securing "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". In November 1947, the United Nations voted in favor of the partition of Palestine, proposing the creation of a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a UN-administered Jerusalem. Partition was accepted by the Zionist leadership but rejected by Arab leaders, and a civil war began. Israel declared independence on 14 May 1948 and neighboring Arab states invaded the next day. Since then, Israel has fought a series of wars with neighboring Arab states, and has occupied territories, including the West Bank, Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights, beyond those delineated in the 1949 Armistice Agreements. The border between Israel and the neighboring West Bank is not formally defined by the Israeli government, as a result of a complex and unresolved political situation. Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, but efforts by elements within both parties to diplomatically solve the problem have so far only met with limited success. The unification of Jerusalem under Israeli government after the Six day War in 1967 was a historic event. For the first time since nineteen centuries Jews could practice their religion freely at the Wailing Wall, the only visible remains of the old Temple that was destroyed by the Romans. Jews, Christians and Muslims can visit their own sanctuaries, be it within limits. But Jerusalem was, is and if nothing changes will always be a political time bomb. ref; Wikipedia also see; Timeline of history of Israel
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them were murdered under his regime. Declining oil prices led to criticism
of the Wahhabi clergy in Arabia, so to diverse the attention a bit, king
Fahd started supporting the Mujahedin in Afghanistan against the Russians.
He assigned a mission in Afghanistan to Osama Bin Laden who had been
stripped of citizenship for becoming a danger to the royal house. With the
support of CIA money Osama made the mission to a success and was
considered a hero for it. By now in 
them due to production
limitations due to the Food for Oil resolutions of the United Nations and
because Saddam ignored them. More than half of the billions that were
invested in restarting oil production went to security issues because the
next day they rebuilt something it was destroyed by a terrorist bomb
attack sometimes done by the companies own employees. The Kurds have never
profited from the oil money in Iraq but were discriminated and attacked
with mustard gas during Saddam's regime. In April 
