Kriege, Umstürze, Stammesfehden, es knallt und kracht überall im Nahen und Mittleren Osten, und das nicht erst seit gestern. Dennoch glauben viele, die es besser wissen müßten, der Konflikt zwischen Israel und den Palästinensern sei die Ursache und Quelle allen Übels, und wenn es nur gelingen würde, Frieden zwischen Israel und den Palästinensern herbei zu führen, wäre auch die ganze Region befriedet. Amir Taheri räumt mit einer Legende auf:

“All told, in the past six decades, this region has witnessed no fewer than 22 full-scale wars over territory and resources, not one of them having anything to do with Israel and the Palestinians. And these international disputes, as I mentioned at the outset, are quite apart from the uninterrupted string of domestic clashes, military coups, acts of sectarian and ethnic vengeance, factional terrorism, and other internal conflicts that have characterized the greater Middle East, not infrequently attaining impressive heights of cruelty and despoliation. Nor is that the end of it. Underlying all of this are the unmoving facts, documented at length in the annual volumes of the Arab Human Development Report, of chronic instability, severe economic underachievement, social atrophy, and cultural backwardness. The greater Middle East is the only part of the world still largely untouched by the wave of positive change that followed the end of the cold war.
The notion that all of these problems can be waved away by “solving” the Arab-Israeli conflict is thus at best a delusion, at worst a recipe for maintaining today’s wider political, diplomatic, and social paralysis.”
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.aip?id=10829