Alan Axelrod - The Middle East Conflict

No one likes a know-it-all. Most of us realize theres no such thinghow could there be? The world is far too complicated for someone to understand everything there is to know. So when you come across a know-it-all, you smile to yourself as they ramble on because you know better.

You understand that the quest for knowledge is a never-ending one, and youre okay with that. You have no desire to know everything, just the next thing. You know what you dont know, youre confident enough to admit it, and youre motivated to do something about it.

At Idiots Guides, we, too, know what we dont know, and we make it our business to find out. We find really smart people who are experts in their fields and then we roll up our sleeves and get to work, asking lots of questions and thinking long and hard about how best to pass along their knowledge to you in the easiest, most-accessible way possible.

After all, thats our promiseto make whatever you want to learn As Easy as It Gets. That means giving you a well-organized design that seamlessly and effortlessly guides you from page to page, topic to topic. It means controlling the pace youre asked to absorb new informationnot too much at once but just what you need to know right now. It means giving you a clear progression from easy to more difficult. It means giving you more instructional steps wherever necessary to really explain the details. And it means giving you fewer words and more illustrations wherever its better to show rather than tell.

So here you are, at the start of something new. The next chapter in your quest. It can be an intimidating place to be, but youve been here before and so have we. Clear your mind and turn the page. By the end of this book, you wont be a know-it-all, but your world will be a little less complicated than it was before. And well be sure your journey is as easy as it gets.

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Publisher, Idiots Guides

For Anita and Ian

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Introduction

Every place on Earth has meaning for someone. No place on Earth has more meaning for more people than the Middle East. Historians have long spoken of it as the cradle of civilization. That familiar phrase may be debated, but only because of the definite article the. There can be no debate that the region is a cradle of civilizationand more than one civilization at that.

Moreover, the Middle East is the birthplace of the worlds three major monotheist religions, alldespite their sometimes violent differencesworshipping the same God. Almost certainly, this makes it the birthplace of monotheism itself, and some scholars have suggested that the region may well be the source of the very concept of religion.

No place on the planet is richer in physical and intellectual evidence of the very ancient past, and few regions have had a more intense and profound impact on the recent past, exert more influence on the present, and are more anxiously watched for their possible effect on the future.

The Middle East has contributed immeasurably to the collective heritage of humanity, and yet much of that heritage is one of conflictmillennia of struggle among diverse peoples for hearts, minds, and resources, and for nothing less than a stake in this world and the next.