Middle East in Crisis

The Middle East has been a world troublespot since 1948, when an uneasy peace followed the Arab Israeli war. Israel fought three more wars against its Arab neighbours, and the Palestinians remained without a homeland of their own. Terrorism became a terrible weapon in this conflict, which was bound up with two other issues: the world’s thirst for oil, much of which comes from Middle East states, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.

Israel’s population increased during the 1950s as Jews emigrated from Europe, Russia and the US. The Palestinian Arabs, pushed into separate communities within Israel, began a campaign for their own state. Wars were fought in 1956, 1967 and 1973. The first war began after Eqypt took control of the Suez Canal. Britain and France invaded Egypt, but later withdrew. Israel also attacked Egypt. In the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel won control of Jerusalem and the West Bank of the Jordan river.

It fought off Egyptian and Syrian attacks in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

Israel also became involved in the civil war in Lebanon, where many Palestinians lived in refugee camps. By the 1990s, Israel had signed peace agreements with Egypt, Jordan and Syria, and the Palestinians had attained limited self-government. Yet terrorist attacks by extremist groups opposed to new Israeli settlements, and even Israel’s very existence, continued.

In 1979, the Shah of Iran was overthrown and an Islamic regime took over. Iran went to war with Iraq in 1980. Neither side won a costly conflict. In 1990, Iraq invaded its tiny neighbor Kuwait, but was defeated in the brief Gulf War by a UN coalition force led by the US. Iraq’s ruler Saddam Hussein was finally deposed in 2003, when US-led forces invaded Iraq.