When I was a kid, my parents used to pack me off to spend a little time with my grandparents. It’s hard to believe now but I used to fly unaccompanied even though I was a young child – hard to believe because in those days my parents literally surrendered me at one gate (even though they weren’t flying) and my grandparents picked me up at the other end.
One mandatory requirement during my visit was to attend the church service at my grandparent’s church every Sunday. It was a rather dry, bland form of Protestantism but about an hour after the service began the preacher would pause and exhort everyone to turn to their neighbors, shake hands and introduce themselves. This was the part that terrified me as a kid but as an adult I now see the benefit of it – it’s good to know your neighbors.
In the spirit of my grandparents’ church’s Meet and Greet sessions, I thought it was time to get to know the “Middle East” a little better. The people who live there are our neighbors in every sense of the word and it’s worthwhile to know a bit more about them. I’ve been fortunate to do some traveling and living abroad in my life and so what follows is my own personal opinions and conclusions and do not represent or purport to represent anyone else’s. Nor are my opinions or conclusions meant to be conclusive – all generalizations, by their very nature, fail to include details that others would deem vital.
The Middle East, also known as the “Near East” (and very infrequently as Southwest Asia), is a region of the planet that is spoken about on a daily basis without it ever being defined. Probably the most common definition of the “Middle East” (map here) is the area encompassed by the present day nations of Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Many people also include Iran and Turkey as nations in the Middle East. Other people also include the nation of Cyprus (an island in the eastern Mediterranean Sea).
With the exception of Turkey and Iran, the majority of the people in the Middle East are ethnically referred to as Arab. Depending on the region, approximately 80-90% of Arabs are members of the Muslim faith with the other 10-20% members of the Christian faith.
It is very important to note that many Arabs do not live in countries in the Middle East (or this definition of it). Nations such as Sudan, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania have either majority or significant populations of ethnically Arab peoples.
Most ethnic Arabs speak a language called Arabic, which falls into the category of languages referred to now known as “Semitic”. Another Semitic tongue that is extremely closely related to Arabic is Hebrew. Yet another one is Amharic, the language spoken by many people in Ethiopia.
Egypt:
By far the largest nation in the Middle East is Egypt (roughly 3 times the size of the state of New Mexico), with a population of about 80 million people. It is considered approximately the 15th most populous nation on the face of the planet.
Egypt has a long, long history going back even before the pharoahs and pyramid builders. What is relevant today however is the more modern part of their history.
During the late Middle Ages and Renaissance era in Europe, the Ottoman Empire had much of the Middle East under its control. I’ll speak more about that later but the relevant fact here is that the Ottomans were Muslim, as most residents of the Middle East are and were, but were not ethnically Arabs.
France had its first revolution in 1789 and this had a large impact on Europe for many reasons, especially because it posed a threat to the dynastic monarchies. But the French revolution also impacted Egypt after French forces invaded Egypt in 1801. The French were successful initially but later mercenaries and political flunkies of the Ottomans regained control of Egypt.
After the dust settled, the nation of Egypt was ruled by an ethnic Albanian (who was Muslim) named Muhammed Ali. He was somewhat of an independent ruler but was still subject to Ottoman oversite. During the 1800’s, the Ottoman Empire was becoming weaker and more fractured so the level of control imposed by them on Ali and his successors varied over time.
Ali’s grandson is usually refered to as Ismail Pasha. It was Ismail who successfully moved Egypt into the “modern era”, especially after he hired a number of French and other European engineers (and tens of thousands of Egyptian slaves) to complete the Suez Canal in 1869.
The Suez Canal is an extremely useful water bridge between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, which runs along the western coast of (what is now) Saudi Arabia and then on down to eastern Africa or on to Asia proper. The Suez Canal is only 100 miles long but it saves seagoing vessels a round-trip around all of Africa that is thousands of miles long.
In 1869 there were no airplanes of course. Trains were in use and extremely useful but most international commerce depended on sea trade. The British eyed France’s involvement and partial control over the Suez Canal and knew that it was a direct threat to the hegemony then in place. This was at the height of the British Empire, when the “sun never set” on its navies or the lands under its boot.
Egypt ran into trouble for two reasons – one was that two major European powers wanted to control the Suez Canal. The other more immediate threat was that the money to pay for the construction of the Suez Canal was procured through credit. As a result of having to borrow money, the nation of France became the majority shareholder of the Suez Canal Company, who controlled access to this vital commercial shipping lane.
To weaken French control, the British then successfully fed the flames of a civil war and then turned around and sent in troops to “protect the peace” in 1882. From this point forward, although Egypt was still technically under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire, it was actually the British who controlled the nation. After the Ottoman Empire lost what we called “World War One” in 1914, all of Egypt officially became a colony of Britain.
The British followed their usual imperial policy of installing local royalty who would be malleable puppets. After WW1 was over, there started to be some unreset and first “modern” Egyptian revolution took place in 1919. This led to continual revolting and unreset until Britain formally declared Egypt as an independent sovereign nation in 1922. It’s worth noting here that the oldest fundamentalist group in the Muslim world, the “Muslim Brotherhood”, was founded in Egypt in 1928.
Even after 1922 however, the British still controlled Egypt, or at least the most important parts. In 1936 a treaty was signed with the democratically elected Prime Minister wherein Great Britain was granted control of the Suez Canal in perpetuity. But the British influence was still resented, which led to the Egyptian military staging a coup in 1952. The British-installed royalty was deposed as was the democratically-elected government.
Egypt as we know it today began in 1953 when General Mohammed Naguib was installed as the first president of the Republic of Egypt (previously in its brief independence it had been a kingdom or sultanate). A year later, the more powerful general Gamal Abdel Nasser assumed power and had Naguib arrested. Nasser declared Egypt fully and one thousand percent sovereign and free from Britain on June 18, 1956. About a month later, on July 26, 1956, he “nationalized” the Suez Canal.
This led to what is referred to as the “Suez Crisis”. In brief, it went like this:
- Nasser declared that the nation of Egypt controlled the Suez Canal, not a company owned by foreigners (mostly Britain but also France)
- Britain and France declared this unacceptable
- Israel felt threatened by this and prepared to invade the Sinai Peninsula
- Britain warned the U.S. that Israel might invade. Oddly enough, the U.S. did little about this at all and more or less “sat this one out”.
- The Soviet Union threatened to aid Egypt if anyone invaded Egypt
- The British PM (Anthony Eden) tried to rally support for an invasion of Egypt and so compared Nasser to Mussolini and Hitler (sound familiar?)
- Israel, France and Britain held a number of non-public meetings to decide what to do. The plan they came up with was what ended up happening.
Israel was encouraged to invade the Sinai and it did so. Immediately after that, Britain and France intervened and sent troops to the Canal itself, instructing Egypt to stay on the western bank and Israel on the right.
The only “problem” was that Nasser refused to play ball. The semi-surprised French and British actually engaged in war, bombing Egyptian forces. Nasser then sank all the European ships in the Canal (closing it for business about a year). French and British paratroopers began landing and the fighting was brief but intense.
Militarily, the British and French quite easily and successfully gained control over the Canal (as Israel has equally successfully gained control over the Sinai and the Gaza Strip). What turned this all on its head was politics and the growing influence of the United States.
Simply put, a few months earlier the Soviet Union had invaded Hungary to quell an uprising there. The United States wanted to prevent a wider war and keep the Soviets from intervening. It sounds kind of quaint today but the U.S. wanted to keep the moral highground (or at least the appearance of it) by not having two of its closest allies do what the U.S. had just been criticizing the Soviets for doing – i.e. using military force to invade a friendly nation.
The U.S. was so adamant that the British-French (and Israeli) intervention cease that Eisenhower threatened to sell off bank reserves of the British pound to destroy their currency. The British PM was forced to resign and the United States (with significant help from Canada) got the United Nations to send one of its first peacekeeping forces to the Suez/Sinai area.
The end result of this is extremely important. Israel was pushed out of the Sinai and the UN peacekeepers as border patrollers was established as a precedent (they’re still there today). The United States’ influence over the Middle East grew tremendously as that of France and Britain waned considerably.
Nasser also became a hero and cult figure throughout the Middle East as he had “stood up to” the colonial powers and won.
If there is a tipping point as the most significant year of the modern Middle East, 1956 is it. Nasser was not just a hero in Egypt but all across the Arab world. Nasser was a fervent advocate of pan-Arabism, that all Arabs are one race and one people and should be united. His political victory in 1956 garnered enormous momentum for this as well as for an increasing pan-Arab coalescence that the “occupiers” in the region must be defeated – not only the Europeans but also the Jews in Israel.
Eisenhower later admitted that the Suez Canal crisis, and how he handled it, was the biggest foreign policy mistake he had during his presidency because at the end of 1956, two key allies had been weakened while an ally of the Soviets, Nasser, had been significantly strengthened. If there is a more universally revered figure in modern Arab history other than Nasser, I do not know who it would be.
Nasser (with growing influence and cooperation of the Soviet Union) soon began to have delusions of grandeur. In 1967 he sent in troops to occupy the Suez Canal and largely provoked the “6 Day War”. Israel responded by crushing Nasser’s military and the defeat was so humiliating the Nasser actually resigned. Millions of people took to the streets not just in Egypt but in other Arab countries as well, demanding his return to office.
A weakened (physically and mentally) Nasser returned to power but died of a heart attack in 1970. It is estimated that 5 million people attended the funeral.
Nasser’s heir apparent, Anwar Sadat, took powerful without (much of) a struggle afterwards. Although Sadat was a member of the military and vice-president under Nasser, after he took office he turned Egyptian foreign policy on its head. He kicked out the Soviet Union’s advisers and switched his country’s loyalty to the west, particularly the United States.
Despite this, in 1973 Sadat led Egypt (along with Syria) in a war against Israel which initially was much more successful than the 1967 war. However the Israelis turned the tide of battle at literally the last moment and once again Egypt was humiliated. Sadat, in 1977, became the first Arab leader to ever officially visit Israel. He was the first Arab leader to put forth a plan for a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian conflict and in 1978 he signed an official peace treaty with Israel (known as the Camp David agreement).
These visits and dialogues with Israel, not to mention the peace treaty itself, were extremely unpopular with most of the Arab world, including Egyptians. It was seen as a betrayal of the Nasser-inspired pan-Arab front. A lot of people were also angered that Sadat did not extract more concessions for the Palestinians. Sadat also became viewed as a toady of the United States, a nation which had originally been somewhat neutral (intervening roughly on Nasser’s side in 1956) but was now firmly pro-Israel.
It is difficult for me to assess why Sadat signed the peace treaty with Egypt and went to such great lengths to align himself with the United States. My main guess is that the United States offered a lot of cash and advanced weaponry and it is definitely a fact that Sadat’s administration was remarkably corrupt and rife with cronyism.
In the wake of the peace agreement, the Arab League suspended Egypt’s membership. Later most of Sadat’s advisors and ministers resigned in protest. In 1981, a number of Egyptian military brass were killed in a helicopter crash under extremely suspicious circumstances. Popular resentment against Sadat was boiling over and he responded by using heavy handed authoritarian measures to crack down on all forms of dissent (including against the Muslim Brotherhood, who had been supported by Nasser).
In 1981 during a “victory” parade (“celebrating” the 1973 war), Sadat was assassinated. This deed was claimed by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization, a domestic, religious-inspired terrorist group. One of its leaders was the cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman, who issued the fatwa (or religious decree, akin to a papal bull in nature) to kill Sadat. Rahman later moved to the United States and is the blind cleric who organized the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
In the attack that killed Sadat, Sadat’s vice-president Hosni Mubarak was injured but not fatally. When Sadat was buried, a number of world leaders including Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon (3 U.S. presidents!) attended but only one Arab leader did – the president of Sudan.
Mubarak quickly stepped into Sadat’s shoes and ordered mass arrests of all known radicals. One of the most important of these was Ayman al-Zawahiri, now known as the #2 leader of Al-Qaeda. Dr. Zawahiri speaks fluent English and when the international press covered the sham trials that Mubarak conducted, Zawahiri spoke to the cameras in English. I’ve seen that footage and it’s quite chilling, especially when you know what he went on to do.
Zawahiri was tortured in Egyptian prisons and was indeed a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad but was not connected to the assassination and was later released (after serving a short sentence on arms possession).
Mubarak imposed martial law once he took office and it is very important to understand that this remains in effect even today.
Mubarak has ruled Egypt since that time, now currently in his fifth term as president. Egypt has a sham democracy, in which political parties are ostensibly permitted but almost all power rests in the hands of the president. Furthermore, Mubarak has extensively cracked down on all fundamentalist groups, including the less radical (than the EIJ) group the Muslim Brotherhood, which has widespread support. Make absolutely no mistake – Mubarak is a dictator in all but title.
Mubarak has kept Egypt’s foreign policy on the same course as Sadat did – allying Egypt with the United States. As a continuing result of the Camp David agreement, Egypt receives billions of dollars in weapons, cash and aid every year from the United States. Egypt is the second-largest recipient of American foreign aid (after Israel and not including Iraq right now).
Therefore, a brief synopsis of Egypt’s modern history:
Middle Ages – 1880’s: ruled by foreigners under the aegis of the Ottoman Empire, who were ethnically different but culturally similar and religiously very similar
1880’s – 1920’s: ruled more or less directly as a colony by Britain
1920’s-1950’s: ruled by a combined monarchy/parliament but still under British control
1956-1970: ruled by Nasser, who was staunchly nationalistic. Nasser’s luck and skill made Egypt the most prestigious and powerful Arab nation in the world.
1970-present: ruled over by Sadat and Mubarak, two authoritarian secular pro-Western dictators who have repressed (almost) all dissent.
By the way, I don’t want to make Nasser out as some kind of saint. He definitely ruled Egypt with a heavy hand as well but he was far more tolerant than the two who succeeded him.
Egypt today plays an extremely influential role in the Middle East. This is partly due to its large population, partly due to its massive military (paid for largely by the U.S. taxpayer), partly due to its prosperity (esp. from tourism) and partly due to its religious organizations.
Approximately 90% of Egyptians are Muslim, the vast majority of them Sunni. The other 10% are members of the Coptic Christian church, one of the oldest branches of that religion.
The Al-Azhar University is located in Cairo and is considered one of the leading theological institutes of the Sunni world. The “dean” of the school is known as a Grand Imam and both his religious rulings, as well as those of graduates of the university, carry enormous weight in the Sunni world.
Roughly speaking, the vast majority of Muslims worldwide, who practice a moderate and ordinary faith, are well-represented by this school. In fact the recent Grand Imam, Mohammed Sayid Tantawy, declared in a fatwa that the perpetrators of 9/11 (as well as suicide bombers) are all heretics.
In majority-Sunni countries, the highest religious authority is usually referred to as the “Grand Mufti” and the Grand Mufti of Egypt is one of the most influential. The Grand Mufti of Egypt is currently Sheikh Ali Gomaa, who succeeded Muhammed Sayid Tantawy. Like Tantawy, he is also a representative of mainstream, moderate Muslim faith and his religious rulings are widely respected worldwide.
Culturally speaking, Egypt is also very influential due to it being the home of much of the Arabic-language TV and film world. Egyptian newspapers and magazines are also read widely across the Arabic-speaking world.
Israel – It’s hard to speak about this country without angering someone so I will try to do my best to step between minefields. Besides, most people are more aware of Israel’s current situation and modern history than other nations in the region.
From the late Middle Ages through the Renaissance, the country now known as Israel was also administered and controled by the Ottoman Empire through a regent based in what is now known as Syria. Jews were a distinct minority segment of population in the area until the modern Zionist movement was founded in the late 1800’s.
After the Ottoman Empire lost World War 1, the area became under the direct colonial control of Great Britain. Especially following World War II, large numbers of Jews emigrated to Israel. The modern nation was founded in 1948 when it declared itself independent from Britain.
Israel was invaded by most of its neighbors (specifically: Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq). A UN-brokered ceasefire was declared in 1949 and Israel was left in control of its current borders minus what is now known as the Gaza Strip (controlled by Egypt), Golan Heights (controlled by Syria) and the West Bank (controlled by Jordan). The Jordanian-controlled territory included what is now known as East Jerusalem.
Due to a large number of reasons, a significant portion of the Arab population of Israel left the area, mostly to neighboring countries especially Jordan and Lebanon. The vast majority of these people, including their descendants, remain as refugees to this day.
From 1948-1967, Israel’s borders remained unchanged. It was involved in the brief period of fighting in 1956 over the Suez Canal. In 1967 came the “6 Day War” in which Israel won an overwhelming military defeat against Egypt, Syria and Jordan. As a result, Israel’s borders expanded to where they are today, meaning control over the West Bank and Gaza strip (as well as the Golan Heights).
It is extremely important to understand that, legally speaking, Israel the nation only consists of the same lands that Israel the nation had in 1948. The sole exception is East Jerusalem, which has been formally annexed. All of the Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza Strip are only occupied and administered by Israel but are not formally part of Israeli territory.
The reason why this is so important is that Arab (but not Jewish) residents of the occupied territories are technically not citizens of Israel. This means, among other things, that they cannot vote, nor do they hold passports of any kind.
The parts of sovereign Israeli territory (including East Jerusalem) are run by a democratic parliamentary government in which all citizens are allowed to vote, including ethnic Arabs. There are currently about 6.3 million Israeli citizens, of which about 1/4 of that is non-Jews (i.e. mostly Palestinian). It is extremely important to note however that the majority of Arabs (Palestinians) live in either occupied territories or in refugee camps in neighboring countries.
The reason why all of this is so critical is because if you add up all the Palestinians inside Israel proper, inside the Occupied Territories and inside refugee camps, they would equal or surpass the number of non-Arab (i.e. Jewish) citizens of Israel. I almost never see this discussed or even noted yet it is clearly a critical piece of data to understand. If the refugees were allowed to return to Palestine/Israel and the residents of the Occupied Territories allowed to be citizens of Israel, the very nature of that land would change overnight.
Starting sometime after the Suez Canal crisis in 1956, the United States and Israel began developing extremely close political ties. As a result of this, as well as the 1978 Camp David agreement, Israel is the single largest recipient of American foreign aid (aside from Iraq currently) and receives upward of 5 billion dollars in weapons, cash and aid every year.
Israel also fought a war in 1973 against Egypt and Syria, in 1981 against Palestinian and Lebanese forces, was attacked in 1990 by Iraq (but did not respond) and invaded Lebanon again briefly in 2006. This plus assorted other bombings and aerial assaults against other nations including Iraq, Syria and Tunisia.
After 1948, a large portion of Palestinian refugees ended up in Lebanon. By the early 1970’s, these numbers were augmented after many Palestinians were expelled from Jordan. The number of Palestinians in southern Lebanon were so high that they became a de facto state within a state.
At this time, Lebanon was embroiled in a civil war and the Palestinians, under the leadership of Yasser Arafat and his PLO, used this to cement their dominance of the south. In effect, the exiled Palestinian people’s government was operated from Lebanon. From there, many raids and attacks were launched against Israel. Israel responded in many ways that culminated in the full-scale invasion of Lebanon in 1981.
The majority portion of this aspect of the war ended in 1983 but Israel claimed a small strip of southern Lebanon as an additional Occupied Territory. It also established a military alliance with what was then the only significant non-Palestinian population in the southern, the Christian Maronites, whose militias (known as the South Lebanese Army) were financed and controlled as an Israeli proxy.
The Maronites and Palestinian populations have since been dwarfed by the exponential rise of the Lebanese Shi’ites. These Shi’ites soon formed their own militia which is known as Hizbullah or Hizb’ Allah in English. Israel maintained control of its Occupied Territory in Lebanon until 2000.
As of this date, Israel is only officially at peace with Egypt. Its relations with other Middle Eastern Arab countries are either non-existent or extremely tense. Most Middle Eastern Arab countries have an economic embargo in place against Israel and do not maintain diplomatic ties on any level.
The majority of the Israel-proper citizens are not ethnically Arabs. The majority are members of the Jewish faith, although a lot of people are surprised to learn that most Israelis are secular rather than fundamentalist. Israel has a law called the “Law of Return” which automatically grants citizenship to anyone worldwide of any ethnicity so long as they are members of the Jewish faith but ethnicity is irrelevant.
Most Israeli Jews are of European extraction, with a significant minority coming from the wider Middle East. In Judaism, corresponding roughly to European origin, the term Ashkenazi is used. The term referring to those from most Middle Eastern and African origins is Sephardim (click on the links for more information). It is extremely significant to note that almost the entire political structure of Israel is controlled by those of Ashkenazi origin. What is also important to note is that most religious institutions and power come from those of Sephardic origins.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was strongly allied with the Arab nations of the Middle East (except for Egypt after Sadat came to power). One result of this was that the Soviet Union prohibited most of its Jewish citizens who wished to emigrate. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, these restrictions were largely restricted and today in Israel the single largest “cohesive” Jewish bloc consists of those with Russian origins. Although their political power is still relatively insignificant, it is growing.
Palestine: It’s worth noting the history of the Palestinians outside of and to a lesser extent, inside of, Israel in the modern era.
Like all things concerning this subject, even the term “Palestinian” is strongly contested. Depending on whom you ask, “Palestinian” either refers to a distinct ethnicity or it doesn’t. For my purposes, the term “Palestinians” refers to the Arab peoples who are either current residents of Israel or whose ancestors were residents of the region prior to 1948.
After Israel declared its independence in 1948, a large number of Palestinians fled the area for many, many reasons. For many other reasons, they were never allowed to return to Israel. The vast majority of them have no citizenship in any country and are living in refugee camps in neighboring nations (see current breakdown here). Many of the ones living in the West Bank from 1948-1967, which was under Jordanian control, were granted Jordanian citizenship and many residents there today still retain Jordanian citizenship.
Most Palestinians today are caught in a vice. Some are stateless people in neighboring countries, neither granted citizenship by their host nation nor allowed by Israeli law to return to Palestine. The residents of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are not citizens of Israel but subject to its military occupation and rules. Only those Palestinians living in Israel proper (including E. Jerusalem) have the rights of a citizen, although these are severely curtailed and include draconian limitations on cross-religion marriages, freedom of movement and the ownership of property.
So many Palestinians left Israel in 1948 and settled (or were placed in refugee camps) in Jordan that they eventually grew in population to outnumber the local “ethnic Jordanian” population. From 1948-1967, with Jordan controlling now what is referred to as the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Palestinian militias used Jordanian territory to launch many attacks on and against Israeli territory, with the approval of the Jordanian monarchy (King Hussein). The predominant militia involved was known as Fatah, then headed byYasser Arafat, who was later to dominate the PLO.
In 1967, Jordan (along with Syria and Egypt) suffered a catastrophic loss to Israel in the “Six Day War”. As a result of that, Jordan lost control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This led to increasing raids by Fatah against Israel and growing power of the Palestinian populace inside Jordan itself. Seeking to curtail this, Jordanian King Hussein secretly agreed in 1968 to let Israel enter the border village of Karameh (inside Jordan), where Israel hoped to decapitate the Fatah movement.
The Israeli attack was unsuccessful and the PLO leader, Yasser Arafat, survived. One of the reasons the Israeli attack failed was because the local Jordanian general ignored King Hussein’s order not to intervene and fought on the side of the Palestinians. Instead of wiping out the Fatah movement, Arafat used the success of this battle as a major morale booster and he became a pan-Arab hero for having confronted Israel and winning (the first time it had ever happened since Israel’s creation).
The PLO (under Arafat’s Fatah) grew in strength and influence in Jordan to the point where the were self-managing the refugee population, including the collection of taxes. As a result of their growing power, there started to be military clashes between the PLO and Jordanian military.
Due to some political reasons, the PLO became estranged with Egypt’s Nasser in 1970 and were therefore no longer receiving popular international support for their state within a state in Jordan. As a result of this, as well as strong backing of the Nixon administration, King Hussein began a serious crackdown against the PLO which amounted to a civil war.
More radical (than the PLO/Fatah) Palestinian groups responded by unsuccessfully trying to kill King Hussein. The PFLP hijacked a number of airplanes to draw attention to their cause, including a British Airways plane in Amman (Jordan’s capital). King Hussein responded by declaring martial law.
What follows is known as “Black September” (1970) to Palestinian and many Arab groups. Essentially the Jordanian military was turned against the Palestinians and many people were killed, mostly innocent civilians caught up in the crossfire. Both Israel and the United States sent their militaries into the region to support Hussein although no actual fighting by Israeli or American troops took place.
By the end of the fighting, tens of thousands of people were dead and Fatah’s military presence in Jordan was smashed and its members mostly disarmed. Many Palestinian militants of all stripes were then either deported to Lebanon or chose to move there, including Arafat’s PLO. Ever since September 1970, Jordanian royal elements have been in much firmer control of the nation of Jordan and Palestinian influence has been curtailed.
Lebanon began a civil war in 1975 which left the central government either non-existant or extremely weak. As a result of this, and the population in the south shifting ever more towards a Palestinian majority, the PLO (including Arafat) as well as other Palestinian militia groups became a de facto state within a state in south Lebanon. This continued until the 1981 invasion by Israel.
It’s worth mentioning here that the PLO’s original charter was written in 1964 by Nasser and King Hussein and was specifically created to destroy Israel. Only later did actual Palestinians (including Yasser Arafat) rise to positions of power within the organization. It was especially the 1968 defeat of Israel in the battle of Karameh that Arafat’s Fatah organization grew in prominence and eventual leadership of the PLO.
After the Israeli invasion (as well as inter-Lebanese fighting with different local militias), the PLO leadership moved to Tunis, Tunisia and effectively consisted of a Palestinian government in exile while there. Israel bombed the PLO headquarters in Tunis in 1985 but failed to kill Arafat or seriously injure the organization.
In 1987, the First Intifada (Arabic word for “uprising”) began in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. This was not sponsored by or engineered by the PLO but was more or less a “grassroots” movement. The PLO soon realized however that most Palestinians were sympathetic of it and incorporated it into their “political platform” as did the organization which became Hamas.
Later Arafat began moderating the rhetoric against Israel (and thus alienating the more hardline Palestinians) up to and including the 1993 Oslo agreements, in which the PLO formally renounced their goals of destroying Israel and pledged to follow the accords in exchange for self-government in the Gaza Strip.
The first Palestinian form of government in the modern era was created out of this agreement and is known as the Palestinian Authority. Arafat was first appointed head of the PA and then later won an election as president of the PA (in 1996). The effectiveness and authority of the PA has since been drastically diminished, especially following the death of Arafat and the 2006 electoral success of Hamas.
The PLO, dominated by Arafat’s Fatah wing, was the ruling Palestinian quasi-governmental body from the late 1960’s until just recently. Hamas was created in 1987 as part of the movement that lead to the first Intifada. Hamas is a much more hardline organization, still openly calling for destruction of Israel as well as the use of suicide bombs.
Its popularity amongst Palestinians is partially a result of apathy towards the PLO/Fatah’s endemic corruption, weakness and inefficiency and partly due to Hamas’ social organization wing. Hamas had set up welfare programs, schools, orphanages and medical clinics long before its 2006 electoral victories, in essence proving it was better at governing and providing for Palestinians’ needs than the PLO/Fatah.
Fatah/PLO is and always was a secular organization. Hamas is a Sunni fundamentalist organization that was founded by Ahmeed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi along the lines of the Muslim Brotherhood. Both men were members of the Muslim Brotherhood and both had studied and lived in Egypt. Yassin in particular studied at Al-Azhar University in Cairo during the early years of Nasser’s presidency.
Approximately 80% of all Palestinians are members of the Muslim faith, the vast majority of them being Sunni. The other 20% are largely members of the Christian faith (what is referred to as the Eastern Orthodox tradition).
As of this year, all Israeli citizens have been removed from the Gaza Strip although Israel maintains a large military presence there. There is currently no effective Palestinian government as Israel has arrested, killed or caused to flee the majority of the Hamas politicians who won elections earlier this year.
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Well that’s it for today. If you found this useful and I didn’t offend you too badly, I’ll continue tomorrow with a look at Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen and perhaps the Gulf States.
There are however some wider trends that I will be addressing. I’ve been adding pieces to the larger puzzle – actually two puzzles – as I go along.
One puzzle is just how the Israeli/Palestinian situation got to where it is today and what affect that has had on the wider Middle East.
The second puzzle is how fundamentalist, terrorist Muslim organizations developed and where they came from, especially those in the Middle East (which completely sidesteps what’s going on in the Philippines, Indonesia, China, etc).
Quite simply put, the overall wide view of that second “puzzle” is that Middle Eastern nations went from being colonies of the Ottoman Empire to being ruled by authoritarian dictatorships backed by either the “West” (Britain, U.S. and France) or the Soviet Union, or both.
It is a child’s overly simplistic fantasy to believe that Middle Eastern terrorist organizations are the sole result of individual “bad guys” who have no motive save some kind of James Bond villain style desire to do evil. No guerilla, insurgency or terrorist organization can ever exist without support from a large segment of the population. This critically important supportive segment of the population derives almost exclusively from a backlash against the authoritarian repressive governments under whom they live – governments for the most part who could not exist without the financial support of the west, particularly the United States.
I do not condone or accept or approve of terrorism in any way. By showing a causal relationship between oppression and terrorism I am not thereby excusing terrorism. But considering that terrorism and the Middle East are two topics which are vitally important to understand, exploring their history and the underlying motives for their existance must not blind us to that which we find abhorrent.
Pax
