Analysis: Why the Middle East stagnates

WASHINGTON, March 23 (UPI) -- One question that keeps resurfacing whenever anyone talks about the Middle East crisis is why, despite the apparent willingness of all parties concerned and the international community to settle the six-decade dispute, no progress is reached, peace is still far from being a reality and the conflict keeps getting more complex by the day.

There is, of course, no simple answer to any of the above questions, yet there are a variety of reasons why the leaders of the Middle East have time and again been unable to bridge their differences and why multiple efforts by the international community have failed. From the outset of the conflict and the first attempt by the world community to fix what was broken in the Middle East, from U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 right up to the latest efforts by the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations with the "road map to peace," nothing seems to have worked. So the question why is a legitimate one. Why?

Where to begin? Probably with the notion that the Arab countries -- except Palestine -- as well as Israel are more comfortable with the status quo than they would be with the change that the creation of a Palestinian state would bring about. And as we all know, change is one of the primary motivators of conflict. People in general, as well as governments, primarily those in the Middle East, are by nature reluctant to introduce change for that very reason. In a more idiomatic manner, one could say, "Why rock the boat?"

In the absence of conflict in the Middle East, how could countries such as Syria and Egypt, where a state of emergency has existed for more than 30 years, justify their domestic policies vis-a-vis their own people? Would Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled since 1981, have been capable of remaining in power for so long had it not been for the general state of mayhem that has been current in the Middle East, giving leaders an excuse to rule by decree? Unlikely. Would Syrian President Hafez Assad have managed to stay at the helm of his country from 1970 until his death in June 2000 and then have his son Bashar take over? Just as unlikely. And then without their proxy militias whom they finance, train and largely direct, how could they continue to influence policy in neighboring countries?

And no doubt, even in Israel, where the political climate is very different from the rest of its neighbors, where they do hold regular elections and leaders are voted in and out of office, the question of how change would affect the country nevertheless needs to be raised -- as does the question asking if, in the long run, the country can afford peace. Would an Israel that is fully integrated in the Middle East and at peace with its Arab neighbors not risk losing the keen interest and the unparalleled support network it benefits from today? What would an Israel without billions of dollars of funding from the United States and the military support it currently receives be like? How would internal politics be affected once the external threat is no longer a unifier?

Perhaps more pertinent to this topic is what the natural reaction of Israeli society would be in the absence of war given that ever since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, the Israeli military has always been at the center of the country's civil society, where men and women are called to serve in the nation's armed forces. Israel is a country of war veterans where almost every adult since 1948 has served in one manner or another in the military and has most likely seen combat.

The generation that fought in the 1948 War of Independence was followed by the generation that fought in the 1956 Sinai campaign. Most likely, many of those soldiers who saw action in 1948 also went into battle in 1956 and were still of military age to fight in the 1967 Six-Day War. Only six years later, Israel found itself fighting a new war on two fronts when Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on October 6, 1973, in a conflict that became known as the Yom Kippur War in Israel and the October War in the Arab world.

And again five years later, Israel went to war against the Palestine Liberation Organization in south Lebanon in 1978, hoping to distance the Palestinians from their northern border. However, only four years later in 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon once again, this time pushing all the way to the Lebanese capital, Beirut, setting siege to the city and eventually forcing the PLO to move out of Lebanon.

Since then, Israel has fought relatively "small wars," which are sometimes also called asymmetrical wars because they involve a regular structured military on one side fighting non-state entities. And those have become harder to win.

Then followed the two intifadas, or uprisings, in the Palestinian territories -- the first in 1987, the second in 2000 -- and two "small wars": the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and more recently the war in Gaza that began the day after Christmas 2008.

One cannot say that there are many similarities between Iraq during the reign of Saddam Hussein and Israel, although, much like Iraq, where the very foundation of Iraqi civil society was built around its armed forces, where Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Christians served without disparity and where the very structure of the country's society literally fell apart after the United States disbanded it, one may ask what the implications would be on the rest of the country if ever the Israeli military no longer played such a central role in the everyday lives of its citizens.

These are all questions that remain difficult to answer. The one certainty in this greater sea of uncertainty that is the Middle East today is that the region will remain a source of conflict for decades to come.

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(Claude Salhani is editor of the Middle East Times.)