Question
Which Arab countries dislike Israel and why?
Answer
It's not just Arabs disliking Israelis. That makes it sound like there is one basic line of conflict. It's everybody disliking everybody in ways that even they themselves are confused about. The rest of us can forget about understanding the situation.
The truth is, that entire corner of the world has a history of being just a fluid state of shifting, fine-grained and varied rivalries, temporary alliances and enmities that dates back to before either Jews or Muslims.
The most psychologically (if not historically) accurate portrait of the Middle East that I've ever seen is actually in the comic book, Asterix and the Land of Black Gold, set in the 1st century AD. In this, Asterix and Obelix get enormously frustrated, as they encounter Assyrians, Akkadians, Sumerians, Hittites, Medes and others all fighting each other in confused and lost ways in the desert. Monty Python's The Life of Brian is pretty accurate too (all that stuff about the Judean People's Front vs. the People's Front of Judea).
There are those who like to pretend that before Israel came along, the region had everybody living together peacefully. Wrong. They've been at each other's throats since at least the Battle of Kadesh, between the Egyptians and Hittites, in modern Syria, in 1274 BC. I like to think that was the first war between superpowers, and things have never settled down since that little dust-up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat...
I am told there is a secret agreement called the "Remember Kadesh" agreement, among all the region's countries, including Israel, whereby they share daily updates about who is supposed to like/dislike whom that day. If there are no clear reasons to make up the patterns for the day, they draw lots.
Okay, I am exaggerating, but not by much. Sometimes grim humor is the only way to react to absurdly bloody situations.
I don't mean to be flippant, but I am starting to believe the entire region just enjoys a good punch up now and then. Most parts of the world do (being Indian, I have to admit the subcontinent has this dynamic too, but we're too lazy to put much heart into it), but the Middle East region seems to perversely enjoy it more than than most other regions. Maybe because it is the original seat of civilization. Who knows, maybe it is the necessary primordial chaos on which the vitality of the rest of civilization depends.
Some people naively trace the region's troubles to America's addiction to oil.Others trace the root cause to the post-Ottoman carving up of the region by the British and the French.
This gives too much credit to the West. The region would have dissolved into a patchwork of enmities and rivalries no matter how the map had been carved up, whether or not Israel had been put there, and whether or not oil had been discovered there. It's just not a region that likes static lines on a map.
I think the closest the region came to some sort of prosperous peace was probably during the peak of the enlightened Abbasid Caliphate. I think the region needs to revive memories of those times.
The truth is, that entire corner of the world has a history of being just a fluid state of shifting, fine-grained and varied rivalries, temporary alliances and enmities that dates back to before either Jews or Muslims.
The most psychologically (if not historically) accurate portrait of the Middle East that I've ever seen is actually in the comic book, Asterix and the Land of Black Gold, set in the 1st century AD. In this, Asterix and Obelix get enormously frustrated, as they encounter Assyrians, Akkadians, Sumerians, Hittites, Medes and others all fighting each other in confused and lost ways in the desert. Monty Python's The Life of Brian is pretty accurate too (all that stuff about the Judean People's Front vs. the People's Front of Judea).
There are those who like to pretend that before Israel came along, the region had everybody living together peacefully. Wrong. They've been at each other's throats since at least the Battle of Kadesh, between the Egyptians and Hittites, in modern Syria, in 1274 BC. I like to think that was the first war between superpowers, and things have never settled down since that little dust-up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat...
I am told there is a secret agreement called the "Remember Kadesh" agreement, among all the region's countries, including Israel, whereby they share daily updates about who is supposed to like/dislike whom that day. If there are no clear reasons to make up the patterns for the day, they draw lots.
Okay, I am exaggerating, but not by much. Sometimes grim humor is the only way to react to absurdly bloody situations.
I don't mean to be flippant, but I am starting to believe the entire region just enjoys a good punch up now and then. Most parts of the world do (being Indian, I have to admit the subcontinent has this dynamic too, but we're too lazy to put much heart into it), but the Middle East region seems to perversely enjoy it more than than most other regions. Maybe because it is the original seat of civilization. Who knows, maybe it is the necessary primordial chaos on which the vitality of the rest of civilization depends.
Some people naively trace the region's troubles to America's addiction to oil.Others trace the root cause to the post-Ottoman carving up of the region by the British and the French.
This gives too much credit to the West. The region would have dissolved into a patchwork of enmities and rivalries no matter how the map had been carved up, whether or not Israel had been put there, and whether or not oil had been discovered there. It's just not a region that likes static lines on a map.
I think the closest the region came to some sort of prosperous peace was probably during the peak of the enlightened Abbasid Caliphate. I think the region needs to revive memories of those times.