The Middle East has been the scene of constant conflict since the end of World War II, centered on Israel and its Arab neighborsùSyria, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians. Since the late 1970s, however, the Arab-Israeli conflict has shared center stage with the Persian Gulf, beginning with the Iranian hostage crisis and continuing on to the near-renewal of war between the United States and Iraq in 1998. This paper will examine those two conflicts and the attempts to end the discord.
The Middle East served as a superpower playground for four decades, with the U.S. and Soviet Union using money and arms to acquire influence. America served as IsraelÆs benefactor, while the Russians supplied Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Libya. Defeats in the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War prompted Egypt to abandon the military option and to pursue diplomacy instead. The resulting Camp David accords in 1978 returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. In return, Egypt recognized Israel and became AmericaÆs second-biggest beneficiary of aid. (Hourani, 1991).
Meanwhile, revolution gripped Iran, long one of AmericaÆs strongest allies. Islamic fundamentalists took power and hostages, and by the early 1980s they were exporting religious fervor to places such as Lebanon. Most of these events occurred against the backdrop of the Iran-Iraq War, which started in 1980, and despite huge casualties for both, dragged on until 1988. The Lebanese civil war started in the mid-1970s, with Christians battling Muslims and all battling the Palestinians, who occupied the southern part of the country. That ended in 1982 when the Israelis invaded, chasing PLO leader Yasser Arafat to Tunisia and establishing an occupation zone that continues to this day.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s marked the end of the superpower rivalry, and its departure from the scene set off a chain reaction that reverberates today. Iraq, freed from the re...