Problem #11: The Situation in the Middle East
Rabbi Ira Stone from Congregation Beth Zion-Beth Israel in Philadelphia once commented that, in the distant future, people would look back at the situation in the middle east today- HaMatsav, as they’d call it in Israel- and say that it was the result of the horrid job done by the French and (especially) British in dividing up the old holdings of the Ottoman Empire. Much as they did with their colonial holdings in Africa, the European powers created arbitrary national borders, ignoring the history of the peoples contained within. So, the British took a bunch of Sunni Arab, Shi’ite Arab, and Kurdish Muslim tribes, put them under a Sunni King, and said “hey- congratulations, you’re all Iraq!
More relevant to this post, the British also took their chunk of Mandatory Palestine (the French were assigned land which they dived into Syria + Lebanon), first said that “"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,”1 chopped off the larger part of it- east of the Jordan- and created a Palestinian Arab state... under the of a Hashemite family, imported from Saudi Arabia, who hated the Palestinians2. Again, brilliant.
But, that’s where we stand: Israel, the sole established democracy, and sole state with minority religious rights, surrounded by Arab nations with which it has either a cold peace- such as Egypt- or is in an official state of war- Syria, Iraq, etc. Note this, though: democracy. I note that because democracy is the answer.
The Democratic Peace Theory holds that democracies are less likely to fight wars against each other than other types of nations3. Immanuel Kant gives three primary reasons for this: the citizens of each democracy will recognise the others as legitimate; democracies give the ability to vote in favour of or against war; and, assuming that the democratic republics are capitalist, it’s likely that neighbouring democratic republics will be trading partners, and it’s bad business to shoot your trading partners. In short, if Israelis and Arabs are making money together, it would be highly stupid for them to start shooting each other.
Unfortunately, democracy can’t be imposed, as the US experience in Iraq should amply demonstrate. Rather, democracy must evolve from within. To take a neo-Hegelian (almost neo-Marxist) perspective, democracy develops in a country as the bourgeoisie acquires the wealth and experience to demand power for themselves, and the feudal dictators gradually cede some of their power as an alternative to revolution. The middle east today, while hardly a perfect analogue for Europe, is largely feudal. However, western oil money is giving the feudal leadership the ability to continue oppressing the potential development of middle class, secular, democratic leadership, thereby preventing the organic development of Arab democracy.
The irony, of course, is that if the existing powers today decided that trade with Israel was a better alternative to perpetual war with it, there’s no reason that the resources- human and natural- of that region shouldn’t make it stable and prosperous. But, diven the importance of Arab democracy, the best thing that could happen to the middle east today is actually peak oil, as it would deprive the ruling powers there the money by which they are preventing the development of democracies- and peace.
Endnotes
3. Kant, Immanuel. “Perpetual Peace,” 1795; this notion is raised by others, though, including Thomas Paine and Alexis de Toqueville.
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