pheres--neutral spaces where men can come as equal citizens, check their tribal memories at the door, and enter into a politics governed by mutually agreed-upon laws. Only then will the words "parliament," "constitution," and "political parties" have any real meaning for these countries and their peoples (Friedman 101-102).
Many elements of the states in these countries have been borrowed from the West, leading to some resentment and to the fact that these institutions do not necessarily work as well in this context. The most volatile situation in the region may be the palestine question, and Friedman notes how this situation has created a complex situation:
This relationship turned Israelis and Palestinians into intimate neighbors and bitter enemies at the same time . . . Meron Benvenisti termed this crazy conflict a "twilight war"--a half-war half-peace kind of existence in which there are no trenches, no front lines, no barbed wire separating the two sides, and no accepted distinctions between civilians and soldiers, enemies and neighbors (Friedman 360-361).
One of the key issues in the Middle East is the Palestine question, a problem that has affected most of the countries in the region to some extent. Lebanon in particular has been faced with the refugee problem, a concern in Lebanon since the creation of Israel in 1948. This is a problem that is ongoing, and that exacerbates tensions within Lebanon as well as between Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East, as well as with Israel specifically. Between 100,000 and 170,000 Palestinian refugees entered Lebanon upon creation of the state of Israel in 1948. These refugees were primarily Muslims and nearly all Arabs, and during their first two decades in Lebanon they became powerful components in the Lebanese political system. This was only the first wave of immigration from Palestine, however, and the numbers increased greatly as a result of the war between the Pal...