Telhami Shibley - The contemporary Middle East : a Westview reader

THIRD EDITION

WITH A SPECIAL CONTRIBUTION BY

Shibley Telhami

EDITED BY

Karl Yambert

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Designed by Jeff Williams

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The contemporary Middle East : a Westview reader / edited by Karl Yambert ; with a special contribution by Shibley Telhami.3rd ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8133-4840-7 (e-book)

1. Middle East. I. Yambert, Karl.

DS44.C575 2012

956.05dc23

2012033625

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Colbert C. Held and John Thomas Cummings

Within its regional unity, the Middle East possesses great cultural diversity. Differences of language, religion, and ethnicity create a complex mosaic of peoples.

Arthur Goldschmidt Jr. and Lawrence Davidson

Varieties of Arab nationalism all share a consistent distrust of the West, based on bitter historical experience.

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad

Islamism is a worldview in which the US support for Israel in particular is understood to be part of a larger Western effort to keep Muslim states weak and subservient.

Steve Yetiv

Access to Middle East oil will become even more critical as oil supplies dwindle, even as the regions flow of oil is vulnerable to several sources of major disruption.

William B. Quandt

The Bush administrations ambitious plan to remake the Middle East fell short and left the United States facing many obstacles in pursuit of its goals in the region.

Barack Obama

President Obama seeks a new beginning by addressing sources of tension between the United States and the Muslims of the world.

Robert O. Freedman

Israel has battled Arab states since its founding and now faces a threat beyond the Arab world in Iran, which backs Hezbollah and Hamas, two militant enemies of Israel.

Bernard Reich and Shannon Powers

Broad support of Israel by the United States is accompanied by disagreements on many specifics of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Glenn E. Robinson

Contradictory promises to Jews and Palestinian Arabs set the stage for inevitable conflict following the 1948 establishment of Israel.

Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar

Ariel Sharons security fence, new settlements, and unilateral withdrawal from Gaza were designed to deepen Israels hold on the West Bank.

Samih K. Farsoun and Naseer H. Aruri

The millions of Palestinian refugees and their right to return are not always represented by those Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories.

Calvin Goldscheider

Israels pluralistic society is shaped by Jewish communities outside the State of Israel as well as by Palestinians within territories administered by Israel.

Hirsch Goodman

Syrias threat to Israel consists chiefly in its serving as a conduit for Iranian aid to Hamas and Hezbollah.

Steven R. David

Even given scenarios in which Iran might launch a nuclear attack against Israel, or Israel might preemptively strike Iranian facilities, Israel will likely allow Iran to become a nuclear state.

Stephen Tanner

Americas battle against the perpetrators of 9/11, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, was derailed by turning attention to Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

Phebe Marr

Iraq must contend with the separatist tendencies of Shiite Arabs and Sunni Kurds, who were ruled until recently by a Sunni Arab minority.

James DeFronzo

The Iraq War damaged US moral standing internationally, strengthened Hamas and Hezbollah, and established a Shiite-dominated Iraqi government friendly to Iran.

William L. Cleveland and Martin Bunton

In the aftermath of the Iraq War, the policies of Barack Obama toward Iraq and Iran have been surprisingly similar to the policies of George W. Bush.

Phebe Marr

Shiite prime minister Nouri al-Maliki shored up his position by steering a secular, nationalist course rather than a sectarian one, and by negotiating Americas exit from Iraq.

David W. Lesch

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 established a Shiite theocracy next door to Saddam Hussein, prompting him to invade Iran and begin the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War.

Mark Gasiorowski

Irans political culture contains an undercurrent of distrust of foreigners even as Iranian moderates in particular occasionally reach out to the West.

Manochehr Dorraj

The US rebuff of Iran as a member of the axis of evil contributed to Irans strengthened ties with Russia, China, Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

Scott Ritter

The Israeli lobby influences US foreign policy to regard Iran as a regional threat, but the United States would do better to normalize relations with Iran.

Michael Axworthy

The United States rejected Irans 2003 Grand Bargain that would have committed Iran to a two-state solution with Israel and to a peaceful nuclear program.

Marwan Bishara

The Muslim Brotherhoods history of charitable work translates into strong party organization in post-Mubarak Egypt, even as traditionalists and radicals disagree over the Brotherhoods course.

Mark Perry

Terrorist groups that participate in elections and governments and that have constituencies to answer to, such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, can be negotiated with.

Eugene Rogan

The trajectories of the Arab Spring are followed in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, where longtime rulers were ousted, and in Bahrain and Syria, whose regimes remain in power.