Pretend I'm an idiot. Can someone please explain the Middle East situation?

Question

I feel like a 2nd Grader - I don't know a Palestinian from an Israeli, who wants what or why. Please don't leave posts like "Bush is an idiot" or "Mueslims are God's chosen people" for I am really trying to understand the global situation. Can anyone break it down simple terms? I watch the news with growing confusion everyday.

Answer 1

Well the least i could do is TRY to explain it in a simple way.. Historical importance, Religious importance, and well .. OIL!!

The main conflict in the region has to do with ISRAEL ..
in 1917 The Balfour Declaration by the britsih goverment allowed the formation of Israel in Palestine! Jewes from around the world got a national home in their "promised land" ... and "Palestinians" who were the existing residents (muslims + christians) got screwed!!! Basically all countries in the region fought with Israel because they all know they're next (because the so calle dpromised land isn't just palestine, its the entire region).. Israel has the most military power and is backed by the US. any attemp by any other country to gain equal power is forbidden. and there are many resistance fractions that are quickly labeled as terrorists though many of them aren't!

Anyways if you like, check these links for more info

Then there's the situation in Iraq, and the real reason behind it all is that everone wants to gain control over the Oil, and because Iraq was gettin too powerful in the 80s and was becoming a threat to Israel. So some idiot by the name of Saddam gave the US the perfect excuse and naturally the iraqi people got screwed!!

the current situation in lebanon is because one party or fraction or i dunno what its considered, by the name of "Hezbollah" who's been fighting Israel for ages now held two Israeli soldiers as prisoners, giving Israel the excuse not only to retaliate against Hezbollah but also to attack Lebanon who's governemnt didnt even know about Hezbollah's plans .. and now Lebanese civilians are dying, airports and bridges destroyed, and Lebanon doesnt have military power to defend itself, its a country that thrives on tourism not terrorism .. and i think its not fair

Answer 2

A lot of the problems in the Mideast stem from the fact that a lot of these countries never developed. At one time or another they were all colonies of western european nations who divided them up along arbitrary bounderies and set up someone they thought they could control who usually mistreated the population. The allies set up Isreal as a place for jews after WW2 because of the halocost. This caused the displaced palistinians to get pissed off cause basiclly the allies just gave their country to someone else. Palistinians are mostly muslim who have never had a lot of love for Jews. Im not sure why. The great muslim nations during the middle ages were pretty tolerant of other religions as long as they paid taxes etc etc. After WW2 the soviet union and the USA were all vieing for control over this area as it is rich in oil and the russians have always been after a warm water port which has been part of russian expansion strategy for hundreds of years. The USA and Russia sent a lot of weapons and money to this region and supported dictators and kings who were not friendly to the general poplulation. So what you have is a general population that has been exploited for centuries coupled with poor economies with a lot of young men who have nothing to do and no real future for them. Add into this mix radical religious doctrine which is being exploited by the powers that be to keep the powers that be in power. The resentment and atrocities that each side has commited goes back thousands of years with neither side remembering what the true reason of how it all began was. The geography is such that the middle east is sitting on a road on which armies from the west going east and armies from the east going west have traditionally traveled so it has always been a battlefield since time began. The middle east has always been a meeting place of east and west so consequently it has always been a place in much dispute. All parties are at fault but no one wants to give an inch because they know the other side will take a mile.

Answer 3

God gave Israel (the promised land) to the Jews. Eventually they were over run and assimilated into cultures around the world. After the atrocities of World War ll the allies decided to return the Jews to there homeland. Since then the Palestinians have been displaced. Hence the long conflict and reason for terrorism in the region and around the world. As of the last 30 years or so the Iranians and Syrians have been using the Palestinian people as pawns to incite war and the eradication of the Jewish state. Israel offered the Palestinians 90% of the West Bank as an olive branch. Why hasn't Iran and Syria offered land and money to the poor Palestinians so that they could create a legitimate government. Instead they fund Hezbollah and Ham mas(terrorist organizations) to fight The Israeli state. Bottom line they do not care about their Muslim brothers. Just as long as they can rid the area of democracy to retain there stranglehold on there peoples and there power.

Answer 4

The current conflict traces it's roots to less than a century ago:

I will try to put it in simple points

*Around 1917 British Foreign Secretary Arthur J. Balfour promised the jews of Europe to give them the land to the west of the Jordan river(what is called Israel by Americans and Palestine by the Arabs)
*Jews started migrating to Palestine which was already inhabited for 1800yrs by none Jewish Semites
* Jews in 1948 started a war which allowed them to control a large area of " Palestine"A lot of the Palestinians living there for over a 1000yrs had to leave their home and run away to the various Arab countries(my father went to Jordan, when he was six yrs old, others went to Lebanon, Egypt and Syria)
* Jordan, and Egypt were able to stop the Israeli forces and kept the parts called the west bank Gaza strip respectively
* In 1967 israel was successful in occupying the rest of Palestine.
* UN security council resolutions were passed and Israel was supposed to withdraw to where it was before the invasion(essentially to give up the west bank and Gaza)
*Israel of course did not comply
* Around 1973 The Arab countries launched an offensive which allowed Egypt to gain back parts of Sinai
*In the mean time, the Palestinians lived under the occupation of Israel where they were treated like **** and had no rights what so ever(it was very similar to south Africa if not worse.)
* Around 1993 there was the Oslo agreement where a peace accord was signed between the Israelis and Palestinians. The Israelis were supposed to give up the west bank and Gaza in exchange for peace
* Israel did not do it's part in the accord and was trying to gain some time over technical issues regarding the implementation. After of few yrs of nothing happening the Palestinians got sick of the peace process and the bad treatment by the Israelis.
* In 2000 sharon visited Muslim holy sites as a provocation. And that started another intifada(uprising)
* The Palestinians continued to loose hope in the peace process because Israel was wasting so much time. This caused the Palestinians who lost faith in the fateh government to vote for the more militant hamas.
* Israel still has 9000+ Palestinian and Arab prisoners.
*Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier to try to force Israel to release some of the prisoners
* Israel decided that it will use a zero tolerance policy(this is the only policy it knows)
* Hizabbolah who used to do minor skirmishes with Israel decided to add more pressure of it's own by kidnapping 2 more soldiers in the hope that Israel would release more prisoners
* Israel decided to retaliate in a big way by bombing the sh*t out of Lebanon.

Answer 5

Part of Palestine was given to the Jewish people after WW2, that was a big mistake because the Israelis then proceeded to throw out the Palestinians, the Palestinians have never accepted this, they have been terrorized by Israel, and now they fight with the only tools they have, throwing stones, and blowing themselves up, and setting off the occasional rocket.

The USA Supports the many atrocities commited by Israel:-
http://www.action-for-un-renewal.org.uk/pages/isreal_un_resolutions.htm

and the American people are blissfully unaware that $90 Billion of their taxes has been given to Israel to aid it's "War":-

http://www.vestedowl.com/counterpoint_results.htm

Israel has a lot of influence worldwide so only one side of the story is usually reported.

Recently Israel has siege Gaza, denying Palestinians electricity, destroying infrastructure, and making it a virtual prison,
As usual the Palestinians have fought against this oppression, and a group of them managed to capture an Israeli soldier.
The Israelis then proceeded to escalate their siege, and killing of Palestinians who had nothing to do with the Capture of the Israeli soldier, world leaders said nothing.
Only Hezbollah would stand up for the Palestinians, and they captured two Israeli soldiers. Then Israel decided to punish the whole of Lebanon, so now Hezbollah try to kill Israelis, and Israelis try to kill Lebanese.

The USA responce had been to blame Iran, and Syria, and it makes me wonder if this was their recent agenda all along - to create an excuse to attack another country.

Answer 6

Well you're probably not an idiot first. Here's my oversimplified view of it:

The situation is very complicated. First what we call Israel now was in the hands of Israel in ancient times, until it was taken by the Romans. After the fall of Rome the area was taken by Arabs, then taken by Christians in the Crusades and then re-taken by Arabs. The Arabs weren't the original people there either, they too were just one group of many invaders.

In more modern times the middle east was held by Brits and French mainly. The British had the area where Israel is and called it Palestine and there were many Arabs living there and few jews, but with increasing numbers with the Zionism movement which favored the return of Jew to their homeland.

The British got a state created for Jews (see the Balfour Declaration supporting a national home for Jews)--some say it was out of guilt others say it was because the Europeans wanted the Jews out of Europe. In any event, Britain was given a League of Nations Mandate to develop Palestine as a Jewish National home. By 1919, representatives of the Jaffa Muslim-Christian council were saying

"We will push the Zionists [Jews] into the sea or they will push us into the desert"

Anti-Jewish rioting and violence broke out in 1920 and 1921. Arab opposition to Zionism was not based only on economic and social issues. It was colored by the traditional Muslim vision of the Jews as second class citizens.

Palestinian Arabs viewed themselves as a small group of helpless victims of powerful British and Jewish "interests," the Zionists saw the opposite side of the coin, saying "the Arab people numbering 25 million, has [territory equivalent to] half of Europe, while the Jewish people, numbering ten million and wandering the earth, hasn't got a stone..." (Vladimir Jabotinsky, 1918)

The Jewish state invited Jews from all over the world to settle in it. The Arabs were upset at this created state and have pledged themselves to oppose it and destroy it since it was created.

Egypt and Jordan are the only two Arab states that have made peace of sorts with Israel. Countries like Iran, Syria and the Palestinian people continue not to recognize Israel and continue to pledge its destruction.

The crux of the problem is that the Israelis won't just lay down and die for the Arabs who want them out, it fights them ferociously at every attempt. In 1967 they were attacked and whipped the Arabs collective a*s*s and took land that they did not annex to themselves but upon which Jews settled. Hence the disputes over "illegal Israeli settlements" and other settlements in lands that were due to be turned over the Palestinians. As I commented elsewhere, you have to understand that none of the land Israel occupied belonged to the Palestinians--it belonged to Jordan.

The solution to the problem is to give the Palestinians their own state, have all Arab countries recognize the existence and the rigth to exist of Israel. When these two things happen, the problem of the middle east should go away....

Answer 7

Both the Muslims and Jewish believe the land that is occupied by Israel is the holy land, where life started, and they both believe theit their own religion is the correct religion and every other religion is wrong. So they both want to occupy that land. That's the basis of a lot of the conflict in the middle east.

Hope that helps.

Answer 8

I found this site which gives a short version of the history of the conflict without taking sides. It will give you a basic picture of the conflict.

www.npr.org/news/specials/mideast/history/index.html

Please don't believe that this conflict is thousands of years old. It started at the beginning of the last century as indicated by the website.

Answer 9

Your confusion is purposeful. Watch the SF Movie "1984" or read the book and it will explain your confusion. The enemy is whoever is most convenient for the powers controlling your information channels. Not that I am paranoid or anything... Let's see... we are at war with.....

Answer 10

haha, ur not the only one - its the sorta thing that you cant explain in one sitting, and if one perosn tells u one side, the next perosn will tell u another side, etc etc, i no a fair bit, but theres still so much to learn...easiest thing is just borow a book out on palestine and israel conflict - theres sooo many out there - just to give u a basic understanding first up