Middle East has been a powder keg for decades.
This post is a gateway to a topic that undeniably
cannot be overviewed in one go. It also cannot be understood from just one person's opinion or perspective, but it does happen to be one I studied for two years. Regrettably, prior to this I used to be one of those people that would joke "just drop a bomb on the whole place, who cares", or echo talking points such as "Muslims are born terrorists", "Muslims don't want peace" etc. I probably blame social media for that. Now i'm of the belief this is much less nature than it is nuture. The Middle East is a powder keg. A very complicated yet predictable total, utter mess.
I learned most specifically about the Israel-Palestine conflict; although it could just as easily be branded the Israel-Arab conflict due to how wide-ranging and destabilising it has been. Britain practically dropped Israel into the Middle East after WW2 with little more than a "goodbye and good luck". Once the dust had settled, the Zionist community kicked into gear and encouraged mass-migration of Jewish from around the world. Military settlement by military settlement, town by town and home by home they displaced Palestinians. Britain didn't want any part in this problem. Palestinian resistance groups constantly got shuffled in and out of their borders and wars spread to any neighbouring Arab countries that took them in. To make matters worse, Israel continued their colonialist aims by capturing land throughout Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebannon - ensuring continuation across the broader middle east. Following a succession of wars, the US and Russia began viewing the Middle East as little more than a proxy to test out their cold-war era military toys. Certain Arab communities were witnessing that they were powerless to an Israel State propped up both financially and militarily by the US. Indirectly, the US and Israel were pushing Middle Eastern attitudes into a corner. Societal shifts began to turn against 'freedoms' of the Western world and Democratic ideals served no place in a region under constant threat of war and occupation. Groups popped up that offered more authoritarian attitudes, many radical. As is the case in all history, this leads to the decline of civilisation. Iraq and Iran later decline.
Back to Palestine; by the 80's multiple generations of Palestinians have been born into the crisis. Each generation more oppressed and brutalised than the last. By this point, sticks and stones were the main form of common resistance to Israeli oppression.
Israel answered it with their "break their legs" policy... Palestinian leadership groups tried violence, they tried non-violence, yet in the end they effected no change. In decades of conflict, the main Western intervention had been to prop up Israel, resist the perceived threat of Communism (proxy vs russia) and destabilise the Arab world. By the 90's a rise in Jewish and Muslim religious extremism prompted renewed urgency towards a peaceful resolution (because war and violence has been shown to only further justify violence and upheaval by radical / militant groups).
Come to lates 90's and early 2000's and the Palestinian Authority had been granted control over regions of the West Bank and Gaza. Things were looking up, but as a consequence of the prolonged conflict multiple groups had developed, each proposing their own answer. Just as Palestine and Israel were closing in on a two-state solution
Netanyahu came into the picture. From the start Netanyahu openly funneled millions of dollars
to Hamas (unlike the PLO/Palestinian Authority, Hamas' solution didn't involve compromising for a two-state solution). And with that, Netanyahu guaranteed peace would not happen under his watch. Here we are today, where Israel now uses the hate they bred as the reason to inflict more violence.
Further violence and support is not and never will be the answer to the Middle East. If only the West listened to Yasser Arafat (PLO leader) during the
1974 UN general assembly
"Our world aspires to peace, justice, equality and freedom. It wishes that oppressed nations, bent under the weight of imperialism, might gain their freedom and their right to self-determination... But all such aspirations cannot be realized in a world that is at present ruled over by tension, injustice, oppression, racial discrimination and exploitation."
"Great numbers of peoples, including those of Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa and Palestine, among many others, are still victims of oppression and violence. Their areas of the world are gripped by armed struggles provoked by imperialism and racial discrimination, both merely forms of aggression and terror. Those are instances of oppressed peoples compelled by intolerable circumstances into confrontation with such oppression. But wherever that confrontation occurs it is legitimate and just."
"It is imperative that the international community should support these peoples in their struggles, in the furtherance of their rightful causes and the attainment of their right to self-determination."
"Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom-fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat: do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."
Back to the Trump thread, well he has continued the US tradition of enabling Israel, fueling the fire and learning nothing. He couldn't even begin to comprehend the history of that region, nor did he consult anyone that did. Trump's base is again engaging in doublethink by associating this sequence of events with an end result of eternal peace. It would be sobering for them to either a) study the history or b) live in one of these countries. I don't blame all Israeli people but Netanyahu's power relies on eternal war and torment in the Middle East. Trump doesn't understand that Iran is a symptom of the conflict and if US understood the history, they would understand that peace begins with turning against Netanyahu.
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