Southwest Asia 1 Israel Lebanon Jordan Syria History

Southwest Asia 1 Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, & Syria

History of Religion animation Watch it again. Regional Imperial History of the “Middle East” Watch it again too.

US Foreign Aid & Defense Spending in SW Asia, 2007

CNN 2015

Israel 1947 to 1967 A tiny Jewish State, an enduring volatility: will it end and how?

Six Day War Watch this, it’s short.

The Gaza Strip, essentially an internment camp for 1. 5 million Palestinian Muslims. Blockaded by Israel, hot, crowded, bombed out from a months long war in 2014 between Israel and Hamas, a militant Sunni group that has vowed to destroy the Jews.

A common scene in Gaza

Hamas, militant Sunnis of Gaza, and Fattah, moderate Sunnis of Gaza fought each other in a short war in 2006 -7. Fattah capitulated and decamped to the West Bank. Hamas fights Israel still.

In 2006, militant Hamas had to govern Gaza after defeating Fattah.

Dead Sea, 1, 300 feet below sea level, is the lowest terrestrial elevation on Earth, blistering hot, it’s a resort for many. Very salty means very floaty!

Israel’s West Bank & Jerusalem. Notice no right-angled areas in the “Old City, ” which is ancient.

Although Israel is the Jewish state, it’s a multi-ethnic country. There also many Christians.

The Western Wall, or Wailing Wall, of the Jewish temple destroyed by the Babylonians earlier and the Romans later in antiquity. Also far left are the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, the two most sacred Muslim sites outside of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

Jerusalem, one of the oldest cities in the world, holy to three great monotheistic religions, is “shared” among Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Armenian Christians. The Temple Mount to the East is just the main place of holy sites. After the Six-Day War in 1967, the Old City was partitioned.

Wall, Bethlehem, West Bank After a spate of suicide bombings by Palestinians against Israelis, walls were erected to keep Palestinians from Jewish settlements in the West Bank. They created misery for innocent Palestinians.

Searchable Link to West Bank Walls

Detailed Map It’s complicated!

Many wise and stupid people have tried to explain why there is so much hatred between the Arabs and the Jews, both of whom are Semitic people, their history is intertwined, their Semitic language is from the same root, Judaism, the first monotheistic religion, begat Christianity and Islam. It’s complicated and deadly and reaches deep into the distant past.

If you consider the recent events, you really have to start in 1900. Antiquity for Judaea/Palestine recedes into thousands of years BCE (see Wikipedia on Palestine Timeline for a history overload). l l l Timeline from 1900 Many blame the conflict on historic hatred of the Jews, who said they were God’s chosen people Then there’s the displacement of Palestinians when the Jewish homeland was declared in the 1917 British supported Balfour Declaration The Holocaust drove European Jews to Israel in the 1930 s WWII collaboration of Palestinians with the Axis powers 1948 declaration of the Jewish state brought war, which Israel won 700, 000 Palestinian refugees 1964 formation of the Palestinian Liberation Front (PLO) 1967 Six Day War began with a preemptive strike in which Israel destroyed the Jordanian, Syrian, and Egyptian air force plains, winning the war. Only the Camp David and Oslo Accords of the 70 s and 90 s brought signs of peace. Otherwise, the conflict grinds grimly on.

Jericho, West Bank of the Jordan River The WB is hot and dry, a rocky inhospitable region that was taken from the Jordanians in the Six Day War. Today there are tens of thousands of “illegal” Jewish settlement s in the WB, all deeply resented by displaced Palestinians. More are built every year, protected by a powerful military and walls.

Israeli Kibbutz Imagine the resources that it takes to build something like this in the desert and support people with water, food, and shelter.

INTIFADA: Arabic for uprising or shaking off First Intifada 1987, peaked in 1991, ended in 1993 with Oslo Accords. The Palestinian National Authority created the Second Intifada, aka al-Aqsa Intifada, which began in 2000 with an Israeli Prime Minister’s (Sharon) “provocative” stroll across the Temple Mount

Israeli Leader, Benjamin Netanyahu (Bibi)

Fatah Leader, Mohammad Abbas

Khalid Meshal, Hamas leader, King Abdullah, Jordan 1/12

Beautiful, ancient Lebanon, a mountainous country on the Mediterranean Sea. Colonized by the French, Beirut was referred to as the “Paris of the Mediterranean. ”

Lebanon, torn apart internally in a brutal civil war from 19751990, fought among the various religious factions: Sunnis, Shi’a, Christians, Druze. Externally fought and lost wars and territory to Israel, which still controls the Golan Heights. Threatened and attacked by the Syrians. Shi’a Iranian-backed Hezbollah, the Party of God, controls most of southern Lebanon, intermittently fighting with Israel.

Lebanon’s political system has its origin in the National Pact of 1943. Under this unwritten Pact, the President of the Republic must be a Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim, and the President (Speaker) of the Parliament, a Shi’ite Muslim. What is more, 50% of the 128 seats in the Parliament are allocated to Christians, and 50% to Muslims, and these allocations are further sub-divided for Christian and Muslim sects. In total, seats are allocated to each of 18 sects. Nationally, the 64 Christian seats are allocated as follows: Maronite 34, Greek Orthodox 14, Greek Catholic 8, Armenian Orthodox 5, Armenian Catholic 1, Protestant 1 and Others 1; and the 64 Muslim seats are allocated as follows: Sunni 27, Shiite 27, Druze 8 and Alawite 2. So, in total Christians have 50% of the seats, and the Sunni and Shiite communities just over 20% each. There was no provision in the National Pact for altering these allocations to reflect demographic changes. And there is still none today. These allocations may have corresponded to the proportion of each sect in the electorate at one time, but they certainly don’t today. But it’s impossible to say with any precision what they should be, since there hasn’t been a national census since 1932. This is a very sensitive issue within Lebanon, an issue that has the potential to trigger civil conflict.

Lebanese Civil Wars Timeline BBC Beirut, formerly the “Paris of the Middle East” Is Lebanon a microcosm of all the strife in the region? 1958 l 1975 l 1982 l

Bombed out Beirut, Lebanon

Destroyed French colonial building.

Beirut rebuilds around a bombed out theater, a reminder.

Hezbollah, Lebanon, an Iranian-backed “militia. ” l Terrorist Groups detailed: http: //library. nps. navy. mil/home/tgpnd x. htm

Hezbollah on You. Tube

Most of Jordan’s population hugs the Jordan River Valley to the west. The east is Arabian desert. Notice the colonial boundaries. Any time you see such straight boundary lines, you can be sure that the Europeans, in this case Britain, were there.

Petra, Jordan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, carved in the living rock in southern Jordan, a hidey hole for wealthy caravaners in antiquity (1080 BC), now a tourist site. “Petra: a rose-red city half as old as time. ” John W. Burgon, 1813 Bedouin Petra patroller, 2004

Abdullah, King of Jordan, going after ISIS following the burning of a down Jordanian pilot. He got them.

Syria Read this BBC account of the Syrian Civil War, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and created millions of refugees. Read this short graphic novel about the climatological root causes of the war.

Refugees of the Syrian Civil War Jan 2013 Total population: 612, 847 estimated[1] (Jan 2013) 508, 454 registered by UNHCR[1](Jan 2013) Regions with significant populations (Numbers don't include foreign citizens, who fled Syria) Jordan 176, 569 estimated[1] (Jan 2013) 128, 628 registered[1] (Jan 2013) Lebanon 192, 045 estimated[1] (Jan 2013) 137, 065 registered[1] (Jan 2013) Turkey 150, 906 registered[1] (Jan 2013) Egypt 150, 000 estimated[2] (Oct 2012) 13, 292 registered[1] (Jan 2013) Iraqi Kurdistan 70, 000 estimated[3](Jan 2013) 54, 550 registered[4](Dec 2012) Algeria 25, 000 estimated (Aug 2012) Iraq 8, 852 registered[4] (Dec 2012) Armenia 3, 248 applied for visas (July 2012) Language: Arabic, Kurdish, Turkish, Syriac, Armenian Religion: Sunni Islam, Christianity

Ebla, Syria an Assyrian iron-age earthwork in northwestern Syria, near Aleppo. Imagine how it was constructed. Notice how fertile the surrounding area is. Wonder what it looks like after so much war.