ABSTRACT
The events in the Arab-Israeli arena since 2000 have threatened to divide—or have already divided—the Arab world or even transformed the Arab-Israeli dynamic into a completely different paradigm entailing a different set of potentialities and possibilities. Two events realigned the Arab-Israeli conflict prior to Yitzhak Rabin’s assuming the office of prime minister in 1992: the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and the 1991 Gulf war. The 1991 Gulf War had a salutary effect on the Arab-Israeli arena. The Arab states much preferred an international setting in which the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Nations, and multiple Arab parties would participate in order to maximize Arab leverage. For a short while in the aftermath of 9/11, the George W. Bush administration actively courted the Arab world as an ally against the new terrorist threat and in its Afghani campaign, attempting to construct a broad coalition.
