ABSTRACT
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of several unregulated legacies of the Ottoman Empire that continue to vex the international order. At first glance, this might seem counterintuitive. After all, this conflict has not been fought out over large swathes of strategically vital territory; has not directly involved the military forces of major powers since the end of the British Mandate in 1948; and has not produced massive disruption or casualties on the scale to which the world in the twentieth century became accustomed. It is true that the territory variously called Palestine, the Land of Israel or the Holy Land has a unique religious-historical resonance, and the cultural affinities between the protagonists and other populations outside the region have guaranteed that it would generate not just interest, but passion. Still, the most persuasive explanation for this phenomenon is that the conflict between Jews and Arabs has often seemed to be important, even critical, to the overall alignment of the Middle East and perhaps even of the whole Arab or Muslim world. The latter, in turn, has always had strategic significance. Even before the discovery of oil, the region’s location at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa made it an object of interest for almost every imperial power. And since the Second World War, the Middle East’s position as the repository of the world’s largest known oil reserves has added a major geo-economic dimension to its traditional geopolitical role. Conflation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the destiny of the Middle East as a
whole distorts reality and does not stand up to rigorous scrutiny. Nevertheless, the link has been asserted so insistently and so often by Middle Eastern interlocutors that extraregional actors have been persuaded that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict demands their attention, not just for its own sake, but also as a determinant of larger strategic outcomes. The ‘international community’ has therefore committed huge resources and political capital to its resolution or at least its management and containment, and the conflict, barring an unlikely peaceful resolution, is likely to stay at or near the top of the international political-security agenda for the foreseeable future. This chapter first traces the contemporary history of the conflict and delineate its
recurrent themes. It then analyses the current state of affairs and prospects for conflict management and resolution. Finally, the chapter discusses the implications of the conflict for broader regional and international security.
