The Mirage of Peace in the Middle East
A few days ago, the media hinted at a forthcoming truce in Palestine. However, we continue to witness acts of war sporadically reported in the media, along with mutual threats suggesting that the embers of conflict are still smoldering beneath the ashes. There is a significant possibility that these embers could reignite into a full-blown fire at any moment.
Our region, naturally beautiful and diverse in its ethnic, cultural, racial, and religious composition, has not experienced stability for decades, let alone centuries.
Its geographical location has historically made it a passage for all conquerors, preventing its countries from experiencing stability. The conquerors were always stronger than the governments which governed the area. The most recent of these was the Ottoman Empire, which rule lasted for four centuries until the First World War came and eliminated it. The great powers dismantled it after flooding it with debt, referring to it as the “Sick Man.”
The colonialists further fragmented and harmed our societies and nations. Despite bringing us a wealth of science and culture – sometimes at the expense of our original culture’s growth – the culmination of this harm was the declaration under which British politician Arthur Balfour gave part of Palestine to groups displaced in batches from the West and settled in this area as part of a plan to seize the land, leading us to where we are today.
The crisis of occupation and settlement in the South of the Antioch Levant has exacerbated the region’s crises and constitutes the pinnacle and most painful of the problems. However, our region is fundamentally predisposed to internal conflicts and wars and has been the scene of them for centuries.
If we review the groups that make up this region, we can appreciate the unique “mosaic” that it forms. Its components may live in peace and stability with each other for long periods, but not without internal conflicts and wars that rage throughout the Middle East from time to time.
A Norwegian doctoral professor, married to a Lebanese, once told me at the university, “I have not found any group in this area that does not have a vendetta against another group.” She is right. Each group seems to harbor historical grievances against another due to past killings or abuses, even if these groups share the same religion or even the same sect.
Our history is "inlaid"with massacres that we have inflicted upon each other, despite all of us belonging either to a unified culture or to similar cultures by virtue of sharing life on the same land for centuries. These are people who sometimes fight for trivial reasons and attempt to create sub-identities to differentiate themselves from other components of society, those with whom they have lived for centuries and with whom they share a cultural bond.
These crises may be part of the dynamics of a highly diverse society that lacks a strong and determined central state to ensure unity. However, these crises, regardless of their form, differ from what is happening in the South of the Antiochian Levant and the Holy Land. This is because the latter is based on a systematic expansionist settlement scheme that seeks to displace the indigenous people, erase their civilization, and replace them with those coming from abroad. It has become clear to everyone that what has happened over the last half-century is a war of extermination and an ethnic cleansing, a term that was not adopted at the time.
Migration from one region of the world to another, even for religious reasons, is normal. However, it is not normal that today, in the era of human rights, something identical to what happened five centuries ago in the American continent and Oceania is taking place.
To make matters worse, this so-called Middle East, or the Arab region, is characterized by two enticing factors for powers that makes wars according to the interests of arms and oil companies: The first advantage is the geographical location, which makes the geopolitics of this region in crisis due to the trade lines and gas and oil pipelines, which constitute the second advantage. The number of military bases planted in the region is no secret to anyone.
Given all this, oil and arms companies need to keep this region in a state of shaky stability, allowing it, from time to time, to benefit of periods of respite during which the people may breathe a sigh of relief.
Most importantly is that the region’s diversity allows the trouble makers to ignite mobile wars in all parts of the region, where needed, given the hostility that has developed between groups several years ago.
The inability of Middle Eastern societies to make the transition from a state of basic affiliations, such as religion, race, or ethnicity, to a state of contractual affiliation – that is, the social contract, which gives “to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s,” as the Master taught us – will keep these societies in a state of conflict or wars among their components, moving from one place to another.
Anyone who studies the political and cultural history of our region may conclude that peace is almost impossible in this region, especially in light of the settlement and expansionist project, which never hesitates to declare its long-term intentions and goals.
The land of Christ, between His birthplace in Bethlehem and the place where His mission to the world began in Antioch, is under threat. The only way to save it is by embracing and spreading His values and teachings.