The Middle East, The Near East

Frequently Asked Questions:

• Where is the Middle East, who lives there, and what is its history?

• Is the Arab-Israeli dispute the key to the lack of peace in the Middle East?

• Why is Israel reluctant to give land to the Arabs? Shouldn't Israel share its land
with them?

• Why is the Middle East constantly the focus of world media attention?

• Why does the Middle East seem like such a hotbed of religious extremism?

Where is the Middle East, who lives there, and what is its history?
• See The Arab World

Is the Arab-Israeli dispute the key to the lack of peace in the Middle
East?
• Quite apart from the values and hopes which the State of Israel enshrines - and the
past injuries which it redeems - it twists reality to suggest that it is the democratic
tendency of Israel which has interjected discord and dissension into the Near East.
Even by the coldest calculations, the removal of Israel would not alter the basic
crisis in the area. For, if there is any lesson which the melancholy events of the
last two years and more taught us, it is that, though Arab states are generally
united in opposition to Israel, their political unities do not rise above this negative
position. The basic rivalries within the Arab world, the quarrels over boundaries,
the tensions involved in lifting their economies from stagnation, the cross
pressures of nationalism - all of these factors would still be there, even if there
were no Israel.
- John F. Kennedy, March 17, 1958, quoted in Near East Report (1958)

• CASUALTIES IN MIDEAST CONFLICTS:

* Arab-Israeli dispute (over 5 decades) 70,000
* Algerian civil war (1954-62) 1,000,000
* Egypt's invasion of Yemen (early 60s) 250,000
* Lebanese civil war (1975-76) 150,000
* Libya's invasion of Chad (1977-87) 100,000
 * Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) 1,000,000+
* Sudanese civil war (1988-present) 1,000,000+
- Middle East Digest - January 1997

Why is Israel reluctant to give land to the Arabs? Shouldn't Israel share
its land with them?
• The Arab world is comprised of 22 states of nearly five million square miles and
144,000,0000 people. The Islamic world contains 44 states with one billion
people. The Islamic states comprise an area 672 times the size of Israel. Israel,
with a population of fewer than 5 million Jews, is - together with Judea/Samaria
and Gaza - less than half the size of San Bernardino County in California. The
Sinai Desert alone, which Israel transferred to Egypt in the 1979 Treaty, is three
times larger than the State of Israel. Perhaps the Arabs should share with Israel...!