Middle East: Breakthrough or Breakdown?
Posted by jonathanfryer on Tuesday, 7th August, 2007
This evening in Kennington, I led an informal discussion at a Lambeth LibDem Pizza and Politics on the Middle East, an area of the world I have been travelling in and writing about for nearly 40 years. Yesterday, the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, went to the West Bank for face-to-face discussions with the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, accepting (without going into detail) the principle of a viable Palestinian state. Recently, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia reiterated a plan which would mean that all Arab states would recognise Israel. And in November, under US sponsorship, there is due to be an international conference on the Middle East. So, does this mean there has been a breakthrough in the world’s most explosive region?
Alas, things aren’t that simple. By failing to recognise the outcome of the Palestinian elections, the West undermined its declared goal of democratisation in the Middle East, and to an extent precipitated the Hamas take-over in Gaza. Meanwhile, the situation in Iraq has gone from bad to worse. Not only is the US-led military effort pouring billions of dollars a month into a black hole, even large quanities of weapons are now disappearing. As US companies squabble over the spoils of war, Iran’s influence in the Shia areas has increased enormously, and the Saudis are wondering nervously if they might have to intervene in the Sunni part, as the Turkish army is re Iraqi Kurdistan. To cap it all, last summer Bush and Blair connived in the disproportionate Israeli attacks on Lebanon, setting that country back years and reigniting internal instability. More breakdown that breakthrough?
There will be a Middle East debate at the Lib Dem Conference in Brighton next month, at which there are bound to be passionate voices raised on various sides. Not that peace and stability can be brought to the region on the floor of such a gathering, alas. Only the actors on the ground could do that. But will the West’s pouring in billions of dollars-worth of yet more sophisticated weapons really contribute to that?
